The Comedy Store has come a long way since it first opened its doors in London on 19 May 1979 above a strip club
in Soho. The Comedy Store’s 30th birthday celebrations kicked off with an all-star charity event. The bill boasted Jack Dee, Jimmy Carr, Paul Merton, Phill Jupitus and Alan Carr &ndash but the biggest star of the night was the darkened basement we were sitting in: The Comedy Store, celebrating its 30th birthday with a packed line up of acts past and present. ‘The best comedy club in the world,’ several of the comedians called it, and it would be hard to take issue. Pretty much everything the Store does, it does right &ndash which explains why it’s been around so long. Its current home, purpose built in 1993 as the perfect comedy venue, is a long way from the room above Don Ward’s Soho strip club where it all began. But then comedy’s come a long way from those ramshackle, anarchic days, when there were just half a dozen or ‘alternative cabaret’ nights scattered around London. It was an omission that last night’s line-up didn’t include more of the performers from those pioneering days. The Store’s original compere, Alexei Sayle, would have been a coup, as would his successor, Ben Elton &ndash although he probably doesn’t do anything these days without an Andrew Lloyd-Webber soundtrack and a fee bigger than an MP’s expenses claim. But maybe an Arnold Brown or a Clive Anderson to add to the reminisces about those early days would have been a nice touch. In the event, that job was left in the more-than capable hands of Paul Merton, opening the show with his policeman-on-acid routine which he first performed at the club in 1982 He’s still a regular, appearing alongside his fellow Comedy Store Players most Sundays, and he explained the significance of the venue’s opening to aspiring comedians back in those days. ‘When I was young there was nowhere to go other than Butlin’s, the working men’s clubs or Oxbridge,’ he said. ‘The Comedy Store democratised all that. Over three thirds, compered by Sean Meo, John Moloney and Paul Thorne, we cracked through 16 acts, all male – not a good message – and all performing a tight seven minutes. A Comedy Store gig is always a precise measure of a comedian’s form &ndash those on top of their game should storm it, while weaknesses are magnified too &ndash and tonight was no exception.
Good news, then, for Rhod Gilbert, who eclipsed some of the more famous names with his vein-popping rant about duvets and million-candle torches dazzling with its escalating fury at marketing drivel. Same, too, for Phil Nichol whose maniacal tomfoolery energises any crowd &ndash especially when topped off, as tonight, by a typically furious rendition of Only Gay Eskimo.