Thursday 13 November 2025

Thirty years of laughter: An archive of the Leicester Comedy Festival

Geoff Rowe, co-founder of the Leicester Comedy Festival, explores the archive he has kept since the start of the festival, and recalls some of his favourite shows.

For the last couple of years I’ve been working with a bunch of wonderful volunteers to catalogue, preserve and archive the thousands of photographs which have been collected over nearly 30 years of the annual Leicester Comedy Festival. When I helped set the festival up, and then over the three decades I led the event, I was quite famous for “keeping everything”. I think I inherited this approach from my mother who has boxes and boxes of “stuff” from me and my brothers and other family members.

At times even I would admit that I wasn’t entirely sure why I kept 'everything', but now, looking back, I am mightily pleased I did. Thanks to the funding we have received from the LAHS, we are now able to put the photographs in some sort of order and the aim is to make these, and the other materials in the archive, publicly accessible via our friends at De Montfort University’s special collections department.

We have unearthed just over one thousand photographs which are now labelled and catalogued. Of course, as you would expect, there are lots of images of comedians in the archive – photos of Alan Carr, Chris McCausland, Nicholas Parsons, Johnny Vegas and festival patron Tony Slattery have all been preserved.

But the one thing that strikes me over and over again is how the archive is not only a record of comedians who have appeared at the festival. It’s also helps record the history of live entertainment here in Leicester, featuring some venues which were really important but for various reasons are now long gone.

Each year the venues which host events as part of the festival change. There is, as you might imagine, a core group of venues. The only venue which has hosted shows as part of every festival, since it began in 1994, is The Y Theatre on East Street. This fabulous theatre, the oldest in Leicester, has hosted festival performances by Johnny Vegas, Tony Slattery, Jeremy Hardy, Rosie Jones, Felix Dexter, Shazia Mirza, Katherine Ryan, George Melly, Zoe Lyons, Jo Brand and many many more. The Y is also the regular host venue for Leicester Comedian of the Year Competition and The Gay Comedy Night.

But here, in no particular order, are some of the venues used for festival events which have now disappeared or morphed into something else. I’ve listed some of the comedians who performed in these venues, together with the year they performed. The lists also help to highlight the comedians who performed in small venues, and then went on to build their careers and, in many cases, become household names.

• Phoenix Arts Centre
  Often cited as being the “birthplace” of the festival. The Newarke Street venue (now called Sue Townsend Theatre) played a really important role in supporting the festival in the early years. In 1994, the first year of the festival, Phoenix hosted performances by Donna McPhail, Rhona Cameron and John Shuttleworth as well as interviews with Nick Park (creator of Wallace & Gromit) and cartoonist Bill Tidy. They also hosted a film series, showing classic comedy films including Life of Brian, Whisky Galore and Carry On Camping. In 1995, their programme included Alan Davies, John Otway and Sean Hughes. In 2006, the venue hosted a relatively unknown comedian called Frankie Boyle.

• Odeon Cinema
  Now called Athena, the beautiful art deco Odeon cinema once proudly stood amongst factories and buildings in what is now Leicester’s Cultural Quarter. The festival boldly “took over” the cinema for a number of one-off live comedy performances. The manager at the time was hugely supportive and enthusiastic and allowed the festival team to produce shows by The Comedy Store Players (11^th February, 1995) and Jenny Éclair (10^th February, 1996) in between the usual film programme.

• Haymarket Theatre – I guess this venue hasn’t technically disappeared but it certainly isn’t currently used for public performances anywhere near as much as it once did. This wonderful theatre was perfect for live comedy; a pretty big main auditorium and then a smaller, intimate studio space – both of which were used for comedy festival shows. Performers included Tony Slattery (1997), Alan Davies (1997), Lip Service (1997), Saeed Jaffrey (1999), The Funjabi’s (2002), Richard Ayoade (2002), Jimmy Carr (2003), Jeremy Hardy (2003), The News Quiz (2005), Mel & Sue (2005), Sandi Toksvig (2006), Omid Djalili (2006), Sarah Millican (2006) and Ronnie Corbett (2006),

• International Arts Centre (now known as The International) – this wonderful space was used for a few years as a festival venue, when it was a core part of Ann Oliver Stage School. A brilliant cabaret/comedy venue it also once hosted 2 performances from a little known Peter Kay when he launched his “Mum Wants A Bungalow” tour. These shows were promoted by the festival team in July/August 2002. Festival performers have included Hal Cruttenden (2002), Mitch Benn (2002), Milton Jones (2002), Jimmy Carr (2002), Tim Vine (2002), Nina Conti (2003) and Jimmy Carr (2003),

• Bar Nova/Halli (now known as Kayal) – sat above the main restaurant is a cosy venue which has hosted many festival shows over the years. Performers have included Miles Jupp (2004), Mark Watson (2005), Kevin Bridges (2006) and Susan Calman (2007).

