Alternative Comedy - United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The official history of London's Comedy Store credits comedian and author Tony Allen with coining the term, though in his autobiography, the late Malcolm Hardee claims to have coined the term in 1978.

Alternative comedy came to describe an approach to stand-up comedy that was neither racist nor sexist but free-form and devised by the performers themselves. This style won out in a 'civil war' against more traditional comedians who had initially played London's Comedy Store, Soho, from its opening in May 1979.

Traditional club comics of the time had been reliant on trite jokes which often targeted women and minority groups. The alternative that developed was more like comedy's answer to punk.

Alexi Sayle, the Comedy Store's first MC, provided angry character comedy satirising the left. Fellow-MC Tony Allen broke the taboos of personal and sexual politics while actor Keith Allen confronted audiences in a fearless series of 'put-ons' and was a big influence on the early cabaret scene that was about to emerge.

From of these onstage battles, Tony Allen and Alexi Sayle founded "Alternative Cabaret", with other Comedy Store regulars. Their aim was to establish several alternative comedy clubs in London in addition to their flagship venue at The Elgin, Ladbroke Grove, from August 1979. Its core members were Jim Barclay, Andy De La Tour and Pauline Melville, stand ups who shared a background in radical fringe theatre.

The pair also brought alternative stand up to the Edinburgh Festival for the first time in August 1980 with "Late Night Alternative", at the Heriot-Watt Theatre. Returning with a full show in 1981, 'Alternative Cabaret' was the critical comedy hit of that year. The Comedy Store now began advertising itself as 'The Home of Alternative Comedy' with 'Alternative Cabaret' listed by London's weekly Entertainment Guide, Time Out as its main show.

Those tours established the idea of running comedy shows in small venues around London, and thus sowed the seeds of the network of pub-based gigs that grew in the capital and across the UK throughout the 1980s.

The new comedy got its own section, 'Cabaret', in Listings magazines, first in 'City Limits' followed by 'Time Out' on 21 January 1983. Other organisations, comics and entrepreneurs including, Maria Kempinska's Jongleurs and Roland and Clare Muldoon's CAST/New Variety added more regular venues bringing the number of gigs per week from 24 in '83 to 69 by 1987.

Just about every major British stand up comedian in the last thirty years started their career in alternative comedy clubs, including Ben Elton, Jo Brand, Jack Dee, Lee Evans, Eddie Izzard, Harry Hill, Peter Kay, Jimmy Carr and Ross Noble.

Meanwhile, other comics had left the Store with Peter Richardson to form The Comic Strip performing 'Comedy Cabaret' featuring double acts and sketch comedy, at The Boulevard Theatre, Soho in October 1980.

The Comic Strip included Manchester University and Drama School graduates Rik Mayall, Ade Edmondson, Nigel Planer and French and Saunders and aimed their talents at television. Ben Elton, who then became The Store's next MC also became co-writer of BBC2's TV hit The Young Ones - as author William Cook noted, "After The Young Ones made him Alternative Comedy's hidden voice, Saturday Live (Channel 4) made him its most visible face." As 'The Comic Strip Presents..', the team altogether made 42 TV Movies for Channel 4 and the BBC.

If Tony Allen, nicknamed by comics and critics as 'The Godfather of Alternative Comedy' "was the theory of anarchic comedy" wrote comic Arthur Smith, "then Malcolm Hardee was its cock-eyed embodiment". Hardee was the much loved MC at the Tunnel Palladium, The Mitre, Deptford 1984-89 whose audience were famous for their vocal participation and wit. There he influenced the early careers of Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer, Simon Day, Chris Lynam, Martin Soan, Harry Enfield and many others to whom he gave their first gigs. He also found fame himself as part of 'The Greatest Show on Legs' which had been started by Martin Soan, his part in the legendary 'The Balloon Dance' as well as his many shows at The Edinburgh Festival.