A Brief History Of Comedy In Bath

Bath is famous worldwide for many things; the Roman Thermae Spa giving the city its name, its relationship with writers such as Jane Austen and Mary Shelley, the birthplace of music sensations Tears For Fears, and national treasure and baker extraordinaire Mary Berry. It is easy to take Bath’s influence on British comedy for granted, but it has given us the likes of Bill Bailey and Russell Howard, and has become a frequent destination for touring comedy shows. Now with its own independent and underground comedy club and emerging prominence on the South West comedy circuit, we look back and give thanks to those who came before us so that The Jesters Comedy Club could exist today.

The 1980s saw the rise of punk, and with it began alternative comedy in London’s The Comedy Store; gone were traditional club comedians with blue joke after punch-down joke after another jab at one’s mother-in-law; in were Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson attempting (and failing purposefully) to tell one joke in five minutes, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders discussing and joking about women’s bodies openly in a way that glorified rather than patronised, The Comedy Store Players bringing raw improvisation to the forefront of entertainment, and Alexei Sayle actively hurling insults at audiences to only make them love him more. The boom happened in Soho, but the fallout quickly spread across the UK: in 1981 the Edinburgh festival launched their inaugural Comedy Awards (then sponsored by Perrier), and in 1982 Channel 4 launched nationwide which presented comedy titans like Saturday Live, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, and later gave vehicle shows to the likes of Harry Hill, Peter Kay, and Armando Iannucci.

Bath saw the impact of this surge in a revolutionary yearning for new comedy; the South West saw the beginning of a circuit here thanks to Bristol University attendees such as Simon Pegg and Matt Lucas, in 1989 the Rondo Theatre was founded as a 105-seat venue for local progressing acts and (in more recent years) as a touring destination for many up-and-coming comedians, and in the same year the humorist Peter Ustinov announced plans for the Ustinov Theatre as a venue for alternative theatre, a lot of which has been comedic.

With the seeds sown, Bath comedy was slowly taking shape with comedians gracing general open mic nights across the city, and in 1996 The Fez Comedy Club opened its doors at Cadillacs every Tuesday as a dedicated space for acts to try their hand at being funny - many of which succeeded, and soon became household names with the rise of stand-up comedy’s popularity over the next decade.

2008 saw Alex Timms launch the Bath Comedy Festival; now run by Nick Steel, the organisation runs weeks-worth of comedy every year comprising large name headliners at the Bath Forum, to its Bath New Act competition, past winners including Joe Lycett, Harriet Kemsley, and Larry Dean. Steel has been joined in recent years by those who once ran The Fez Comedy Club amongst many others, and together they have kept a strong adoration and devotion to providing Bath comedy alongside the theatres, booked line-ups, and open mic scenes.

In 2019,  after a strong interest from Comedy Society members (including one Sam Hawkins), and having run numerous comedy based modules as part of the BA Acting degree (attended by one Holly Leggett), Bath Spa University began running the BA Comedy degree led by the Gaulier trained Pat Welsh and comedy writer Chris Head to give plucky young individuals (like one Oliver Young) three years of tutoring and freedom to experiment with any and all avenues of performing and writing comedy in Bath venues.

In August 2021, in the back room of the pub he worked at, Sam Hawkins launched a comedy open mic night named Pint and a Laugh. The night quickly became popular amongst audiences and acts alike, to the extent where Hawkins and recent graduate Oliver Young ran booked gigs at local venues Moles and The Ale House, and inspired other local comedians  like Holly Leggett to start their own nights across the city. When Hawkins broke away from The Saracens Head to focus on running booked nights, any fears that the open mic would stop were calmed with the announcement that local alternative-comedian Keane Tugwell would take the reins - who still runs the night under the new name Big Squash Comedy to this day.

With Hawkins, Young, and Leggett’s success of the booked nights, however, Sam had the idea to open a dedicated venue for comedy to bridge the gap between stand-up acts developing their first five-minute sets and those touring full hour-long shows, alongside offering a space to do sketch, improvisation, and alternative comedy: The Jesters Comedy Club was born. A 50-seater cellar venue open five nights a week, with nights encompassing everything between a sign-up-on-the-night show run by Young, the Jesters Presents night run by Leggett, and the weekend headliner shows run by Hawkins. One thing that stuck since the very beginning, however, was the Pint and a Laugh night, now running every Monday but always offering a place for acts to start establishing themselves.