Good morning and welcome to this meeting of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. This is the first meeting of our state of play inquiry, which takes up issues that may not fit into the wider inquiries that our Committee is looking at but are often about DCMS sectors that might have been slightly overlooked, either by the Department or by Parliament. Today, we are looking at live comedy. We announced this session on 1 April and, thankfully, only a handful of people thought it was an April fool. The proposal for today’s session was made by the Live Comedy Association and I am pleased that we are joined by: Geoff Rowe from the Live Comedy Association and founder of the Leicester comedy festival; Jessica Toomey, who is managing director of the Frog and Bucket in Manchester, founder of Fab comedy talent agency and co-chair of the Live Comedy Association; and Dr Sharon Lockyer, who is the director of the Centre for Comedy Studies Research at Brunel University of London and is one of the authors of the UK live comedy sector survey, upon which we have based quite a lot of the evidence for this session. Welcome to you all. Before I begin, can I remind any members to declare any interest? If you have a comedy past hiding in the closet, this is the point to whip it out, if you will pardon the expression. I will start with the first question. I want to start by drawing a picture of live comedy. Some people might think of the acts that they see on telly, on “Live at the Appollo,” or in local theatres and clubs. Others might think of the artists they see on TikTok, social media and YouTube. What does the live comedy industry look like in reality? How do you describe it as a whole, Geoff?

Thank you very much for asking us to come today, by the way. I think it is great that you are looking at this subject. The live comedy sector has many different aspects. The Live Comedy Association looks specifically at live comedy, as opposed to TV or broadcast comedy. The industry is made up of a number of different people. I sometimes describe it as a cottage industry. It is a lot of enthusiasts, a lot of individuals, particularly in comedy clubs as opposed to comedy venues that may pop up in pubs, restaurants or small rooms—individuals who are enthusiasts. Looking at the next stage of the comedy industry, you will see agencies and managers, clubs and venues, such as Jessica Toomey’s in Manchester. Then we have the bigger theatres and arenas. Also, a lot of freelancers work in the industry, in the sector. One of the great things about live comedy in the last 10 years or so is the diversity of voices coming through among the talent and comedians. It has always been there. I have been involved in live comedy for 35 years and know it has always been there, but I have seen a massive growth in that diversity in recent years, which I think is fantastic. However, the sector is largely unstructured, and largely unsupported financially by Government or others. It was once described to me as being an illegitimate sector. It is interesting to me that over the years there have been examples of other illegitimate sectors that have become legitimate, pantomime and musical variety for example. You can look back at the history of music hall and variety in particular and see that it was never studied by academics and others. Over time, however, it did become more legitimate. I hope that answers your question.

It does, brilliantly. Thank you for kicking us off like that. You talk about how there are a lot of freelancers in the workforce. What would they be doing to earn a living? Would they all work full time in the world of comedy? Would some of them be working elsewhere in the creative industries or even in a completely different part of the economy? How does that break down?

Looking at club nights, a lot of people work part time and have other income, sometimes from completely different sectors; they would have day jobs. They are enthusiasts of live comedy. For a promoter/producer, a gig every fortnight at your local pub would be a part-time job. Some people involved in that bit of the sector would not describe it as a job because the financial gain is sometimes very small. Also, it is not very stable. It is a quite risky endeavour, and I think that aspect is increasing in the world today. The associated risks are multiple and maybe we will come on to that later.

Yes, thank you. Jessica Toomey, you run a venue as well as being involved in the industry body. We have talked about quite a lot of people in the sector having another job as well as being involved in live comedy. What are the barriers to accessing opportunities and being able to stay in the sector?

Do you mean barriers to getting to full-time employment? Comedy is weird. To become a professional comic probably takes longer than becoming a pilot or a doctor, at least seven years of not earning any money to speak of to get you in. I do a comedy course and describe getting in as being almost like air miles. You have to have so many hours on stage before you can become a pro. It takes time and building up. There are a lot of full-time jobs for comics. For every comedian you see on stage, there is probably a manager and an agent, and a comic may have several agents—a voiceover agent, a live-work agent, a TV agent, even a cruise agent. Then there is everything else around the tickets—box-office staff, promoters, bookers, programmers, promoters and tour promotors. Even with live comedy, there are many strands. There are mixed-bill clubs, the festival hours, tours and festival tents and stages. There are podcasts now, so there may be a producer. A lot of comedians are now paying social managers. Looking at it financially, do not just look at the comedian on the stage. You must look at all the support. A lot of professionals make a full-time living but, sadly, it takes years to get to that stage and they need to top up their incomes with a day job. We have all done other jobs in the past. There are websites. They might offer to design posters or look after the websites to get more and more contacts and eventually get a full-time salary.

How do you kick off? Say James decides he would quite fancy tipping his toes into the world of live comedy alongside his political career. If he came to you, what advice would you give him?

James, you are very welcome to come to the Frog and Bucket. Every Monday, for 31 years, we have had an open mic night. That is the beauty of comedy. It is so accessible. Anyone can walk in off the street and give comedy a go. That is what John Bishop did one night, as a travelling sales rep—a pharmacy sales rep. He didn’t know what to do in Manchester on a Monday, so he walked into the Frog and got on stage. That is how most people start comedy. You have to get to an open mic and give it a go. Comedy is very reliant on the lower league, maybe deemed unprofessional, not money-making level that is vital for getting stage time—the little gigs above pubs. That is probably not the face of comedy that you will see, but those little gigs are vital to getting to the professional level. Most comedy clubs that are worth their salt have an open mic night. There are also comedy courses. I do not like to genderise, but I feel that women tend to prefer an academic route into comedy, to get some sort of formal training and then showcase. There is maybe a new wave of people coming through TikTok and finding an audience that way. That is rarer because you cannot avoid needing stage time, but there are new channels into comedy now.

Sharon, what are the challenges in having a largely freelance sector?

As Jessica said, it takes a long time to get to the professional stage. To be financially stable during those times, people need to support themselves, which some groups or individuals can do more easily than others. Those are the economic barriers. Not everybody will be able to perform without being rewarded. That is one of the social barriers linked to the economic barriers. The sector is becoming more diverse but certain groups or individuals in society still struggle because they do not necessarily have the resources to perform for five or seven years without being financially rewarded. It is a social barrier. The playing field is not level or accessible to all groups in society. The sector relies on grassroots venues and performances but does not necessarily support performers financially before they become well known and professional. It is difficult to survive the five or seven years before becoming professional without having a well-paid day job or background that allows performers to work without financial reward.

That is helpful. So there are lots of opportunities for starting out—open mics and so on—and getting your toes in the water, but when you decide that is the career you want to move into, the difficulty is how to build that career and sustain yourself financially.

This may be interesting. When I set up the Leicester comedy festival, I went to places that offered business development support—the local chamber of commerce, and people like that. The closest we ever got was, "Oh, you want to set up something like a theatre?" and the answer was, “No, I don’t want to set up a theatre. I want to set up a comedy festival.” There was no information available. There was no recognition that live comedy was a valid thing. Live theatre is a valid, legitimate thing but live comedy is not. For a long time, people were asking me when I was going to get a proper job. Although that is amusing, my job is a proper job. I had a 30-year career building a comedy festival that had a massive economic impact. The economic impact of live comedy across the UK is over £1 billion a year. It is hugely successful but the building blocks and the framework in which we operate, I would suggest very strongly, is not recognised as being a valid, legitimate thing like other live performing arts. That is an issue for comedians as well as for producers, agents, promoters and festival organisers.

Thanks for the offer. My ego wants me to take you up on it, but I don’t think I have the jokes. You talked about courses. Could you explain a bit about what is covered in the comedy courses people take? When you talk of the need for five to seven years of work, of training, of hours on stage, is that learning the precision and craft of the form? Or is it understanding how to read the room and craft a joke?

You know more than you realise. Yes, it is about learning to adapt your set. A village hall will be very different from a city centre venue in Liverpool. There will be different demographics. Some gigs will need clean material, or not. It is about instinct, looking at an audience and knowing how to test, where to take the level with how blue your material is, an instinctive knowledge of audiences and how to play a particular room. There is also just writing enough material to get to the level where you have several 20-minute sets.

Something has always struck me about comedy: a band doing five years may well still play the hit that it has played forever, and plenty of bands pretty much trade on one hit and are brought back time and again, but that is not tolerated or indulged, let alone celebrated, in comedy. Why does a joke not get retold by the same artist in the same way?

