LAUGH OUT LOUD COMEDY CLUB

From the trading floor to the back room of a hotel

Laugh Out Loud is not a comedian and not a single venue. It is a promoting operation, dating its founding to 2004, that books and brands monthly stand-up nights inside theatres and bars around England. Its office address is at The Sharp Project in Manchester, and the person behind it is Damion Larkin, a comic from Southport who left a decade-long career as a stockbroker in London in August 2004 after studying politics at Newcastle University.

Larkin went at the circuit as a performer first, reaching the final of the City Life North-West Comedian of the Year competition in 2007 as runner-up, taking part in the Beat The Frog World Series in 2006, and appearing at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2008, 2010 and 2012. The promoting grew alongside the performing. He began running nights in his home town in the late 2000s, moving between the Bold Hotel, the Royal Clifton Hotel and Southport & Birkdale Sports Club before settling the Southport club at The Atkinson on Lord Street in 2013, on the first Saturday of each month.

A chain of rooms rather than a room of its own

By May 2016, speaking to the Southport Visiter around the third anniversary of the Atkinson residency, Larkin was running seven clubs spread between St Andrews and Bournemouth, and said he wanted to grow the number substantially while eventually returning his own attention to writing and performing. The model has stayed the same since: no bricks-and-mortar club to fill seven nights a week, but a recurring monthly date inside a venue that already has a bar, a box office and a mailing list.

The club's pitch leans on the names it booked before those names were expensive — Jason Manford, John Bishop, Russell Howard and Sarah Millican are the four it cites — and on the television shorthand of the circuit it draws from, from Mock The Week and 8 Out of 10 Cats to Live at the Apollo and Taskmaster. The headline acts on a given month are rarely household names. They are working club headliners, which is a different job and, on the evidence of the bills, the one the operation is actually organised around.

The brand has stepped outside the monthly-club format occasionally. A Laugh Out Loud season ran at Manchester's Palace Theatre in the autumn of 2019, opening on 14 September and finishing on 9 November that year.

Where it plays in 2026

The current circuit is six rooms. York carries two of them: the YO1 Live Lounge at York Barbican and The Basement underneath City Screen Picturehouse, where the club takes the first Saturday of the month. The other four are Hull City Hall, Portsmouth Guildhall, the Pavilion at Bournemouth and The Piano Bar inside the Regent Theatre in Stoke-on-Trent.

Prices sit in a narrow band and are published per venue: £20 at Hull, £21.25 at Stoke, £22 at Portsmouth, £23.25 at Bournemouth and £24.50 for either York room. The run currently on sale opens at York Barbican on 26 September 2026 and continues through Hull on 2 October, The Basement on 3 October, Portsmouth on 10 October, Stoke on 17 October, Bournemouth on 23 October and York Barbican again on 24 October, before a November and December block and a first date of the new year at Hull City Hall on 15 January 2027.

The Basement is the smallest of them and the most club-like: around 100 people standing or seated, about 50 in cabaret layout, and refurbished in 2026 after fifteen years of wear. The Barbican's YO1 Live Lounge is unreserved and first-come, first-served, which is why the club tells people to be in by 7.45pm.

The bills

A Laugh Out Loud line-up is four professional comics, the MC included, and the club's own rule is that the acts change every month with no repeats. The published bills for the autumn bear that out. York Barbican on 26 September 2026 has Liam Farrelly, Seeta Wrightson, Joe Zalias and Gary Jennison. Michael Shafar tops Hull on 2 October and The Basement the night after. Markus Birdman and Sunjai Arif are at Portsmouth on 10 October; Dave Longley plays Stoke on 17 October with Larkin himself on the bill; Alex Boardman is at York Barbican on 24 October.

November and December continue in the same register. Paul Pirie, Jonny Brook and Jordan Ducharme are at Hull on 6 November. Stoke takes Sean Heydon, Jimmy Shirley, Alex Boardman and Will Duggan on 21 November, then Chris Washington, Rich Austin, Michael Legge and Will Duggan on 18 December. Christian Reilly opens the January 2027 date in Hull. Several slots in the November and December bills were still listed as to be confirmed in late September 2026, which is normal for a club that books months out and swaps acts as tours and television work move.

The recent past reads similarly. Dave Johns headlined the Barbican lounge on 27 September 2025 with Paul Pirie and Josh Sedman. Paddy Lennox topped The Basement on 29 October 2025 above Silky and Benny Shakes, with Kieran Lawless compering. Sean Heydon played a New Year's Eve show at The Basement on 31 December 2025 that started at 6pm and finished at 8.30pm so the audience could get out for midnight. Laura Lexx headlined the Pavilion Ballroom at Bournemouth on 5 July 2025 with Patrick Monahan and Ola Labib, Larkin hosting. Silky headlined The Basement on 5 September 2026, on a bill with Dave Johns, Jimmy Shirley and Gary Jennison.

Where it stands

Nothing about the operation suggests reinvention. What has changed over the last two years is scale within the same shape: multiple York rooms running in parallel rather than one, three Christmas specials at the Barbican across 13, 14 and 20 December 2024, occasional double-headers such as the 5pm and 8pm shows at The Basement on 2 March 2024, and a booking calendar that now extends a full quarter beyond the current month.

The club's public identity is still largely Larkin's. He promotes the nights, hosts many of them, and appears on the bills as a performer — Chortle's line on his own act, that it is warmly and intelligently told, is the one the venues reprint. Chortle listed no upcoming solo dates for him as of late September 2026, which fits the division of labour he described a decade ago and has not yet reversed: the clubs first, his own material second.