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| Location | Soho London, W1 England United Kingdom |
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| Coordinates | 51°30′36″N0°7′56″W / 51.51000°N 0.13222°W |
| Owner | Don Ward and Peter Rosengard |
| Type | Comedy club |
| Opened | 1979 |
| Website | |
| thecomedystore | |
The Comedy Store is a comedy club located in Soho, London, England, opened in 1979 by Don Ward and Peter Rosengard. [1]
Since 16 January 1925 [2] David Tennant's Gargoyle private members' club had leased the three top floors of 69 Dean Street, Soho, London (at the corner with Meard Street). [3] In 1952 David Tennant sold the Gargoyle as a going concern for £5,000 to caterer John Negus. [4] In 1955 the club was sold on to Michael Klinger [5] and Jimmy Jacobs [6] who relaunched it as a strip club [7] [8] called the Nell Gwynne (variously advertised as a theatre, club, or revue). [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] A 1960s ad shows the club as the Nell Gwynne by day and the Gargoyle Club at night. [16] [17]
In 1978, Peter Rosengard was on holiday with his wife Irkku in Los Angeles.
"We had nothing to do one night, so I asked the concierge and he recommended the Comedy Store. At the time there was no live comedy in the UK, apart from working men's clubs up north, which was not really my scene. I loved what I saw in LA, so decided to open one in London, despite everybody telling me I was nuts." [18]
In 1979, the Gargoyle's upper rooms took in a varied series of weekly themed club-nights, in addition to the long-running Nell Gwynne Revue strip show. [19] Don Ward said Rosengard could use his premises on Saturday nights. But it was also a strip club with topless barmaids, which Peter had to explain when comedians came to audition. [18]
On Saturdays, beginning 19 May 1979, in the Gargoyle's rooftop club space Hammersmith-born insurance salesman Peter Rosengard [20] started a weekly club-night on Saturdays called the Comedy Store, in partnership with comedian Don Ward. It was open mic, in a Gong Show format, and invited audiences to show approval or disapproval of the unknown acts performing by "gonging" them off. [21] [19] There was no toilet in the dressing room, and male and female comedians used the sink. [22]
"On 19 May 1979, only sixteen days after Margaret Thatcher’s first general election victory, a new comedy club opened in London, hosted in a Soho topless bar named the Gargoyle, accessed through the Nell Gwynne strip club in Dean Street. The Comedy Store was the brainchild of insurance salesman Peter Rosengard, [1] who teamed up with local businessman Don Ward, having been inspired by the Los Angeles [23] Comedy Store while on holiday." [24] [25] [26]
"In the old days, there was a cross-over between stripping and comedy. 69 Dean Street was the Nell Gwynne strip club until about 11 o’clock and then it suddenly turned into The Comedy Store. When it got successful, they stopped doing the stripping on Friday and Saturday and they did two comedy shows – an 8 o’clock and a midnight. If you were on the circuit then, you’d do first act in the first house at the Comedy Store, then go off and do a pub in Stoke Newington or wherever, then rush back and do second or third on the bill in the second show at the Comedy Store. If you were good, you were working in more than one place. Everyone worked round each other and there was a cross-over between street acts and alternative acts"
Philip Herbert [27] [28]
The London Comedy Store made the reputations of many of the UK's upcoming "alternative comedians" while the specifically political Alternative Cabaret was taking root.
Among the original line-up who made their reputations here were Alexei Sayle, [29] Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmondson, French & Saunders, Nigel Planer and Peter Richardson who in 1980 led these pioneers to establish the breakaway Comic Strip team elsewhere in Soho. [30] All were to prove influential in reshaping British television comedy throughout the 1980s as stars of The Comic Strip Presents.
The Comedy Store, at the Gargoyle and elsewhere, helped start the careers of Paul Merton, [31] Ben Elton, [32] Keith Allen, [32] Jo Brand, Mark Thomas, Arnold Brown, [18] Andrew Bailey, [33] Pat Condell and John Sparkes.
Comedian Paul Merton is one of the longest performing mainstream comics to still be associated with the venue from his debut performance in 1984. [31] He presented a BBC 1 documentary, 25 Years of the Comedy Store – A Personal History by Paul Merton (11 January 2005).
In 2016 British artist Carl Randall painted the portrait of comedian Jo Brand standing in front of The Comedy Store, as part of the artist's 'London Portraits' series, where he asked various cultural figures to choose a place in London for the backdrop of their portraits. [34] [35] In an interview Brand explained why she chose The Comedy Store for her portrait, and her experiences performing there early in her career. [36] [37]
In October 1985, an improvisational group called The Comedy Store Players was formed, consisting of Mike Myers, Neil Mullarkey, Kit Hollerbach, Dave Cohen and Paul Merton. The group has had several line-up changes over the years, and now features a rotating team of Neil Mullarkey, Josie Lawrence, Richard Vranch and Lee Simpson, together with frequent guest appearances. Jim Sweeney was a member until retiring from performance in 2008 due to multiple sclerosis. Andy Smart was a member until his death in May 2023. [38] Several of The Comedy Store Players appeared on the BBC Radio 4 and Channel 4 comedy game show Whose Line Is It Anyway? .
In 1990 The Cutting Edge satirical comedy team was formed by comedy journalist John Connor (formerly comedy editor at radical London listings magazine City Limits ). The original team was Mark Thomas, Kevin Day, Bob Boyton, Nick Revill and Richard Morton. The show's aim was to recapture the political edge that was fostered at the original Comedy Store.