It can, on rare occasion, but the beauty of comedy is that it is of the moment, addressing political or cultural things that are happening. Comedy captures the mood of society. Comedy has to be very much about what is relevant at the moment. We have just archived all our old clips. Some of the material has aged badly, so badly. That is because comedy addresses a moment in time.

It is not just Government and the Arts Council. I have thought a lot about this and have talked to a lot of colleagues about the Arts Council. It is something of an elephant in the room. Writing live comedy into policies and strategies, which is how I interpret your question, would make a massive difference because it would legitimise the sector to others. We were talking earlier about applying and bidding for funding. There are streams for theatre, live music and visual arts but none for live comedy. It is not recognised. This will not be a very articulate answer to your question but there is something about recognition. If we went out onto the street and asked people about what Britain and the UK are known for worldwide, pretty quickly, I think, people would mention our sense of humour. Our comedy is known globally. Our TV programmes, and increasingly our stand-ups, tour internationally. However, comedy is not given a platform. Just by doing that, by writing it into policies and strategies—of course, I would not say no if the Arts Council recognised live comedy; they now have a funding stream for live music, and I don’t see why they could not have one for live comedy—it will recognise, validate and put live comedy on an equal platform with other live performing arts. I have spoken to numerous colleagues who have made funding bids, have made bids to reduce business rates or have talked about reducing VAT on tickets. These kinds of things need to be addressed. The Live Comedy Association is doing that. We have strong partnerships with the Night Time Industries Association and the Music Venue Trust, and we are looking at different projects that would help the sector. However, the sector is largely invisible. The last thing I will say on this topic is that the British sense of humour is celebrated and recognised, but live comedy—what might be called stand-up or character comedy—is nowhere near as well recognised. People talk about comedy on the radio, TV and theatre that is funny, but we are here today and the Live Comedy Association exists, to talk about stand-up and live performance comedy. It is about recognition. The sector is invisible, largely, at the moment, when you are working on it day in and day out.

Not so much, with my LCA hat on, but they were our saviour during lockdown. That was the first time we had been acknowledged. Grants were open to us. To be positive, I don’t think many comedy clubs would be around now if it had not been for that support. Every comedy club that received the grant has grown substantially. Liverpool has just invested in a £7 million purpose-built comedy club. The Glee Club is another great comedy chain. It recently opened a new venue in Leeds. We are all around the same age, about 30 years old. The Stand is moving to a larger venue in Glasgow. That acknowledgement and funding—I think you will have seen the greatest return ever from any sort of Arts Council funding. The way we converted the funding to real growth proves that when we are supported, it is so beneficial for us.

We have about 1,800 members. The association is growing. One of our issues is that we do not know the total size of the sector. We have been talking to people like Sharon Lockyer and others to try to research that. We do not know how many comedians are performing every week or month in the UK. There are knowledge gaps in the sector. However, we do have 1,800 members. The organisation is quite new, as it was set up during the pandemic. As Jessica said, the Cultural Recovery Fund was massively significant, and getting it was an enormous triumph for people working in the sector. It was astonishing because it was the first time in 30 years that live comedy was recognised. Since then, however, it has not been recognised. The LCA has lots of work to do to represent the sector, and we are trying to do that with an incredibly small resource base. However, the current directors have been in place for a couple of years and are trying to do more work on lobbying and advocacy, talking to people like you and others about the role that live comedy can play. Very briefly, if I may, another thing about live comedy is that the economic impact is significant but the social, health and wellbeing benefits are enormous, and the LCA wants to recognise and champion that aspect as well as the economic benefit.

Can I add to an important point that Geoff made about recognition? If comedy was included in policy documents and public discussions and there was more recognition of the value of comedy—the economic and social value—it might make it easier for academia to have research projects funded by research councils. At the moment, comedy sits outside and is excluded from the creative industries, so it is hard for academia to get funding for comedy-related research projects because there is not that broad a recognition within policy and public discussions. In addition to benefiting the industry by leading to a deeper understanding of the size and number of venues, recognition would benefit academic research, which is closely linked to the industry. We could map out in more detail and understand more deeply what is currently a quite fragmented industry. The sector currently sits outside funding streams and opportunities.

Jessica, next month we are returning to the work that the Music Venue Trust and grassroots music venues have done on the challenges they face. In comparison with music venues and the challenges they describe so well, how are dedicated venues such as yours faring?

I don’t think it is fair to compare us with music venues because they do get the funding and recognition. They will now get the arena levy. It does not make sense to us that, one night, live music in an arena will feed back £1 from every ticket to grassroots venues but the next night, Peter Kay, say, is there and we do not get that £1. I do not want to compare us like for like with music venues.

At the moment, it is a voluntary levy, right?

At the moment.

I am not expecting it to be other than voluntary. Is it not something that the comedy sector could propose for itself, given that it is voluntary?

We are proposing it, yes. The biggest risk for any venue is keeping the bricks and mortar. The Frog and Bucket has probably made it for 31 years only because we own the freehold. If we did not have the freehold, we would not exist. We would have been regenerated. I think venues are about to go through their toughest phase. We have benefited from the reduction in rates, but they are creeping up again now. And there are wages. My electricity bill has probably been the biggest killer. It has gone from £1,600 a month to £2,800. This month, all our costs have shot up. The minimum wage is passed on to the door. All our suppliers—the breweries—I imagine that we are all going to experience quite a tough three months coming up, and how are we going to weather that?

Will it see ticket prices go up?

If we took a year’s view of all ticket prices going up, it would not cover the increases. I am already the most expensive ticket in the UK, so I am very nervous about pushing it too high because no one else has set that benchmark, charging that much.

How much is it?

On a Saturday night, £26.50. I think The Comedy Store in London is probably the same price. I increased the price of tickets in January because I knew that I needed three or four months’ head start to get a bit of extra revenue to cover costs. Another difficulty is that, in good conscience, I had to do another wage increase for the comics. It did not seem fair, otherwise, when the national minimum wage was going up. Freelancers do not benefit from rules about wages. I have just had to put acts’ wages up as well. The cost of everything has increased and the increased ticket price does not cover it, so I will see a reduction in profit this year, for sure.

Is it wrong to assume that the cost of putting on a live comedy show is relatively low compared with other forms of entertainment?

I think theatres would struggle at the moment without comedy. Comedy can plug in between longer programmes at short notice and is fairly cheap for a theatre to put on, compared with big productions. However, a comedy club has all the venue costs and staff costs, health and safety, security, PAYE and so on. Remember, 20% is gone immediately. You won’t forget that 20% is gone to VAT. A lot of comics work on a 70:30 ticket split if they are touring, but they will have immediately lost 20% of their split. Very few comedians are VAT registered. They get disproportionately less money because of that.

You made a point about plugging gaps in multi-use venues. If that opportunity is increasing, does it amount to direct competition with specialist venues like yours? Are you now increasingly competing with the multi-use venues that may come with different experiences for the comics as much as for the audiences?

In business, you are always in competition and just have to up your game. I feel as if there has never been such a high demand for comedy. There has been a shift in drinking patterns. People don’t just want to sit in a pub because they don’t have as much money to spend on going out. If people are going out, they want a quality night. So, there are trends in competitive drinking—not drinking competitively, but maybe drinking along with axe throwing, drinking with activities or entertainment. I feel that there is a bigger demand than ever before for comedy.

I have a question about audience habits for the rest of the panel. How are habits changing? What are your observations?

Something that the Live Comedy Association has talked about is not going to happen overnight but we working towards having an audience survey because we want to know more about audiences’ habits. They are probably similar to music venues and other entertainment venues and options, largely in city centres. Factors include transport costs, the lack of public transport and what is happening to our town centres and city centres cross the UK. Those factors are similar for everybody. An interesting thing that we know about from the LCA is the interest in what I will call rural comedy, although some people do not like that term. But there seems to be an increase in comedy clubs in villages and closer to where people are since the pandemic. I think that is interesting. Why would you spend 30 quid on a taxi to go into Manchester, for example, when you could see something closer to home? We do not know enough about audience behaviour. All I would add is that I think people are generally, across the board, seeing live entertainment as an annual treat rather than a regular thing. Clubs like Jessica’s are doing well, but whereas people might go out once a week, once a fortnight, for example, I think they are going to see shows and they are probably, across the UK, going to see bigger arena shows as a treat rather than regularly going to their local venue.

