Perhaps it’s not so surprising that The Queer Comedy Club – which first opened the doors of its Archway home last month – is the UK’s only venue dedicated to LGBTQ+ comedy. Over the course of the past decade, nearly 60 per cent of the capital’s queer spaces have been forced to close down altogether in the wake of surging rents and large-scale developments taking over entire areas of the capital, and as securing permanent spaces becomes increasingly challenging, organisers have often had to get creative with pop-ups.
Funnily enough, this is also how The Queer Comedy Club first came into being; long before it set up shop in North London, it first existed as a night at Hampstead’s ZODIAC, followed by a stint at Peckham’s John the Unicorn. “Our nights were always really oversubscribed, and we had lots of great audiences, and people would keep coming back for more,” says David Ian, a stand-up comedian and co-founder.
