{"id":1625,"date":"2026-08-19T15:44:44","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T15:44:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/opencomedy.com\/news\/?p=1625"},"modified":"2026-08-19T15:44:45","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T15:44:45","slug":"leicester-comedy-festival-trustees-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/opencomedy.com\/news\/leicester-comedy-festival-trustees-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"Leicester Comedy Festival trustees get eight questions and a deadline"},"content":{"rendered":"

The people who ran the charity that owes comedians more than \u00a3100,000 were invited onto a video call on Sunday, and they declined. The exact wording came via Live Comedy Association chair Jessica Toomey, quoted in Chortle on Wednesday. The trustees had concluded that it would not be helpful for us to do so at this stage<\/q>. So the twenty-odd promoters, comics, suppliers and former staff on that call spent the time writing questions instead.<\/p>\n

There are eight of them. The LCA, which says it represents 1,600 people in the industry, sent them to Big Difference Company chair Chris Traill and the rest of the trustees. It has asked for a reply by the end of this month. Big Difference Company is the registered charity that produced Leicester’s comedy festival for over three decades. It then became insolvent and ceased trading on 5 August<\/a>. Before that came the February festival whose ticket money never reached the acts.<\/p>\n

Toomey put the mood plainly. She told Chortle the trustees have been annoyingly silent since the announcement they were ceasing trading was made earlier this month<\/q>. That is a very LCA way of saying what most of the people on that Sunday call were probably putting less politely.<\/p>\n

What happened to the Leicester Comedy Festival money?<\/h2>\n

Short version, since it’s what people are typing into the search box. Hundreds of comedians performed at the Leicester Comedy Festival in February 2026, and the ticket income from those shows was never passed on. The charity holding it collapsed in August, owing a sum Chortle reports is believed to exceed \u00a3100,000, much of it owed to comedians. There’s no pot left to pay them from, and the council has already said it can’t absorb the debts. In a liquidation the unsecured creditors queue up behind everyone else, and that queue includes every comic who did twenty minutes up a staircase in February.<\/p>\n

The eight questions are an attempt to work out how the pot emptied. One asks what specific changes were made after audited accounts dated 29 June 2024 flagged that the reserves policy was not being met. Another goes after how much was raised in 2025\/26 from donations and fundraising, and what it was spent on. There’s one asking when trustees first learned that ticket-sale money was being used to pay Big Difference Company’s core costs, and who signed that off. Question six asks how the trustees decided which people got paid after the 2026 festival and which didn’t. That is the question I’d want answered first if I’d done a Leicester run and my mate down the corridor had somehow been settled.<\/p>\n

A separate bank account, promised in November 2025<\/h2>\n

Question three is the one that will sting. The LCA asks whether the trustees knew what the CEO promised promoters in November 2025. The pledge was that ticket money from the 2026 festival would be ringfenced and safe in a separate bank account. Opening a second business current account takes an afternoon and a proof of address, so nobody is asking whether it was possible.<\/p>\n

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As a charity, they have a responsibility to communicate with the community they were supposed to benefit and we hope the trustees will reply to our questions soon so we can update our members and the wider grassroots live comedy community.<\/p>\n

– Jessica Toomey, LCA chair, speaking to Chortle<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Two other questions go after money that was supposed to arrive rather than money that went out. The LCA wants to know what the \u00a3150,000 or more of funding and income was that the charity expected to have by August and didn’t get. It also asks where the funds went from a successful public agency bid for a community libraries project planned for June 2026. That second one matters beyond comedy: a libraries project comes with a public funder, an outcome report and its own paper trail, and that’s the sort of thing the Charity Commission tends to read carefully. The charity had already filed a serious incident report on 21 July.<\/p>\n

The council will run a festival in 2027 but won’t clear the debts<\/h2>\n

On the same day the collapse was announced, Leicester City Mayor Sir Peter Soulsby said the council would step in. His statement is clear about the limit: the council can’t absorb the charity’s debts. But it will work with local promoters, venues and other stakeholders to ensure that an interim comedy festival programme can take place in 2027<\/q>, drawing on its own festivals team and De Montfort Hall. If you performed in February and you’re owed \u00a3180 from a Sunday afternoon room above a pub, and fees at that end of the business are thin enough already<\/a>, that press release is not for you.<\/p>\n

What is for you is the Live Comedy Association’s fundraiser, which is targeting \u00a330,000 for people hit by the non-payment. The LCA had already distributed \u00a35,000 from its Stand Up And Give Fund, split between 18 comedians and one promoter. Toomey has estimated the affected group at potentially hundreds of comedians and dozens of promoters and venues. Equity, separately, clawed back pay for three of its members earlier in the summer, which remains the single most effective thing any individual act has done about this.<\/p>\n

There’s a smaller, cheerier line in Chortle’s 5 August report too: Anthony Lamb, who managed the charity’s repossessed venue, has raised more than \u00a320,000 to reopen it as Forum Porcorum. A room that went under with a charity attached is coming back as a room with a lease and a landlord, which is roughly how most comedy venues have always worked anyway.<\/p>\n

Nothing forces the trustees to write back<\/h2>\n

Here’s the uncomfortable bit for anyone waiting on a reply. The LCA is a not-for-profit community interest company with 1,600 members and no statutory power over anybody. Its deadline is a request. The trustees have already turned down one invitation to talk, and a set of questions published on a trade website is not a regulator’s letter, however reasonable the questions are. The Charity Commission is the body with actual teeth here, and it works on its own clock, which is not measured in weeks.<\/p>\n

Between now and 31 August, watch question six – who got paid and why – because it’s the only one on the list the affected comics can check against each other. Everything else depends on documents only the trustees hold. That one can be crowdsourced by about forty people comparing bank statements in a group chat, and some of them have already started their own festival<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sources<\/h2>\n