The first comedy club to offer financial support to the Live Comedy Association’s Stand Up And Give Fund has been announced. Manchester’s Frog & Bucket is asking customers to voluntarily donate £1 on top of each ticket bought throughout October and the money will go to the fund and support grassroots live comedy across the UK. The Stand Up And Give Fund is an umbrella campaign to raise money to feed back into the sector to support comedians, promoters, festivals, venues, clubs and other people working across the UK. Pledges can be made by visiting https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/stand-up-give
The Frog and Bucket was established in 1994 and has run club nights ever since, employing thousands of comedians and entertaining many hundreds of thousands of audiences. The club has always prided itself on supporting northern acts. Comperes are invariably northerners and the club always employs northern comedians alongside many guest acts. Many famous faces have performed on the famous stage, including Johnny Vegas, Sarah Millican, Steve Coogan, Jason Manford and John Bishop. The Frog continues to provide a place to nurture new talent, for Manchester to check out the stars of tomorrow.
Jessica Toomey, Managing Director of Frog and Bucket said “we have a long proud history of supporting grassroots live comedy and we are delighted to be helping the Stand Up And Give fund in this way. 25 years ago this month John Bishop stepped up and performed his first ever comedy gig on our stage and we have nurtured and supported comedy talent ever since. We are now asking our audiences to do the same and give as generously as they can”
Geoff Rowe, from the Live Comedy Association said “we are absolutely delighted that the team from the Frog have come on board to support the Stand Up And Give Fund in this way. It echoes what the live music industry are doing with the £1 ticket levy on arena gigs which then gets distributed to the grassroots music sector across the UK. We want to do the same thing but with live comedy. The donations are voluntary and we hope that audiences attending shows at the Frog and Bucket will help us support grassroots live comedy across the county.”
The fund initially aims to raise £50,000 before Christmas and organisers say it will support people working in the sector with training and development opportunities as well as other initiatives. It will also help support the lobbying of government and projects including those that use laughter and comedy to improve mental health and wellbeing.
The LCA is a Community Interest Company, set up during the pandemic to support people working in live comedy. In February 2023 the CIC adopted 2 new Directors who took on the organisation with the main aim of getting live comedy recognised by government as being a vital part of the UK’s cultural landscape. Since that time the Directors have also appointed an Advisory Panel, with 20 members working within the sector.
The LCA organised a crowd funder in 2021 and raised almost £80,000 to support people affected by the pandemic. Since that time the organisation has
Conducted the first-ever UK live comedy sector survey, in partnership with the Centre for Comedy Studies Research at Brunel University
Published the sector report at the 2025 Live Comedy AGM
Lobbied the DCMS Select Committee and spoke at an evidence session in Parliament
Been featured in media including The Observer, Times Radio, The Independent, BBC local radio, and The Political Party podcast
Delivered online workshops on funding and hosted regular member meetings
Live Comedy Association - https://livecomedyassociation.co.uk
