No frills, low-ceilinged basement bar/club with a regular programme of stand-up and improv shows.
Our first venue was in the Africa Centre (A semi-derelict community centre formally in the heart of Covent Garden). I was renting a basement storage space, on behalf of the Street Performers of Covent Garden, where we kept all of our props; unicycles, tight ropes, juggling, escape and acrobatic equipment. Weirdly, the building was almost empty.? After running a tiny open mic night at the Queens Head in Denman Street, with a capacity of around 25 people I decided that a disused restaurant down the corridor from our storage space could make a great little comedy club.
After a 6 month campaign of badgering emails, the ?trustees? of the Africa Centre (who in the end could not be trusted and sold the building!) kindly allowed me to rent a small part of the building and I set up a weekly stand up comedy night each Friday. We bought bottled beers, spirits and soft drinks from Tesco?s at the end of King Street, and used the Africa Centre license to set up our own little bar in the space. Our flyers announced comedy and all drinks at ?1.50! We funnelled as many people as we could in from the streets with the flyers and from my street show on the West Piazza juggling chainsaws every Friday Night. The Top Secret Comedy Club was born! We had no website!
It went so well (despite my appalling but stubborn weekly attempts at hosting) that I immediately started pestering the trustees with more emails to open more days. 6 months later I was allowed to extend to Fridays and Saturdays. 6 months more of pleading emails and I was allowed to rent the space from Wed-Saturday and then after another protracted negotiation (coincidently 6 months!), I was allowed to rent on a monthly basis and open every night! A year and a half since our first night and we had ourselves a full time stand up comedy club!