That reflects research I did with audiences. It was a while ago, but I think the pattern is probably the same with audiences preferring smaller venues rather than the arenas where the tickets are usually much more expensive. My research with audiences shows a preference for smaller venues and the importance of live comedy as a social event. My research demonstrated that only 4% of audience members would go alone; it is very much a social event with friends or family. Equally, laughter itself is a social event. When we laugh together in a small venue or even in a large arena, there is a collective sense of community, experiencing something unique at that moment. The shared experience is important for audiences, and in my opinion it has become much more important post-covid when we saw online comedy, which was very important at that time but without the sharing of the laughter it was a very different experience. The smaller venues allow proximity and closeness that audiences like about live comedy.

Comedy is about a lot more than economics, and we will come on to talk about social impact and health benefits, but I will stick with the economics for now. Geoff, I think you mentioned a figure of a £1 billion contribution to the UK economy each year. Sharon, do you recognise that number? I am sure that you are not going to disagree with Geoff, but does that sound about right? Can you break it down a little bit for us? Crucially, could you also say how that £1 billion could get to, say, £2 billion?

I do agree with Geoff. We co-authored the report that includes the £1 billion figure. It is as accurate as it can be, given that the sector is so fragmented. The UK comedy live sector report shows the diversity and how that £1 billion is dispersed across the sector. Large corporate comedy companies will be making millions of pounds. Equally, there will be comedians averaging, say, £26,000 a year. That is an average. Lots of comedians will be making much less than that. The money is dispersed and fragmented. It is interesting that audiences want the smaller venues where there might not be such a large return for the comedians, but lots of comedians are making lots of money while, equally, lots of comedians at the grassroots and in smaller venues are making very small amounts of money, if any at all. It is something else that we probably need more research on, broadening out the research so it might be a bit more targeted on the economics. However, we have a good idea of the economic value, and I think it is an accurate reflection of the data we have to hand. The survey that that figure was based on is a good starting point for understanding the nuances, the challenges and the financial and economic opportunities as well as the social aspects.

Thinking about its composition, we were talking about the ticket sales and ticket pricing part of it. There are also drink sales, which I guess is quite a big part, as well as food sales in some venues. What other revenue line items are there?

There are quite a lot. The Frog and Bucket runs comedy at the Silverstone F1. There is a huge marquee there for comedy. There are comedy courses. We are still streaming—

Are comedy courses quite a big business?

I think we have done over 40 courses now, with 12 students per course. Salford University has a comedy degree. We are still streaming comedy, although there is not as much demand now. However, we do it directly and also with NextUp. NextUp is a subscription service like Netflix but just for comedy. That is another income stream. There is corporate award hosting.

Is much money being made from YouTube ads, Creator Fund on TikTok and whatnot?

Patreon is huge at the moment. I know of a podcast that is making over £50,000 a month from Patreon and Twitch. Comedians have become the new rock and roll stars. We do not have rock frontmen, and people are attaching themselves to their favourite comics, going all the way with them, buying the merch, going on tour, listening to the podcasts, and really buying into that person as a brand.

Jessica, you were talking about some of the current cost increases. You are in the position of being a profitable business, able to reduce profit—I know that sounds like an odd thing and, of course, other hospitality businesses will be facing some of the same issues, the same sort of nighttime economy in Manchester. At a wider level, Sharon, from your point of view, what is the impact of economic changes? We have talked about the national minimum wage, employment taxes, energy costs and so on. Do we expect those things to have a macro-level effect on the sector?

I don’t want to say the changes are detrimental, but they are a challenge for venues, large and small. There is potential to minimise growth in the sector. So many comedians work at the grassroots where the economics are such that there is no opportunity for growth, so as a society we are restricting the opportunity for comedy to become bigger and more successful and also to allow opportunities for other voices to be heard on the stage.

Venues are operating businesses. Do you expect employment and prices to be affected? Might some venues close? If there is the same amount of money but all the prices have gone up, the money does not go as far. What will the effects be?

If venues have to cut costs, one of the ways for them to do that is by reducing the workforce. That would have a direct detrimental impact on the economy.

I want to talk about the impact of the numerous clubs and venues across the UK and plug festivals as well. The economic impact on the city of Leicester of the Leicester comedy festival, which I set up a long time ago, is in the region of £5 million each February. That comes from a 19-day festival. My reason for mentioning that is because, when we look at the economics, there are issues for the sector itself but also the multiplier effect that clubs and festivals have on locations across the UK. Of course, I cannot think of naming one at the moment, but there are examples of a sort of Waitrose effect where there is a thriving comedy club, venue or festival in a city. It has an economic impact on the local community. That is increasingly crucial as town and city centres are thinking about their viability. Festivals and venues, particularly for comedy, are economically powerful.

A couple of you, Geoff in particular, mentioned possible Government support, incentives and cost reliefs that the sector might be looking for. Do we know of any other countries that do that? Any success stories?

That is an interesting question. Honestly, I don’t know. I suspect that other than Australia and possibly North America, the UK has the biggest and arguably the best live comedy scene anywhere. I would guess that there are no success stories from other countries, but it is an interesting question.

The Canadian Government support live comedy.

That is true.

Is Juste Pour Rire still going?

Yes.

Yes. The Canadian Government directly support live comedy. Going back to the economics, it is important to highlight the interlocking interconnection of economics. A survey report highlights how live comedy supports the charity sector. Over 80% of comedy organisations will run charity nights and support charities in that way. An impact on the live comedy sector will impact other economic spheres due to the interconnection of the economics within the industry and beyond.

Going back to the live comedy sector as distinct—and you are here to talk about the live comedy sector—I am also interested to know who you would see yourself as most like. Are you most like a sitcom actor, most like a band playing in a pub or most like someone delivering a serious monologue in a theatre? Who do you have the most affinity with?

I suspect the experience and the information that we know about live music and grassroots music is in terms of the infrastructure, the mechanics and the framework. If that is what you mean, I would say probably live music. The difference—and Jessica touched on this earlier, and musicians argue with me about it—is that if you are a live musician you can practise your guitar in your bedroom for months and months, get good at it and then walk on stage and play your guitar. If you are a comedian, you have to go in front of an audience to find out whether it works. That is a significant difference between the two. In terms of the framework of how it works, grassroots music is probably the most similar.

TV sitcom is a different interaction for an audience member than a live comedy gig. There would be quite different production values and expectations from an audience perspective.

Female comedians have described sexism and even sexual assault as a peril of the job. What is the industry and specifically the Live Comedy Association doing to change this?

I wanted to touch on this before when you asked about the issues of having so many freelancers. It is a huge issue because there is no HR department. The LCA established early on that there needed to be some framework to support the reporting of sexual harassment in the industry. A great thing called Get Off was set up. Not enough, but quite a few venues have committed to donating just 1p per ticket to a centralised HR lady, who deals with complaints independently. It is not enough money. It is massively underfunded. It is heartbreaking if people knew how many reports they get every week.

How many reports does your venue get every week of sexual harassment or assault of female comics?

Not many at all, to be honest. But we have a lot of policies. I have a female venue manager. I have a female programmer. We have a lot of systems in place. It tends to be more at either the entry level or the top level, where there is a real power play. But sadly, there is no funding or no legal requirement at the moment for that to be policed and managed. We are quite good at fixing things as an industry. It is great that two comedians, Kiri Pritchard-McLean and Nina Gilligan, have set up Get Off. Sadly, there is no way for them to get real funding when it is such an essential service for our industry.

You asked specifically what the LCA is doing about it. To put this in some context, the LCA is a very small, under-resourced organisation that is trying to advocate for live comedy across the board. We cannot fix everything that people want us to fix in terms of live comedy, but working with Get Off Live Comedy is a good start. Through the survey, harassment came up as an issue not just for female comedians, I have to say, but predominantly for female comedians. We all know the headlines that we have read about specific cases. But Jessica is right. A growing number of clubs, promoters and producers pay much more attention to it than they used to. That has to be a good thing. The LCA will keep championing harassment as something that we need to stop and stamp out, as has been done in other sectors. We will continue to focus on that.

Have you had the opportunity to chat with CIISA, the Creative Industries Independent Standards Organisation? It was set up specifically to look at issues of bullying, harassment, workplace intimidation and inappropriate sexual behaviour—the greatest hits of all these terrible things. It is a great organisation to be able to tap into its knowledge. It is kicking off now.

