The Birthplace of British Comedy and the Deathplace of Several Wallets
On the evening of 19 May 1979 sixteen days after Margaret Thatcher won a general election and two days before anyone had worked out what that meant Don Ward and Peter Rosengard opened The Comedy Store in a Soho rooftop, and British comedy was never the same again. The first compère was an angry young Liverpudlian named Alexei Sayle, who approached the microphone like he had a personal grievance against everyone in the room and used it to deliver the kind of comedy that made audiences simultaneously laugh and check whether the exits were clearly marked.
The History That Justifies the Prices
The Comedy Store is not just a comedy club. It is a monument. A cultural institution. A place that has a stronger claim to shaping modern British comedy than any television programme, awards ceremony, or Netflix special you care to name. From this stage first in Soho, now in its purpose-built home on Oxendon Street near Leicester Square emerged Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmondson, French and Saunders, Paul Merton, Ben Elton, Jo Brand, and Mark Thomas. The club’s improv troupe, the Comedy Store Players, was co-founded in 1985 by a young Mike Myers and Paul Merton and still performs on Sunday nights, making it one of the longest-running improv shows anywhere in the world.
The club’s Tuesday night show, The Edge originally launched as The Cutting Edge in 1990 predates Have I Got News For You by six months and has been dissecting the week’s political news with savage wit for over three decades. In a media landscape where topical comedy has become an industry unto itself, The Comedy Store was doing it before it was fashionable, before it was fundable, and before anyone had worked out you could make a career from shouting about politicians in a basement.
What the Comedy Store Offers Today
The modern Comedy Store is a 400-seat purpose-built venue that feels, appropriately, like a place with weight and history. The sight lines are good, the sound is professional, and the bar prices are set at a level that suggests the management have done extensive research into how much a captive comedy audience will pay for a medium glass of wine before revolting. The answer, it turns out, is quite a lot.
The programming runs seven nights a week, with different formats across the week. Monday nights are typically new act nights, where you can see the next generation of comedy luminaries in the early stages of working out whether they are actually funny or have simply been told they are funny by supportive friends. Weekends bring the bigger names established circuit headliners, Edinburgh Fringe breakout stars, and the occasional legend returning to the venue where their career began.
The Comedy Store Players: A National Treasure in a Basement
If you see only one show at The Comedy Store, see the Comedy Store Players on a Sunday or Wednesday night. This improv troupe has been performing together since 1985 and includes Josie Lawrence, Paul Merton, Lee Simpson, Richard Vranch, and Andy Smart performers who have collectively accumulated more hours on stage than most comedians manage in a career. The format is pure improv: suggestions from the audience, games with escalating stakes, and the sort of spontaneous invention that makes you wonder why anyone bothers scripting anything at all. It is, without exaggeration, one of the great live performance experiences in London.
Getting There and What to Expect
The Comedy Store is on Oxendon Street, a two-minute walk from Leicester Square Underground station. Advance booking is essential for weekend shows and the Comedy Store Players nights. The venue operates a strict 18+ policy, and they mean it the door staff have the energy of people who have heard every excuse and are entirely unmoved by all of them. Arrive early enough to get a drink and a good seat. The front rows are fun but carry the risk of crowd work, which is either a feature or a bug depending on your relationship with public attention.
The Verdict
The Comedy Store is the benchmark. Everything else in London comedy is measured against it. At 4.7 stars from over 3,300 reviews, it is not quite at the 4.9 level of some newer venues, but this is less a reflection of quality than of the simple fact that when you have been operating for forty-five years, the statistical variance of your audience grows considerably. Some people came on a bad night. Some people gave three stars because the Uber was expensive. The Comedy Store itself remains, inarguably, one of the great comedy venues in the world, and visiting it is as close as you can get to paying your respects to the institution that made British alternative comedy what it is.
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
