New Year’s Eve comedy in London

This review is from the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Joe Kent-Waters’s second show is exactly what I wanted it to be, which is to say that it’s basically a bigger budget remake of his first show.  In case you missed it, Kent-Waters made a huge impression at last year’s Fringe – winning the Best Newcomer award – with his creation Frankie Monroe, a hulking, gravelly-voiced, white-faced men’s club owner and self-declared ‘biggest bastard in Yorkshire’. The improbable longevity of his anachronistic Rotherham working men’s club was the result of a pact Frankie had signed with the Devil 25 years previously – and in debut show Joe-Kent Waters is Frankie Monroe: LIVE!!! the Devil came to collect, the show culminating in him being dragged to Hell, ‘by the balls’. Joe Kent-Waters is Frankie Monroe: DEAD!!! (Good Fun Time) is the direct sequel: it begins in Hell, where Frankie is essentially practising almost exactly the same schtick to the souls of the damned as he was to the men of Rotherham (who I’m sure are two very different groups of people). The jokes are different, but it’s the same character doing the same shtick in a similar way – an audience member is picked on to a remarkable extent; a puppet dog is deployed. And it’s brilliant, the best show I’ve seen at the Fringe this year. Sometimes it’s death to return to what you did last time out, but it was exactly the right decision for Kent-Waters. Most crucially, the joke is still funny. Frankie – a sort of monstrous amalgam...

London has the biggest and best comedy scene in the world, so if you love a good laugh (or a good heckle) you're in the right place. From tiny basements and rooms above pubs to boats to huge venues, there’s comedy in the capital for comedians (and audiences) of all shapes and sizes. But not all spaces are created equal. Avoid getting sucked into a rip-off joint with a vibe that's deader than Monty Python's notorious parrot with our list of London’s liveliest and best comedy nights and clubs. Whether you're up for try-out nights at pocket money prices or massive gigs from names off the telly, here's where to look for your next comedy night out. RECOMMENDED: Here are the very best cinemas in London.

Even by London’s standards, November is an eclectic month for comedy, with our most anticipated shows including Joe Kent-Waters’ hell-set Frankie Monroe DEAD!!! (Good Fun Time), an evening of Vaudeville with beloved US actor John C Reilly, and the return of the ever gloriously baffling Tim Key. There are far, far too many one-off, multi-performer comedy nights in London for us to compile a single coherent page with our favouites on, which is entirely to London’s credit. So do check individual bills of comedy clubs online for that sort of thing. But if you’re looking for an individual comedian with a full headline show then this page is here to compile the Time Out editorial team’s top choices, often with our reviews from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The best comedy clubs in London.The best new theatre shows to book for in London.

As the unofficial comedy capital of the world, London's comedy circuit doesn't take a break. There are stand-up shows seven days a week, from early evening through to the small hours. To help you plan your week of witticisms, here's a nifty calendar of regular comedy shows in London.

Slapstick comedy sensation Starr attempts to perform every single Penguin Classic novel – from Frankenstein to The Grapes of Wrath – over the course of one joyously bonkers 70-minute show. Do not expect to learn that much about English literature.

It’s my first visit to London’s newest theatre, and the press officer says she wants to hang about for a bit: ‘just until I see the look on your face when you see the auditorium for the first time’.  I immediately start worrying that I’ll offend everyone by not looking impressed enough, but it’s all good: my jaw duly thuds to the floor when I step into the main house of Soho Theatre Walthamstow.  The ‘original’ Soho Theatre on Dean Street in central London is a truly wonderful comedy, cabaret and theatre venue, but the building is not what you’d call architecturally noteworthy. Soho Theatre Walthamstow is a different matter entirely.  Photo: David Levene It has a long and complicated history, but the short version is that it opened in 1930 as The Granada, a 2,700-seat cinema on busy Hoe Street. It eventually fell into disrepair. Now it’s been born again as a 1,000-seat comedy and theatre venue. And it looks incredible. While the exterior has been given a clean, white, unobtrusive paint job that brings it somewhat in line with the Dean Street venue, the inside is like stepping back in time – a ravishing art deco masterpiece so instantly iconic that I feel a twinge of frustration that it’s just been sitting here unused for decades.  The slide into dereliction The original Granada cinema was a special place: built by prolific London theatre architect Cecil Masey and with interiors by the great stage designer Theodore Komisarjevsky, it was beloved by noted Leytonstone...