We have not, but we are aware of what it is doing and so we want to do that. But we have not done it yet so far.

Thank you so much for coming today. Both Sharon and Geoff touched on this earlier, but I will talk a bit more about the social value and health benefits of comedy. With that in mind, organisations have gone into prisons and performed there. A campaign called Craic Health is about comedy on prescription and social prescribing. Would you like to see comedy move into those spaces a bit more? What support could be given to you to allow that to happen, if you think that could be a bit of a growth industry for comedy?

Comedians and people in live comedy have been working in health for more than the 30 years that I have been involved in live comedy. It has been going on for an awful long time. That is fantastic, and the Live Comedy Association is particularly interested in it. We are interested in stand-up, and we think stand-up is great. But we also think when comedians and live comedy go into prisons, health settings and so on, it is also good. Interestingly, from a comedian’s point of view, it gives an economic benefit. It gives a diverse income stream if they can do that. Also, certainly the work that I have done over the years using comedy and live comedy in schools has a massive impact. A few years ago, I was successful in getting funding from the NHS to fund a kids’ comedy festival to help kids get over the pandemic and start to build their self-esteem and their confidence. The social role of comedy in those settings is longstanding. I can think of one organisation in particular called BrightSparks, which has been working with mental health service users for probably 25 years or more.

You are right. There is a legacy here. It has been happening for a long time. It is not new. You are already doing these things. But what can be done to formalise that arrangement a bit more, to provide a bit more structure and a bit more support, and to have those links within communities?

I feel a little like I am repeating myself, but recognition and validation. Numerous organisations, as I mentioned earlier, have written funding bids that talk about performance and individual practitioners, but they dare not mention comedians or comedy. Historically, there was a fear from people involved in education and in health. What will the comedians say? Will they swear? Will they use inappropriate material? I and plenty of other people have a whole directory and database of comedians who have been doing this for a long time and know the rules of the game. They will not be inappropriate in a school, for example, in terms of language. It needs validation and recognition. One thing that often comes up is the lack of evidence, academic research and impact studies. There is loads of it, but it is not recognised as valid and important. Certainly in terms of the work that I and others have been doing in health, there is loads of evidence around the health benefits of comedy, both for the participants but also for the comedians themselves. As I say, it is pretty simple. It is validation, recognition and people talking more about the importance of comedy in those settings. And it works. It does not work for everybody, but dance does not work for everybody, either. It is pretty straightforward.

Sharon, assuming you agree with what Geoff was saying about validation and recognition, what would look like in academic circles? What would make it easy for people making policy to pick comedy as a legitimate way of helping with mental health issues, loneliness or any of those things?

Designated or directed funding towards looking at the social impact of comedy at this moment in time would help a huge amount. As Geoff highlighted, lots of research demonstrates the health benefits both to comedians or performers and also to audiences. In terms of the social, cultural and political context that we are operating in now, which is quite different from research that was published 20 or 30 years ago, thinking about how comedy has changed and also how audiences engage with comedy within a quite different cultural context than 20 or 30 years ago and having research projects looking at how comedy is working now would be helpful for the industry, academic research, public discussions and policymakers more broadly.

I wanted to come back to something you were saying about your long list of comics who you could send into a school or hospital and have no worries about them. It strikes me that the brilliant thing about stand-up is you do not know what you are walking into. Also, the terrible thing about stand-up is you do not know what you are walking into. Before you all came in, we were exchanging anecdotes about those awkward moments that you sometimes have with family members one generation up or one generation down. I used to enjoy going to stand-up when I was a man about town in my 20s. I do not now. I wonder if quite a big audience segment out there could be tapped into if there was some way of distinguishing more between those things when you see the poster or the sign above the door, so you know what you are walking into.

A good programmer should, on a mixed bill, have a mix of artists to appeal to everyone and not—

The mix does not work if you bring your mum or your child. Do you know what I mean?

I would not want to book an act that would make someone feel that uncomfortable.

Are you suggesting some sort of rating system?

I was trying not to put words into our panel’s mouths but one question might be, yes, do you have some sort of—

Rating system—

There you go. She said it.

—saying it is safe to bring your mum to.

You have not met my mum.

Some comedians—I will not name them—you would not want to take your mum to, and I would not put them on a mixed bill. They have their own night with their own brand under their podcast banner, and it is sold directly to their fanbase. I have to be mindful of where we advertise that because I do not want someone to come and be upset or offended. At the same time, I have to create a space where people can still push the barriers and not be muted. I have always taken the view, as Johnny Vegas says, that comedy is a campfire; come and be warmed. You should be able to sit in a comedy club and not feel uneasy, not be fearful of what will be said, and be able to bring multigenerational families. That is why everyone loves what Peter Kay does so well. You can watch him with Grandma. That is the beauty of comedy if done right.

It is also something about the location. I am speaking from a festival perspective here, but we have done numerous shows, for example, in Leicester cathedral. That attracts a very different audience from, possibly, The Frog or the late night 11 o’clock show at the pub around the corner. I mentioned earlier that we have done gigs in hospitals. We have done different shows in different locations. I saw a whole thing recently about a promoter who is doing shows that finish by 9 o’clock because a lot of people, including me as I get older, want to make sure we are home before that time. Things happen where the entry level for live comedy is perhaps easier than going to a traditional environment that you might anticipate live comedy being in, but it is changing. The average age of the audience for the Leicester comedy festival is about 45. People think it is much younger than that, but it is not. It depends, as I say, on the location and the content. People sometimes tell me, “I tried going to a comedy show. It was not for me.” Then they write it off. If you go and watch a film at the cinema and you do not like it, you would not write off going to see films. “I listened to some music and I did not like it, so I will never listen to music again.”

You are right. People do that.

It is interesting. Certainly, to go back to the point that was made earlier about social comedy and community comedy, that happens a lot. It happens in the corporate world. A business says, “We booked a comedian for our annual dinner. They were a disaster. We will never do that again.” Frankly, you booked the wrong comedian. You raise an interesting point that needs further conversations.

Thank you very much. I thank all three of you for coming in and giving us evidence today and giving us a first glimpse into the world of live comedy. It has been fascinating to meet you all.   Witnesses: Kate Cheka, Matt Forde and Lynne Parker.  

Thank you very much. I now welcome our second panel on live comedy. We are joined by award-winning comedian Kate Chek, by the founder and CEO of Funny Women, Lynne Parker, and, turning the tables on him normally interviewing politicians, by comedian and podcaster Matt Ford. You are all welcome. Thank you so much for joining us today. Can I kick off the questions? You may have heard us talk to the previous panel about how people start their careers in live comedy. We were hearing about the open mic nights that some people use to try to hone their skills and gain confidence. I was interested to know how you started, Kate. How did you get your break in live comedy? What brought you in, and what has kept you going?

I have a bit of an interesting story to get me in. I was trying to spite an ex-boyfriend. I thought, “What better way than to do stand-up comedy?” I started in Berlin, Germany. I was living in Berlin. That is where I did my master’s degree. I started there. The English-language scene there is quite busy and quite big, so I began there. It was much easier in a way to start somewhere like Berlin because the rents were so much cheaper and I could afford things a lot more. I do not know if I would have been able to do it here. There it was quite easy to begin comedy. That is how I started.

What has kept you going?

People tell me I am good at it. People come to the shows. I love it. It is an interesting way of expressing yourself. It is a nice way of saying things you want to say about the world. I studied politics at Cambridge, and I originally wanted to become a politician. That was my whole life plan. I was going to become an MP. Early mornings are not for me. It was a nice way of saying things about the world without maybe some of the other work that an MP would have to do.

That is perfect. Matt, can I ask the same question to you? How did you get started in your career?

I did my first gig when I was 16 at a pub in Nottingham. I saw it as a hobby and then for many years would do it alongside working in politics as well as working in other areas. It is a great education in the way society works and the things people want to listen to. Then you build up. It was interesting hearing the previous session. The reason it takes so long to become a comedian is you do five minutes at your local club. They might give you another 10 minutes. You also have to do five minutes at clubs all across the country. You need the ability to travel. For me, I was at a young age. I was predominantly gigging in the East Midlands. You are building your name in different places at various times. You also have to build that material up. It takes a while to get somewhere, but you feel like you are getting somewhere. You start to get a few paid gigs. Then you do the Edinburgh festival. Then the thing that sustains you is the love of it. You need to be able to make a living doing it. Otherwise, it remains a hobby and that is true for a lot of comedians. But once you are at a level where you can pack in the day job and become a professional comedian, it is a proud moment in your life.

