Shoddy gigs are killing comedy

James Cook on Birmingham's stand-up scene

I've been involved with the Birmingham comedy scene for 11 years now. I've booked for, promoted, run, performed at and compered nights in pretty much every part of the city, at every type of gig from the legendary Bush out at Cradley Heath to a Saturday night late show at The Glee. I don't say this to show off, more to show that I've 'been around' and to give some sort of context to where my argument comes from.

Often acts from outside of Birmingham express surprise that there isn't a bigger comedy scene in the second city. After all, 1.2 million people live here, with six million within 50 miles, yet the number of regular gigs is nowhere near as high as Manchester.

So why is this? Well, research shows that residents of Birmingham are the most risk averse in the country. The vast majority of people here will only do anything if they've seen it on telly or done it before. There doesn't seem to be a 'going out' culture in the city that goes beyond drinking until you're physically ill - and lord knows we all enjoy that.

So when intrepid comedy entrepreneurs set up gigs in Birmingham, they've really got their work cut out. Andy White and I used to run comedy at The Bear in Bearwood. If we spent a day a month flyering every house in the district, then we'd get a decent crowd at the gig. If we didn't, numbers would drop off massively. By far the most successful club I ever ran, The Comedy Kav in Moseley, took a couple of years of obsessively collecting email addresses and flyering to get to the stage where we'd turn a profit every show.

Because my ethos was that the best way to get your audience to come back, was to put on the best show you possibly could. This meant spending money on professional comics - ideally at least an opening act and a closing act. Then there'd be space on the bill for local newbies to do short spots and get the experience of performing in front of a full room – and if there was money left over, it was split between whoever was compering and whoever was running the door. There were nights at The Kav when we made nothing and when we lost money, particularly in the first 12 months, but once it was up and running, it wasn't unexpected for me to walk away with well over a hundred quid.

But, like many parts of the UK, there aren’t many nights run along similar lines in Birmingham right now.

With a few exceptions such as the superb Comedy Junction in Sutton Coldfield and Cheeky Monkey in Moseley, all we have is a plethora of comedy nights that feature anything up to ten new acts, all doing short sets, and charging up to £5. Now, I have no problem with any new act night that advertises itself as such and cuts the ticket price accordingly; but what I do object to are nights that feature nothing but new, unpaid acts, charging a door price and not letting the audience know what the deal is. It's tantamount to fraud. But more damaging than any trades description laws which may or may not be broken is that these nights shrink the potential comedy audience.

If your first experience of live stand-up comedy is a night at your local where you've paid a fiver to see eight comedians, only three of whom looked like they knew what they were doing, there is a very high probability that you will never go to see live comedy again. Not just in this venue, but in any venue, even the big ones. Not only that, all the punters at these sort of gigs are likely to tell their friends. 'Live stand-up? I went once, it was shit.'

I won't even go into where the money goes, but any time I see these nights advertised as being a 'Top Night Of Stand-Up', I want to grab my placard and protest outside.

One of the biggest lessons I learnt while promoting and running clubs was that it was the easiest thing in the world to put on a painfully mediocre night of comedy. Mediocre and just plain bad acts are easy to secure for nothing (or nearly nothing). What is hard, but ultimately more rewarding, is to put on an excellent night of comedy. What is even harder, but do-able if you're willing to play the long game, is to get a consistently large audience who keep coming back.

Too many gigs aren't taking this approach, and this hurts everyone.

Published: 3 Mar 2011

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