• Bamboo Café Bar – a small bar, based on Welford Road, was the unlikely host of some brilliant festival shows for a few years. Performers included Jason Manford (2005), Bridget Christie (2006), Zoe Lyons (2008), Sarah Millican (2008), Susan Calman (2009),

• The Looking Glass – based on Braunstone Gate, The Looking Glass basement venue was a wonderful comedy venue. Shows were often promoted (& hosted) by Leicester comedy legend Alan Seaman who promoted shows under the title “Ship Of Fools”. Performers included Sarah Millican (2006) and James Acaster (2011).

• Bowies (The Belmont Hotel) – The Belmont Hotel was the first Leicester hotel to support the festival as an “official hotel”. The owners were extremely enthusiastic and supportive of the festival for a number of years. Their cosy, basement “Bowies” was taken over by festival promoters for a number of years and performers included Henning Wehn (2008), Arthur Smith (2008), Zoe Lyons (2009), Susan Calman (2010), Iain Stirling (2011), James Acaster (2011), Josh Widdicombe (2011), Sara Pascoe (2011), Katherine Ryan (2012), Nish Kumar (2012), Angela Barnes (2013) and Nish Kumar (2013).

• The Criterion – a real ale pub in Leicester, The Criterion (based on Millstone Lane) was known for amazing pizzas, great beer and, during a few weeks in February, brilliant live comedy. Past performers included Joel Dommett (2012), Suzi Ruffelll (2012), Iain Stirling (2013), Romesh Ranganathan (2013) and Tom Rosenthal (2013).

One question I am often asked is what are my favourite shows from the 30 years I led the festival. When I worked for the festival my answer was always the same; that I feel like all the comedians (& venues) are a bit like children and apparently you aren’t supposed to have favourite children. However, a few years ago I left the festival to explore new opportunities so I see no reason why I can’t now declare (in bold below) who some of my favourite 'children' have been...

In the very first festival in 1994 we were fortunate to include a show by a relatively unheard of comedian Harry Hill. He had won the Perrier Comedy Award in 1992 and had received glowing national newspaper reviews. The show was at the Scraptoft campus Student Union and tickets were £2.50. What I mostly remember about the show, alongside the brilliant Harry, was his support act was a then totally unknown comedian called Matt Lucas who performed as his Sir Bernard Chumley character. I was fortunate to interview Harry live on stage as part of Leicester Comedy Festival 2018.

Over the years, one of the joys of producing the festival was to have “silly” ideas which then, over time, became a reality. One of my early “silly” ideas was to turn a meeting room at Leicester City Football Club into a theatre exclusively for the festival and produce a live version of the West End theatre hit “Fever Pitch” starring Tom Watt. We developed a partnership with the football club and produced the shows for four nights in 1996. The project was sponsored by the club and Walkers and we also developed an education pack for schools based on the themes of the play. It was a really ambitious project, almost certainly cost us a fortune to do it, but was great fun to do. (If you want to know more about other “silly” ideas I have had over the years, please stop me and ask.)

From the very first year of the festival it was so important that we produced and presented an event which was as diverse and inclusive as possible. Everyone laughs at something, and our job was to cram as many of those things as possible into the festival. In 1997 we produced the first Gay Comedy Night, which has run every year at The Y Theatre. We think this makes it the longest running LGBTQ+ comedy event in the UK. The first show was actually called Pink Comedy Night, and it featured headliner Scott Capurro, supported by Graham Norton and Maria Esposito. 

In 1995 we set up the Leicester Mercury Comedian of the Year Competition, a competition to support new and emerging comedians from across the UK. We have been fortunate to have seen some incredible winners, and some pretty wonderful runners up. Jimmy Carr famously did NOT win the competition when he took part in 2001 – he lost to Miles Jupp. However, in 2000 a very young comedian called Jason Manford took to the stage and won the competition. He very kindly has supported the festival ever since, and returned many times including in 2014 when he was the first comedian I interviewed live on stage as part of the festival programme.

The brilliant Jo Brand is a comedy legend and the festival officially recognised this when we presented her with the title in 2019. Before this, she appeared at the festival many times, first in 2000, when she also attended the festival’s London launch event. I was also fortunate to have been able to interview her live on stage in 2019.

I vividly remember watching Pam Ayres on TV as a child, and my mother still listens to her copies of Pam’s audio cassettes to this day. I absolutely adored her and followed her career. In 2022 I had the pleasure of interviewing Pam on stage at Curve as part of the Festival. We spoke about her childhood and how she developed her career, as well as her inspiration and influences. Fortunately the Q&A was filmed, and is available to watch on Youtube.

On 22 January 2026, Geoff talks about his experience of producing and promoting British comedy, including stories about the development of Leicester Comedy Festival. He also tells anecdotes about performers he has worked with including Ken Dodd, Barry Cryer, Jo Brand and more. See here for details of this talk and how to attend.

If you enjoyed this blog you can also check out other blog posts from the LAHS, or explore the articles in our general audience publication Leicestershire History magazine.