Lynne, how do you see that the industry has changed since you started Funny Women? Have you seen a difference?

I have run Funny Women for 23 years. I set it up because I was told women were not funny. There were no funny women, apparently, at that time. I very much work at grassroots. I am not a comedian. I should declare that because everyone asks me why I do what I do. I am about the grassroots. I am all about how we support and bring people through in the industry. Funny Women is a non-profit organisation, so we are all about investing back into the platform we have built. We run the Funny Women awards, which are specifically aimed at supporting women into comedy. As a direct answer to your question, that has impacted hugely on the number of women you now see coming through. You see the successful people on television and the radio because they have done their indentures around the circuit. They may get picked up by management companies, which I am not—we do not run a management company. We are very much about presenting new talent to the industry. We are not the only competition, either. The Funny Women awards is one of numerous competitions, some of which are run out of various festivals, including the Edinburgh festival awards. All those things add to an industry that is pushing and developing itself forward, although we are genderised, and I work specifically with women to address the inequality and lack of balance when I first went into working as a comedy. I had a long career in journalism, then marketing and then PR, which led me into promoting comedy. The world is slowly changing. I have seen a big difference in the last 10 years. I do not know if Kate would back me up on that, but far more women are on the circuit than ever.

What about how the art form is perceived by policymakers and the public? Has that changed? The Live Comedy Association has called for formal recognition of live comedy as an art form. Is that the sense of direction we are moving to? Do you see barriers to that?

There are, but we have had some success. We have had some Arts Council funding. We positioned it in a way that was not directly comedy. It was about health and wellbeing. The campaign we had funded is called A Safe Place. It is badged under a much bigger project called The Glitter Project, which is all about supporting women in the industry. In the previous session, you talked about supporting women because of the dangers of being a woman out at night on your own in an industry. We got our funding because we built some of that into our work, but that is because we are a female-specific brand. I am immensely proud of the work we have done. It is, sadly, coming to an end because the funding is running out, but we will get funding from elsewhere. That is one level of success we have had. The other level of success we have had that is also worth mentioning for how we can go from the ground up to get Government on side is, within Medway, where Funny Women is based and I live, we have had a share of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund money. Medway decided to put it into supporting a lot of local businesses. We all had to pitch for it and apply. We have had two years’ worth of funding for a specific campaign called Comedy in the Community. My thought is that maybe it starts at local government level, if you can work with your local council. Medway is a unitary council so it has a little more autonomy and is probably closer to its population. It knows people like me in the creative industries. I would like to spin that model out. It is valuable because it has brought local government, local businesses and local creative industries together into one campaign. We could push that out as a way of taking grassroots comedy into the community and then building out from there. There are lots of other examples. Leicester comedy festival, which Geoff launched, has done an amazing job working within the local government and community. I may have this wrong, but I am sure it has had some support. Maybe that is where we should start.

It is difficult because you are starting unpaid. You have to be prepared to work for years for free alongside often a day job and, for many people, a family. You have to travel the country late at night. It is difficult if you do not have a car, particularly given the state of the rail network in Britain in 2025, and similarly for coaches. It is emotionally difficult. When you are first starting out, it does not always work. It takes you a long time to perfect your craft and get up to enough material. In a lot of comedy clubs, the money has gone backwards. Since when I first started gigging, the money has got worse. People face higher costs and get less money for the work they do. Until the birth of TikTok and social media, the main way to get discovered as a comedian and to get a career, on the whole—and this is not true for everyone—was to have a successful Edinburgh festival. Performing at the Edinburgh festival costs a fortune, and the single biggest cost is accommodation. The single biggest barrier to being able to perform and indeed visit the Edinburgh festival is the exorbitant rent that landlords charge. Year after year, it has gone up and up. Performers and audience members are prepared to pay a bit of a premium for staying in someone’s house that they have had to vacate for a month, but it is growing exponentially year on year. That means that comedy at that level is becoming more elitist because the only people who can afford to do the initial 10,000 hours are privileged. Then the only people who can afford to perform at Edinburgh and indeed visit Edinburgh are privileged people. The Edinburgh model makes it almost impossible to become a successful working-class comedian in this country. The lack of recognition from the Government, I should add, is part of that problem. I know that the Minister has said in written answers that comedy is considered under theatre. That in itself, in my view, is effectively another form of institutional classism. They say that theatre is what this thing is and stand-up does not exist on its own terms. That is simply wrong. We are not theatre. We are our own art form. That inability to decouple us from theatre disproportionately punishes working-class creative people.

Yes. It is funny because I began in Berlin, and within a year I was making my living off comedy. My rent was cheap, but I was living off it completely. I do not quite understand how Germany, where the first language is not English, has an English language scene that can sustain you. Lots of comedians in the English language scene in Germany live off it. Of course that is partly to do with the cost of living being less there, but also the gigs pay more. I am now six years in the UK, and I am still doing gigs for £20 here and there. That does not even cover my leaving the house. It is not worth it. The only reason I can keep going is I have a living set-up where I live with my best friend’s parents who kindly said, “You can stay in the spare bedroom in London when you need to do your gigs.” That is why I can keep this going, but I would not be able to keep going without it. The working-class comedian thing is true. You see fewer working-class comedians coming up because there is no assistance. I found a gig setlist from 1991 on Mark Lamarr’s Twitter the other day. The amount that the comedians were getting paid in 1991 for a basement pub in Islington was the same, if not more, than we are getting paid 34 years down the line, which is worrying. I do not quite understand how that has happened. I do not know how anyone lives off it without other means.

We have to be honest about how social media has allowed lots of arts to be seen for free. A lot of people, especially the younger generation, do not go out to live comedy because they can get what they want on their phones. The algorithm feeds them who they like anyway. That is fine for them to get their enjoyment and whatever. In that case, Government funding is important. I have been in France and Belgium for a conference. Both France and Belgium have the intermittence du spectacle, which is funding for artists that guarantees a minimum income per month. In France, it is €1,300 and in Belgium it is €1,900. If you are not making that amount a month but you are still going to the gigs and you sign off the hours you are at the gigs and so on, the French Government will top it up to that amount, understanding that a living wage is necessary to keep the arts funded. In the UK, where one of our biggest exports is our arts and culture, we are not Germany and we do not have huge manufacturing exports. It is important. British sitcoms are famous around the world. To be able to write for British sitcoms, you need a good live comedy scene. The people writing the sitcoms are the same ones doing the live comedy.

I totally agree. That is what you need. You need direct financial assistance to creatives to allow them to sustain it. Otherwise, the sort of comedy we see and get will become more and more elitist, made by people who went to nice schools and nice universities. People from backgrounds like mine could gig at their local comedy club and could do it as a nice hobby. They would be prevented from doing it as a career at the moment. We are in danger. We have seen how elitist music has become. We see it in acting. The same will happen in comedy if we do not give direct financial assistance to people from all sorts of backgrounds. At the moment, the people who are disproportionately punished are people from low-income backgrounds.

We have all lost our shirts at the Edinburgh Fringe. I have done everything there, from crazily setting up a venue, never to be done again, to going up there to look at shows, review them and support artists like Matt and Kate. I would like to say one point about the Edinburgh Fringe that came up in the last group, which was about who sees what. Edinburgh Fringe, despite the expense of it and the commitment that we all have to make to be there, is an amazing melting pot of talent for all audiences, and it is well specified. If you go through the Edinburgh Fringe programme, it tells you the age groups. It itemises things into comedy, theatre and performance. They have various categories—I cannot remember what they are off the top of my head. In essence, it is a fantastic platform, but it is flawed because of the cost of it. It is very expensive for an act to go and be there on their own for three weeks, rent a property and do all sorts of other things like feed themselves and travel. We have all been there. I am sorry. I have lost the thread of the question.?

