James Cook has joined this cohort with a post titled ‘Why the Birmingham comedy scene repeatedly dies on its hole…‘. His gripes are that (and I apologise for paraphrasing):

• research shows that residents of Birmingham are the most risk averse in the country. We have a drinking culture, but not much of a ‘going out’ culture. This makes things difficult for promoters
• there are too many poor quality comedy night charging people good money to see new, unpaid acts. These nights are rubbish and will put people off ever going to a comedy night again

I don’t claim to know too much about this – I go to the occasional stand-up show, but I don’t have James’s experience of the local comedy scene and he’s not the first to have made this complaint. However, from a lay punter’s point of view, I was under the impression that if comedy’s your thing then Birmingham caters for you pretty well. We’ve got:

• the NIA and LG Arena for the big, mainstream touring shows
• Town Hall and Alexandra Theatre for other biggish touring shows
• two main stand-up venues – The Glee Club and Highlight
• other occasional shows at The Public and the MAC. Warwick Arts Centre and various places in Wolverhampton are fairly close too
• some smaller, regular nights bringing in some decent national names (Comedy Junction and Popcorn Comedy)
• there’s a proliferation of other, smaller nights at pubs and bars around over the city too

In terms of general promotion, we’ve got a dedicated comedy website and (almost?) every year the Birmingham Comedy Festival draws a ring around a load of shows happening over the space of a month and shouts about them.

That seems like a pretty healthy spread to me. Certainly a good deal more than many other towns and cities can claim. Does it constitute a ‘scene’? If not, is it just the audiences for the smaller gigs that are missing, or something else?

I’d be interested in hearing what people think. Or, seeing as how he started the discussion, leave a comment on James’s post.

Listings come from Live Brum (although they’re not coming through quite right at the mo, so check Live Brum itself), news comes from Chortle and they add their own news, previews and reviews. Their Twitter account puts out a weekly top tip.

The Glee Club and Jongleurs are the main venues around town so it’s worth browsing their listings too, just in case.

Created in Birmingham doesn’t tend to cover comedy very much although, as people have pointed out, there’s no lack of creativity going on with it.  The problem is that, although I come across plenty of listings, there’s been no-one (that I’ve found) writing passionately and consistently about the city’s comedy scene.

Until now – enter Who’s Laughing Now?:

With news, listings, features and a kind of curation area for YouTube vids, it’s been launched to coincide with the Birmingham Comedy Festival and is the brainchild of Rich Batsford and Simon Harper.

Rich explains on his own blog that:

The site has been created with the intent of developing the comedy scene in the area and is more or less an open forum – we are very happy for all local promoters to send in previews of their events.

We are also on the lookout for other writers or budding journalists who are interested in publishing reviews through the site. Whilst there’s no money on offer, its all good experience and we would expect to be able to get free show tickets for our contributors when they are reviewing a show. Are you interested? – please contact us

I’m really chuffed to see this and think there’s a whole heap of potential here, so good luck to them.