‘My main goal of the show, and my life, is to clear the name of Yoko Ono,’ says James Acaster, matter-of-factly, at the top of his show. Quite how we get there via examining his love of mariachi music, or the identities of Percy Pig’s mates, we’re not sure. But it all seems to make sense, at the time. Honest. Three solo shows in, and Acaster’s quickly becoming a reliable Fringe favourite. The Kettering-born comic is quiet, pedantic and refreshingly low-key. He's in no rush to get laughs, his shows are slow-burners, but every carefully chosen word or pause builds up to a sturdy, satisfying punchline. From Twister-etiquette to French rhyme structures, the Marks and Spencer-donning comic has a knack for flipping observational comedy on its head, studiously examining things most of us have dismissed as inconsequential. His confident, yet gawky, persona is wonderfully aloof, too. But what Acaster has mastered, which most comics fail at, is structuring an hour-long show. Seemingly throwaway jokes cleverly re-emerge, and no callbacks are crowbarred in. By the end of the hour you’re totally sucked into his minute, quizzical world, where Yoko Ono is addicted to biscuits, and Joe Bloggs is a prat. And it’s a wonderful world to visit. See 'James Acaster – Lawnmower' at the Edinburgh Fringe

There’s no shortage of great entertainment venues in London, but one of the best things about this city is that new ones are still popping up all the time. The latest arrival? A brand-new comedy club in Southwark. The Old Union Yard Arches club, which will open its doors for the first time on Thursday October 16, will become the permanent home of improv group the Free Association. The Free Association has been training up comedians and putting on shows for over a decade now, so it’s about time it had a place to call its own. There’s a big launch event/celebration on Thursday, which consists of an inaugural performance, complete with champagne and ribbon cutting. Then, on Friday (October 17) you can catch This Doesn’t Leave The Room, the troupe’s ‘flagship show’ where the improvisers take confessions and gossip from the audience and turn them into something wonderful. In the past, people like Amelia Dimoldenberg have joined for this particular bill. Over the opening weekend there’s a full lineup of shows ranging from St Doctor’s Hospital, an ‘improvised medical drama’, to Fabled, a ‘fantasy adventure tale’ with a live band playing a soundtrack. As well as being a 104-seater performance space, the venue aims to be ‘a creative hub for performers, audiences, and the wider community’. It will also house purpose-built classrooms to train up the next generation of comedians (alumni include Ambika Mod, Phil Wang and more), and a café/bar area open to the public. Photograph Amy...

Maybe it’s his law school training, but relative newcomer Ronny Chieng is already a consummate professional. The 27-year-old comic is blunt, full of bravado and not aiming to be liked; he’s got a job to do, and he’s putting forward a strong case. Born in Malaysia, based in Australia and raised in Singapore via the US, Chieng has a blurred sense of national identity. ‘I belong nowhere,’ he says, explaining that Westerners just see his Chinese roots, and back home he’s considered ‘the whitest guy in Malaysia’. But Chieng feels passionately about his heritage and aims to change the opinion that Chinese people aren’t cool. ‘Cool’ isn’t exactly how you’d describe Chieng; he’s a permanently pissed-off germaphobe. But he smartly attacks Chinese stereotypes while mockingly reinforcing them, and just when you think he’s slipping into cliché, he’ll flip the joke on its head and find a fresh, sharp punchline. Not that race is the only subject Chieng’s an expert on. He’s a master BitTorrent user, a penis-hygiene specialist and regular IT support for his mum. We’ve all heard young comics mock their parents’ inability to grasp technology, but Chieng’s extended routine about providing tech help over the phone wins through his outward frustration. It’s this honest indifference to being liked that makes Chieng stand out. Refreshingly, he’s neither charmless nor charming. All that matters is there’s sharp comedic mind at work here – why should we need anything more? See 'Ronny Chieng – The...

Fluffy observations, uninhibited outbursts, long-form storytelling… they’re all very well. But let us not forget the purest, and sometimes most effective, form of stand-up: the good old-fashioned art of one-liners. A raft of crafty jokers are visiting our city this year, but this week king of the zinger-slingers, Milton Jones, is in town, whipping Hammersmith into hysterics every 20 seconds with his surreal, elegantly written bon mots. The 38-year-old ‘Mock the Week’ star has a joke on just about every subject imaginable. Don’t believe us? We fired ten topics over to the loud-shirt-wearing gag man, and he shot back with ten one-liners from his joke vault… Crime ‘Years ago I used to supply filofaxes for the mafia. Yes, I was involved in very organised crime.’ Hobbies ‘Recently I’ve been attending meetings of Eavesdroppers Anonymous – not that they know!’ Yorkshire ‘The Grand Old Duke of York – he was a manic depressive. Well, when he was up, he was up…’ Health ‘As a child I had a medical condition that meant I had to eat soil three times a day. Lucky my older brother told me about it, really.’ Litter ‘Keep Britain Tidy – chop off Norfolk and Cornwall!’ Holidays‘Recently I went on a ballooning holiday – I put on four stone!’ France‘I can’t even count to ten in French: un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept… Aarrgghh! Sorry, I’ve got a huit allergy.’ Old people‘We live in an uncaring society. I was in the park the other day watching an old man feed the birds, and after a...