Having had the experience of getting some funding, to be completely clear, the funding that we received as Funny Women went to lots of different people. I had to spread it thinly over quite a wide group and we still have to report back and we have to tell the Arts Council how we are using it. I would like to see that made easier because, for those of us who do it as a non-profit endeavour, a lot of homework and reporting to be done makes it difficult and it puts people off. The other thing to remember is that a lot of people in the comedy world are neurodiverse. Doing the forms for Edinburgh Fringe would make you go blind—sorry, that was inappropriate, but it is a difficult process to do and negotiate. Access is difficult. It needs to be made easier. The Arts Council’s funding applications are about 90 online pages. If you struggle, if you have any kind of neurodiversity, that is hard to do. I would like to see that. I would also like to see something that no one has mentioned. A whole other middle structure in the world of comedy is management. Management companies sit between what you see on television and on tour and the grassroots start-point for comedy. They sit in the middle, and they go to places like Edinburgh Fringe. They come to see the Funny Women awards and all the other competitions to choose the kind of talent they want to represent. Then they, quite rightly, take on and develop that talent and manage it. However, I do not know how much they then invest back into the grassroots side of the industry. A lot of us work hard doing the circuit. People who are promoters put the whole world of comedy in front of these people. They take what they want from it, and then they make money because they sell their big acts to television. In terms of economy, you do not make lots of money out of some of this stuff. The big money is still in the touring and the commercial deals. It is a bit like sport. If you are a big-name sports personality, you get lots of sponsorship deals. Big-name artists and acts get paid to do big advertising campaigns, but that is all run through their management companies. I suppose one thing that would be helpful is to have more of a dialogue with them and to get them more involved. We have had some success with broadcasters investing in us. We are currently working with BBC Studios, but that is an investment back from a company in the industry that needs people like us to develop comedy.

The Edinburgh one is tricky. I could do Edinburgh last summer only because I had a friend who lived there and let me stay for free. I did the Free Fringe, which is smaller venues, but it was much harder to get people in. I had won Funny Women, so I had that little bit of industry buzz that helped. I do not know how you regulate something like Edinburgh, how you ask landlords to make things cheaper. I do not know how you do that in a privatised capitalist system. That is why we are both pushing for some kind of individual funding, because comedians will spend to go into the industry. I dropped out of school at 16 and then I was on the education maintenance allowance as a teenager. The only reason I was able to get myself through college was because I had these handouts. People want to make something of their lives and, when you do get those kinds of handouts, you will put all your energy into it. I know how deeply a lot of us feel about doing comedy and how much we adore it, which is why we do it despite having to overwork ourselves and live quite difficult lives in lots of ways.

I totally agree. The model of Edinburgh is basically that the artist takes all the risk. The management companies and others will pay your up-front costs but, at the end of the month, if you have not sold enough tickets—or you could even have a sell-out Edinburgh run and still lose money—you have to be prepared to make that investment in yourself at the start of your career because you back yourself and you think you are onto something and you are prepared to take a loss as many businesses do. One thing about comedians is we are fundamentally entrepreneurial. We back ourselves. We try to improve. We are effectively our own business that we are trying to grow. We levy a lot of risk at the start of our career. For a lot of people, that risk will never pay off. They will never see the fruits of that labour, and they will stop and drift away. Now, some people maybe should not have done comedy in the first place, but what is great about Edinburgh is what is great about comedy. You can give it a go. It is up to you whether you choose to back yourself or not. However, the scale of the costs is now prohibitive. They are so scary for people that it puts them off doing it in the first place. As a result, we are narrowing the pool of people who will go on to be arena fillers and TV stars.

A comedian is expected to lose about £10,000 for Edinburgh. For that one month, we will expect to lose about £10,000 and I have many friends who did lose £10,000 at Edinburgh.

Thank you all so much for coming. Picking up on that, when we think about inequalities, we think about class inequality, income inequality, race and gender. Do we think that inequality is ingrained within comedy?

Yes. I set up Funny Women in 2002, and I can remember distinctly having a conversation with a female comedian about five years in who said, “Soon we will not need this anymore.” I thought, “That would be great. I can move on and do something else.” I have had that same conversation every five years. At the moment—and I am talking about gender at the moment—there has been a big resurgence of misogyny repeated to me around the industry, which I am shocked by because I thought, after working and doing this for so long, perhaps we had got rid of some of these taboos. There have been awful things like, when we launched the awards in 2003—we had a break last year—we had done a programme with BBC Radio 4 on 20 years of Funny Women, and the whole agenda was hijacked by the Russell Brand case. I was asked to go on programmes like the “Today” programme to talk about the awards, and all people wanted to talk about was that. That kind of publicity does not help. I do not know if that has fuelled the misogyny. We have the whole Andrew Tait thing. If you look at the broader media landscape of what is happening on TikTok and Instagram, and the messaging that goes on out there in the world, it reflects on all culture but particularly on comedy, which is satirical and reflects society as we know it now. Whether that is what is happening, I do not know. I find it quite distressing that I am getting reports from women who are encountering some unacceptable behaviour. I do not have the resources or the woman power to deal with it, sadly. Generally though, comedy is becoming more open to working class, disability and any kind of cultural diversity. There has been a big effort in the industry to reflect that. Somebody said earlier that, in the last 10 years, it has become much more obvious and prevalent, but that is down to the broadcasters picking it up and putting it out there on public platforms, and also social media, where you can be your own channel. If you are a working-class comedian, you can get out there and you can talk about yourself and your life. Possibly that is feeding into it as well.

We will come back to that in a bit, if you do not mind. Kate, you have often spoken about having interest from the US when you won your Funny Women award. You are thinking of performers like Gina Yashere and London Hughes, who have gone out there and had big careers. Is that the only way a black woman can be a comedian? If that is the case, what can the UK do to change its approach?

Unfortunately, yes, which is bad right now because it is the last place in the world I want to live at the moment. A lot of black women leave for the US because an inherent misogyny and racism is embedded within this industry in this country. I do not know quite how you get out of it. If we believe that comedy also has a benefit in social terms in hearing people’s stories, it does that. It is good for society to hear different people’s stories. We see an under-representation of not just people of colour in comedy and women of colour in comedy, but trans comedians, queer comedians, non-binary comedians and all these people. Interestingly, working-class comedians used to be much more represented and the costs have taken working-class comedians out of comedy. We are getting better about disabled comedians as well. Yes, it is a weird to think, “I have to go to another country to make it in my career,” but it is a well-trodden route for a lot of black creatives in this country, not just comedians. A lot of them leave and go to the States because they can command bigger paycheques.

Lynne, you have spoken before and I want to quote you back to yourself, if you will forgive me. No, sorry, I will quote Jessica who was on earlier. She has talked about women having to choose between taking sexist abuse from men and paying the rent and how “misogyny will wrongly allow women to be labelled as awkward, difficult to work with or problematic the minute they try to tackle any concerns that they have.” Given that idea of inbuilt peril and waiting for bookers and promoters, and acts getting prevalence through those things, how can we make sure artists are treated fairly and protected? Are we seeing perhaps a democratisation of that with things like TikTok? Is one way forward to have people use these social media platforms to have their own platforms?

In the pandemic, we saw a big increase. We did everything online in the pandemic. We did not stop the awards. We carried on with them but we did them online. Kate did them. We saw a lot of women specifically coming through because it was a safe place for them to do it. We were all stuck at home. Some huge successes came out of that. We changed an award that we had run for best show into a content creator award to reflect that. It was a fantastic place for women. In fact, two people I can think of both had kids and were both at home, but they were creative and they came up with ideas. They have become very successful, earning six-figure incomes and have book deals. I have to say, they work really hard. It is not easy to be a content creator. You have to be on it the whole time. They spend their lives walking around with their phones in their hands. It is not like going to a comedy club and getting on stage. It is interesting that those people—and there are lots of examples, men and women, who are doing that—are now often going back into the live sector and touring and doing well. One of the women I was talking about has done two sold-out tours of the UK and Australia and is on tour again now, but she had never done live stand-up until after the pandemic. That is controversial. I know a lot of people in the industry are not as enthusiastic about that because some people have been treading the boards for a very long time and then these newbies come along and they are selling out tours. But, hey, life’s like that. The music industry is like that. It is all part of the rich tapestry of how we can make comedy much more culturally significant and important.

Matt, you have built an entire industry for yourself off the back of podcasting and social media. How do you feel it has helped you develop your audience, and how important is this for new talent coming through?

