Stand-Up for Survivors of the M&Ms Store and the TKTS Queue
Leicester Square is London’s most aggressively tourist-oriented public space a plaza ringed by overpriced restaurants, cinema multiplex queues, the world’s most inexplicable M&Ms store, and a constant ambient roar of people who have been separated from their money slightly faster than they expected. Into this environment, the 99 Club Leicester Square inserts something that Leicester Square desperately needs: a reason to be there that has nothing to do with a film premiere or a fast food franchise. With 1,214 reviews at a 4.3-star rating, it has been doing this for over a decade.
The 99 Club in Context
The 99 Club operates from Ruby Blue on Leicester Place a side street off the main square that is close enough to the tourist traffic to benefit from it and far enough to avoid the worst of it. The venue runs shows four nights a week, typically featuring top-quality circuit line-ups at prices that Time Out has noted are remarkable value for the standard of act on offer.
The 99 Club model is straightforward: book good comedians, charge fair prices, run the show professionally, repeat. It does not have the historical prestige of the Comedy Store or the pricing gimmick of the Top Secret, but it has something arguably more valuable in the long run: a consistent quality of programming that has kept it operating for more than a decade in one of the most competitive entertainment markets in the world.
The Leicester Square Audience
The 99 Club’s location in Leicester Square gives it access to an audience that is, by definition, already in a place designed for entertainment and already primed to spend money on a good evening. The challenge is converting people who came for a film or a restaurant into comedy audience members and the 99 Club has apparently been doing this successfully enough to accumulate over a thousand reviews and maintain a viable business model through everything from the 2012 Olympics to the pandemic and out the other side.
The 4.3-star rating is slightly lower than some of the newer West End venues, but this is partly a function of operating for long enough that statistical variance becomes a factor. A venue that has been running for over a decade across hundreds of nights of comedy will inevitably accumulate a handful of reviews from people who saw a weak bill, arrived late and sat at the back, or simply had expectations that were misaligned with what the 99 Club offers. The majority of its 1,214 reviewers, evidently, had an excellent time.
Programming and Format
The 99 Club follows the standard circuit format compère, support acts, headliner with the emphasis on booking acts at the upper end of the working circuit. The shows run for approximately two hours and represent the kind of value-for-money proposition that is increasingly rare in central London entertainment, where the cost of everything has risen faster than any reasonable measure of wages or inflation.
The Verdict
The 99 Club Leicester Square is a solid, well-established comedy club with a track record that speaks for itself. It is not the flashiest venue in the West End and it does not have the review volume of the Top Secret, but it has been doing what it does for long enough to have earned genuine credibility, and for anyone navigating the Leicester Square area in search of a good evening, it is one of the most reliable options available.
Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: editor@prat.uk
