The Stand Comedy Club celebrated its twelth anniversary in September 2007. From tiny beginnings the club has grown steadily. What started as a voluntary organisation run by enthusiasts has now become a successful business.

In Edinburgh the club is now housed in the city centre in its own purpose built premises, converted out of an insurance company’s old archive store. The sister venue in Glasgow was built in the basement of an old secondary school in the city’s west end. Both clubs are open seven nights week, every week of the year. They are Scotland’s only full-time comedy venues and last year sold over 70,000 tickets.

In the beginning

The Stand Comedy Club began life in August 1995 in the basement of WJ Christie’s pub off Edinburgh’s Grassmarket as a temporary platform for local comedians who found themselves without a stage during the Edinburgh festival. The experiment worked well enough to try a regular event, and The Stand ran its first regular club night on Thursday 21st September 1995: seven people came.

Aims and objects

The club set itself the aim of promoting the development of live comedy in Scotland in general adopted the following objectives which remain unchanged to this day:

• maintaining a regular venue with high quality entertainment at a price potential audiences can afford;
• encouraging new performers by creating a comfortable, friendly atmosphere in which to get started and develop skills;
• encouraging new writing and performance which contributes to, and reflects, contemporary Scottish culture.

By May 1996 the club opened a second weekly venue in the slightly larger Tennents Tavern pub Zabets Moscow Bar. That November, the Moscow Bar closed to be refurbished and changed into the Ivanhoe, and the club moved to the more central and larger still Tron Ceilidh House. At the end of 1997 a third weekly club started on Sundays.

In April 1997 Tommy Sheppard and Jane Mackay, formed a limited company - Salt ‘n’ Sauce Promotions Ltd - to develop the club on a commercial basis. They put together a business plan, invested their own savings, identified city centre premises, and raised the capital for refurbishment. In March 1998, after two and a half years of staging shows in various public houses, the club moved to a new purpose built venue at 5 York Place, on the edge of the city's New Town, and just five minutes walk from Princes Street.

From a standing start, the Edinburgh club has gone from strength to strength. It is now recognised as one of the leading comedy venues in Britain. The Edinburgh venue stages up to ten shows per week and sells out more often than not. It is also the fourth largest comedy venue in the world’s largest arts festival - the Edinburgh Festival fringe.

Almost as soon as the Edinburgh club was up and running the search began for premises in Glasgow. By the beginning of 1999 the basement of a former secondary school in the city’s west end had been identified as a potential venue. The school buildings had been developed by the STUC as their headquarters offices and they already had several tenants who were small businesses active in the culture industry. Negotiations on a lease, applications for planning and licensing consent, and the raising of capital took place over the following 12 months and by the end of the year the company signed a 25 year lease and awarded a contract to convert the premises into a new comedy venue.

Glasgow’s first ever purpose built comedy club opened on the 14th April 2000. Initially open five nights a week the club soon bedded down and trade grew steadily. By 2003 the Glasgow club had joined its Edinburgh counterpart in opening seven nights a week.
Between the two venues, The Stand now sells an average of around a 1400 tickets per week for stand up comedy shows.

In 2005 the original partners split and Jane Mackay has now retired from comedy and the board. The company has now been strengthened with new directors joining the board, and with the original debts almost paid, is in a strong financial position and looking to expand in its second decade.

A record of achievement......