It is huge. Ultimately, people want to watch funny people and they do not care where they find them. They do not care if they find them on their phone, on their laptop, in their local comedy club or through television. People want to be entertained. There is a real joy for an audience in finding the person that makes them laugh or the person they want to go and see live, or more than one person. Social media is fantastic. Anything that makes it easier for comedians to get out there can only be good. The tension within the industry is that it is one thing to be funny in one discipline but doing it as a stand-up comedian is something else. A lot of those funny people who started on TikTok develop into very talented comedians and it is up to the audiences who they want to go and see at the end of the day. I do not have an issue with that as long as the show is good enough. That is the main thing. For me personally, comedy is a hugely empowering industry to be a part of. It can open so many different doors into television, into radio, into podcasts, into live work. As a performer, you are working in an inherently unstable industry. You have to try to get as many irons in the fire as you can. That does not suit everyone. People might not want to try to get a radio show or a podcast or express themselves in that way, but sometimes—and I say this as someone from a working-class background who grew up in a single-parent household on benefits—genuine restrictions are in the way, the costs of doing things, the fact that decision-makers are predominantly from certain backgrounds and go to school and university with the people that they then commission television shows for and buy from. Equally, in life, the danger is you assume a level of restriction on yourself. Being a comedian is so great because it empowers you if you can get a foothold to back yourself. Sometimes, great working-class comedians emerge in some of the best sitcoms in the history of this country like “Only Fools and Horses” and “People Just Do Nothing”. So many great sitcoms are about working-class culture. It is not impossible. It is just that it is a harder route. You should not be put off by it. If you back yourself and you are prepared to take that level of risk, you can still get somewhere.

We have seen the decline of public service broadcasting and traditional telly, with that being a big platform for people to launch their careers. Is there an opportunity for social media providers to use some of their social capital and value to develop working-class talent, for example, with their platforms, giving out free workshops on how to build their audiences?

I totally agree. If you watch some YouTube shows, they look like telly shows. Some of the production values are impressive. The problem for television, regarding the specific area of comedy that I am often working in, which is satire, is that commissioners have become too timid at commissioning topical comedy and topical comedy that has a bit of bite. The BBC, Channel 4 and others, certainly under the last Government, were wary of annoying a Government that at the time was saying it would privatise Channel 4. The BBC has fallen into that problem as well. You see less new topical comedy on the telly. There is a huge desire for satirical comedy that really packs a punch, not just at politicians and the Government but at other powerful people as we perceive them. Online is where people are going with that now. I mean, I worked on “Spitting Image”. We did that as a West End show. The desire for that sort of comedy is overwhelming, and yet it is not reflected in television.

On copyright, an enormous debate is going on at the moment about the rise of AI and the threat it poses to intellectual property. As people who create content and share it with the world, there must be a bit of an honour among comedians not to rip off each other’s jokes.

Among most. The odd one might.

How does the copyright concern strike creatives like you? Is it a very real threat?

It is an existential threat. Comedy is so different. You write your own stuff and you take real pride in it. It takes so long—or it did for me, anyway—to write a really good 20 minutes or a really good hour. The hard work that goes into writing a joke can take ages. A routine is never fully finished. It can always be perfected. Another line will always improve it. On occasions where you have had material stolen by someone else, it is infuriating to go through. To think that now an industry is specifically designed—basically, a lot of the point of AI—effectively to harvest your creative output, to take all those years of hard work and say, “Anyone can have this.” They will scrape that data from somewhere, and it will be from the people who put years and years of hard work and labour into that. It threatens us as an industry. It threatens live venues. It threatens the hospitality sector. It is a major threat to the UK economy if guardrails are not in place to prevent the wholesale theft of intellectual property. I understand why the Government wants Britain to lead in AI. Of course, we all do. But if that is at the expense of other industries like ours, the net effect of it will be appalling.

It is a real wild west at the moment. I hosted a panel last night with women in journalism and a legal company called Russell. The question about AI came up. I also learned a new term last night, which was “scraping,” which Matt used. That is it. Even our legal person on the panel said exactly as Matt says. It is absolutely unregulated. Your material is out there and—whatever they are—bots are scraping your material. AI depends on that because it takes that and makes it accessible to other people. It is not just in comedy. That is right across all the creative arts, all of it. Women journalists were talking about it last night. It happens in the music industry. I am not an expert, but I find it frightening.

Yes, I was also reticent to be a social media comedian because I did not want to put my work out there. I had worked really hard at it and I wanted people to come and see it live. It is a different experience live than it is on social media, which is like the beauty of live comedy. Then I had one viral video and it was incredibly addictive and immediately set off a trend. I suddenly saw people doing almost the identical video with no credit to me for the format I used and stuff. It is frustrating because it is your art and it is stolen from you. That is why we push towards live comedy. It is bad for the UK if everyone is sitting at home watching these videos. The people who make money in the end are the people who own these huge tech giants, these billionaires. They are the people fundamentally profiting off your art that you put out into the world for free in the hope that somehow it will inspire people enough to buy live tickets to your shows. It is a completely different experience live than it is on social media. It is also important for the economy to get people out of the house. It is not just ticket sales, but it is the drinks that people buy. It is the taxis people take to get there or the buses or whatever. It is all stuff that makes social cohesion better. If we all go out and sit in a room, I can tell you when you have a room united, like a hundred people united with you, it is so different from being alone watching someone doing a joke. How good it is for society for that to happen. The technology thing is a real double-edged sword because it is unbelievably validating and addictive. But in the end, we would all say live comedy is better and way more valuable.

In this debate about opt-in, opt-out on AI and copyright, it could apply differently in different sectors. When you hear the opt-in, opt-out, it sounds like people have a view about whether their material should be used or they can stop it being used. Actually, in some senses, in music, for example, it does not sound like they want to stop it being used. They just want to make sure they can get some cash coming out of it. Of course, in music, there are mechanisms through which you can do that through the performing rights system and all the rest of that. I guess in comedy, there probably is not. But I wonder about your thoughts on whether in comedy specifically, given the work that can go into a single gag, you want to stop that material being used like a tool rather than make sure there is some artist remuneration.

You do get paid for writing work. Artists are prepared to write for other comedians on radio shows and telly shows. That is not unusual.

I am talking about the scraping.

Yes. Unless you were paid the sorts of rates that you should be paid, the reality is you would be undercut for it. I cannot imagine many people, unless they are new and at the start of their career, where they are looking to make—

I should not have interrupted you. Sorry, I misunderstood what you said. Are you saying that the same remuneration system for when you write material for somebody else could be used for remuneration for your material being used by AI, even if you cannot say, “I produced this. It appeared there”?

There are two systems because you are commissioned as a writer to work on a show for x amount of days. You get paid for the material you generate on that show on those days. My point is that people are prepared to give their material to other people for a fee because you work as a writer on a topical comedy show or wherever. As a principle, people are not against giving their jokes to someone else because they are being paid for that specific role. But in terms of the use of AI, only people at the start of their career who are desperate to monetise it in any way they can are more likely to take any sort of deal. I presume it would be a terrible deal because, if you are paying people the sort of day rate that people should get for radio and comedy writing, the costs to the AI companies are far too large.

Can I jump in on that? Sorry to interrupt. The entertainment newsletter Pop Bitch last week noted that the launch of the UK version of “Saturday Night Live” was inviting writers to send samples of their work for free. I do not know if any of you saw that. On the one hand, I know it has been tried before, but trying to bring “Saturday Night Live” over to the UK could potentially be a great opportunity for many artists wanting to try to launch their comedy careers to a wider audience. We talk about AI stealing people’s work, but how do you feel about writers being unpaid for their work?

If you are auditioning, that is different. Basically, a writer’s audition is sending some sample material and then getting paid work. That is a different principle. I am excited that SNL is coming to the UK. It is a good. We need more topical comedy on telly. We need more sketch on telly. I cannot believe it. You go to the Edinburgh festival and you see amazing sketch shows that you do not get. It is a real breeding ground for talent. It is a different discipline from individual stand-up and there should be more of it on telly. SNL in itself will not dramatically change the culture here. It is always positive when shows try to break out. Lots of very talented people write on comedy shows. Part of the problem is you end up with a group of people who all write on the same shows and then, because not that many shows employ those writers, they all start to feel quite similar. Any new show that comes along and tries to use established talent that can deliver, which is the crucial thing—the thing needs to be funny—but that also tries to get new writers in is positive. If SNL is serious about trying to get new writers in and give new people a break, I welcome it.