Don Ward dissolved his business relationship with Rosengard in late 1981. [18] Ward remained CEO of Comedy Store interests.
In 1982 when the upper floors were sold off, the Comedy Store moved to a series of other venues. In late 1982, The Comedy Store operated from 28a Leicester Square (The 400 Club) [39] [40] for two years, taking over the club in 1985. [32]
In 1993, The Store moved to a specifically designed stand-up comedy venue, at 1a Oxendon Street, between Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square. [32]
In 1984 Rosengard went on to manage the band Curiosity Killed the Cat.
The Comedy Store also has sister venues in Manchester (opened in 2000), and Bournemouth (2006). There was also a venue at the Merrion Centre in Leeds which opened in November 2003 but closed in June 2004. [41]
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster in the West End of London. Originally a fashionable district for the aristocracy, it has been one of the main entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century.
Paul James Martin, known by the stage name Paul Merton, is an English comedian.
The Comic Strip are a group of British comedians who came to prominence in the 1980s. They are known for their television series The Comic Strip Presents..., which was labelled as a pioneering example of the alternative comedy scene. The core members are Adrian Edmondson, Dawn French, Rik Mayall, Nigel Planer, Peter Richardson and Jennifer Saunders, with appearances by Keith Allen, Robbie Coltrane, Alexei Sayle and others.
Alternative comedy is a term coined in the 1980s for a style of comedy that makes a conscious break with the mainstream comedic style of an era. The phrase has had different connotations in different contexts: in the UK, it was used to describe content that was an "alternative" to the mainstream stand-up of the day which took place in working men's clubs, and was characterised by unoriginal gags often containing elements of sexism and racism. In other contexts, it is the nature of the form that is "alternative", avoiding reliance on a standardised structure of a sequence of jokes with punch lines. Patton Oswalt has defined it as "comedy where the audience has no pre-set expectations about the crowd, and vice versa. In comedy clubs, there tends to be a certain vibe—alternative comedy explores different types of material."
Richard Michael Mayall, known professionally as Rik Mayall, was an English comedian, actor and writer. He formed a close partnership with Ade Edmondson while they were students at Manchester University, and was a pioneer of alternative comedy in the 1980s.
The Comedy Store Players are a group of improvisational comedians who perform at The Comedy Store in London. The group first came into being in October 1985.
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Bernard John Manning was an English comedian and nightclub owner. He gained a high profile on British television during the 1970s, appearing on shows such as The Comedians and The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club. His act became controversial as attitudes changed, with the result that Manning was rarely seen on television in the last few decades of his career. However, he continued to perform at live venues until his death.
Don Ward is a British comedy entrepreneur, producer and CEO of The Comedy Store which he co-founded in 1979 in London's Soho. In 2003, he was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy, and although he performed as a variety performer in the 1970s, he is not actually known as a comedian.
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Roger Wilmut is a British writer and compiler of books on British comedy. Wilmut attended Warwick School, and began his 'day job' as studio technician for the BBC on leaving school in 1961. Wilmut claims to have drifted into a career as a writer "by accident". Wilmut's books include The Goon Show Companion, Tony Hancock: Artiste, From Fringe to Flying Circus and Didn't You Kill My Mother-in-law.
Adrian Charles Edmondson is an English actor, comedian, musician, writer and television presenter. He was part of the alternative comedy boom in the early 1980s and had roles in the television series The Young Ones (1982–1984) and Bottom (1991–1995), which he wrote together with his collaborator Rik Mayall. Edmondson also appeared in The Comic Strip Presents... series of films throughout the 1980s and 1990s. For two episodes of this he created the spoof heavy metal band Bad News, and for another he played his nihilistic alter-ego Eddie Monsoon, an offensive South African television star.
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Alternative Cabaret was a group of politically motivated performers, jokingly described by one of its founder members, Tony Allen, as 'a sort of collective of comedians, musicians – dope smokers, dole scroungers, tax evaders, sexual deviants, political extremists'. It was set up by Allen and Alexei Sayle in the summer of 1979 shortly after they had met at the newly opened London Comedy Store. They quickly recruited comedians Jim Barclay, Andy de la Tour and Pauline Melville; plus folk duos Chisholm and Stevens and Gasmask and Hopkins aka Alexander Arundel and Stuart Turner. Plus jazz salsa band Combo Passe. Alternative Cabaret performed their first show at the Pindar of Wakefield pub on Grays Inn Road on 15 August 1979.
The Alternative Comedy Memorial Society (ACMS) is a British comedy night, where comedians are invited to perform sets that might not work at more mainstream comedy nights. It was founded by John-Luke Roberts and Thom Tuck at the New Red Lion Theatre in Islington, London. For a while it was mainly held at the Soho Theatre, but now the regular London venue is The Phoenix, Cavendish Square. Each year there are Alternative Comedy Memorial Society shows at the Edinburgh Fringe. ACMS has been running since March 2011, usually on Monday evenings. The group's logo is a boulder emblazoned with 'JOKE?' being pushed up a hill, representing the slogan 'Fresh Sysiphean Comedy'.
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The GargoyleClub was a private club on the upper floors of 69 Dean Street, Soho, London, at the corner with Meard Street. It was founded on 16 January 1925 by the aristocratic socialite David Tennant, son of the First Baron Glenconner. David was the brother of Stephen Tennant who was a prominent member of the social set called "Bright Young People" and of Edward Tennant, the poet who was killed in action in World War I.
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Media related to The Comedy Store (London) at Wikimedia Commons