I would love to see a paid system for submitting stuff because, even if you are auditioning for something, it may not physically be going somewhere but it is still doing work. Showing up to something and giving your thoughts to something is doing work, so I would love to see remuneration for it. It has been an unregulated industry for so long that we have learned to accept these terms. Some people can afford to accept the terms and therefore do, and the rest of us have to deal with that because it is also competitive. If some people can deal with it, we all have to deal with it, unfortunately. I agree with the principle that if I am submitting to something or if I am speaking at something, I expect to be remunerated for my time. I am a freelancer.

Back to AI, how much of a competitive threat ultimately is this? Will AI actually be funny on purpose?

It might be, but not yet.

How long do we have?

I do not know. That is the problem. We have noticed that it cannot yet write or tell a joke in the way that a comedian can on stage, but I do feel a bit anxious about it because it definitely can do poetry all right and it is starting to be able to write scripts okay. I feel like it will be a little bit like that poem, “First it came for the poets and I said nothing and then it came for the scriptwriters and I said nothing and finally it will come for the comedians and there will be no one to defend us because no one else cares about stand-up comedy like we do.” Yes, it will come for us eventually. It just cannot yet. Also, there is something about the experience of watching a person. Would you want to go out and watch a computer tell jokes?

I guess that is the point. As with music, potentially live experiences become more valuable, not less. In a world where so much stuff is an artifice and is coming to you, the experience is going to it and interacting with other people, particularly with comedy, as with the roar of the crowd for music and sport, the laughter around you is amazing.

I agree. As human beings, the live experience is not replicable, but it means that when you are live and you tell those jokes, they may have heard that on an app. If you tell that joke and they go, “I have heard that before. He has nicked that off someone,” and they have heard it on an AI app and then you are robbed of it. Jokes are the creation and the release of tension. They have the element of surprise. That is why comedy is different from music. Music comforts people in a completely different way. With comedy, the first time you hear the joke is always the funniest. If that joke has been told through some sort of app or AI or sort of bot or whatever it is, the live experience is tainted by that.

Do you want to go on and talk about the health impact?

I can, yes. Social prescribing is a big thing. It comes up quite a lot more, probably, for all of us in our constituencies. People see great potential for it. It has no national framework or co-ordination. It is probably not the first thing that people think about at the GP surgery. Comedy is probably not the first thing the practice manager would think about. What are the most productive or most promising applications for your artform in helping the health of the nation?

I am not in the Comedy on Prescription area specifically. I am more on the general community side of it, but there are big parallels. Working on comedy in the community as a project has helped us see within the community the health and social aspects of bringing comedy into the workplace or working with specific groups. We work with elderly groups, and we work with all-female groups and mixed groups. Seeing people interacting using comedy techniques through workshops has been quite groundbreaking. There is the social aspect of it. Then there is the absolute specific social prescribing. Within Kent is a big social prescribing lobby. I am part of it. There is a meeting tomorrow where lots of different practitioners from the creative arts and the health sector get together and explore ideas. There is a little bit of funding, I believe, for various elements of that. It is important. Then, as Geoff said earlier, lots of comedians might go and work in prisons or go and entertain people in hospitals. Everyone knows the benefits of that, as it is well documented. The famous Patch Adams was portrayed by the late, great Robin Williams. We have lots of evidence to support it, and it should be on a separate agenda. A whole project called Comedy on Prescription is run, interestingly, through a tech entrepreneur, who has a lot to say about AI. He is much better than probably us to talk about it. They are fuelling a lot of the research into a platform called Craic. We have had discussions with the Government at an informal level, and there is definitely a growing movement for that. It is really valid. I do not know how many social prescribing programmes are active in this country. I would like to know. It would be interesting. It would be great if doctors were sending people to comedy clubs.

Is that how it would manifest, basically, “Go to The Comedy Store. Here is a ticket,” or is it something else?

I do not know. It is a bit of everything. Workshops. We all know that laughter is the best medicine.  

Certainly, it did wonders for my mental health because I suffer from depression and so on. When doing comedy, I always said, “If they do not make it a comedy, at least I am going out for an evening and laughing.” There is also a thing about certain spaces for certain people. I help comedian Kemah Bob with her Femmes of Colour comedy club, which is for femmes, trans, nonbinary and queer comedians of colour. To be in those spaces where people feel safe and included and see themselves represented is helpful because a lot of living in the world right now is really traumatising. For an hour or two, you get this release. I do believe it helps you go about the day. I have certainly had audience members come up to me afterwards and be profusely thankful or saying things like, “I was feeling bad today and you have made me feel better.” I do not know how you make that into like a policy per se but, if you can do something that promotes our industry, people will find it on their own and they will come to it.

That emphasis on live is crucial, because I always thought comedy was quite disposable compared with other art forms and I completely underestimated the profound impact of anything immersive. Whether it is a football match, a theatre show or a comedy show where you switch off from everything else in your life and you are completely immersed in that world, it is magical. I have come to see the value of comedy as even more distinct in that sphere because something about laughter is so good for you and lasts. It does not leave you at the door when you leave the comedy club or the theatre. People have very difficult lives in many different ways and everyone has stresses and troubles. Going to a comedy club where you totally switch off and you see all these different funny people who would make you laugh in different ways, something that will last beyond the night there that only comedy can give people. It is such a special art form for the impact that it has on people’s lives. It brings me back to the point that it is infuriating that we are not recognised.

Without a live scene, which is the base, you do not have that. Comedy is in everything right across the arts. It is in the media. It is in film. It is in books. Shakespeare wrote brilliant comedies and brilliant tragedies. You cannot have one without the other. Talking about comedy not being part of the arts is ridiculous. Chaucer wrote some of the funniest stuff in the 14th century. Samuel Pepys wrote funny diaries. Diarists use humour. A good film might be an action movie but it will always have a funny bit. To think that comedy is somehow sidelined as not an artform is completely ridiculous to me.

It is such a British thing. Ironically, I started comedy in Germany. I have lived in lots of places. I have lived in India. I have lived in Argentina. I did an interesting master’s. Everywhere I went, people said, “Wow, you are funny.” There is something about the British. We are inherently funny people and naturally funny. Comedy is culturally so important to this country and something that we have. I wonder in a way that it is not more of our big selling point as a country internationally because we do it better than lots of nations. It feels British.

Our biggest comedy export is Mr Bean, which is visual.

Yes, everywhere around the world, it is the most watched TV show in the world.

Thank you very much. That brings us pretty much to the end of this session. As you probably know, we kicked off this round of what we are calling state-of-play sessions. They are one-offs, different from the normal Select Committee way of going about things where we normally spend months looking in-depth at an issue. We have decided to do these one-off deep dives in a series. This is the first. Thank you for being our lovely guinea pigs for the day. I want to wrap up by asking you this. After this, we will put our heads together and figure out what we will recommend to the Government and others that we have gleaned from chatting to you and the panel before you. If you were in our shoes, what would be your recommendation to the Government, the Arts Council or any other body that you think would meaningfully move the dial for the live comedy industry?

It is direct funding, to be honest. I understand why the Arts Council may not want its branding on every comedian’s poster because comedy can be incredibly controversial, but in some way, some direct funding could step in because it is not working with all the competition from the apps and all this stuff. It is not floating right now. With the venues struggling and so on, direct funding would be the—

Back to the individual?

To the individual, yes.

I would like to pick up on what I said earlier about my experience of working locally, because that ties in well with grassroots and live. A Government provision, as we have had through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, should come together with people in local areas and look at how they can bring comedy in line with supporting music or folk festivals or whatever. Local councils support lots of other things, but they would not necessarily put their funding into a comedy project. That might be a good way of devolving it. That would fit well with the Live Comedy Association as well because it represents people all across the country.

Yes, direct funding but, also, it is crucial that the Government, the Department and the Arts Council recognise stand-up as its own individual industry. Otherwise, we will forever have to justify ourselves and compete against other sectors. It is ludicrous that in 2025 stand-up comedy is not recognised. People have been lobbying about this for a very long time. Having that recognition for our industry would solve a lot of the other problems.

Brilliant. Thank you all for being so brave to be the first ones to do our state-of-play series of inquiries. We are grateful for all your time and your evidence today. If you think of anything else that you feel that we should take into consideration after you have left, please drop us a line because we will be coming together quite quickly as a Committee to work out what we think will be the key recommendations. We are grateful for your time today.