Table of Contents

1. Alternative Comedy Now and Then: An Introduction.- 2. Alternative Comedy Timeline.- 3. The Meccano Club: The Business of Alternative Comedy.- 4. ‘A Local Show for Local People: Alternative Cabaret at the Tower Art Centre, Winchester, UK, 1981-1984.- 5. The Story of Cabaret A Go Go.- 6. Trends with Benefits.- 7. Alternative Cabaret in Conversation.- 8. Pressing for no change? Political Correctness, the defence of the ‘mainstream’ and class in UK newspaper responses to the emergence of ‘Alternative Comedy’.- 9. The Dramatic Script of Alternative Comedy.- 10. Alternative Comedy in Finland: Juhani Nevalainen, Musician Not Comedian.- 11. “Less Dick Jokes”: Women-only comedy line-ups, audience expectations and negotiating stereotypes.- 12. New Alternative Comedy: Productive Crises c.2005-Present.

About the Author

Oliver Double is a Reader in Drama at the University of Kent, UK, but before becoming an academic he worked as a stand-up comedian on the national comedy circuit and set up Last Laugh, Sheffield's longest running comedy club. He continues to perform occasionally in his one-man shows and as compere of the Funny Rabbit Comedy Club. He has written a number of books, chapters and articles on stand-up comedy, variety theatre and popular performance, and helped to establish the British Stand-Up Comedy Archive, based at Kent’s Templeman Library.

Sharon Lockyer is a Reader in Sociology and Communications at Brunel University London, UK. She is the founding director of the Centre for Comedy Studies Research (CCSR) – the first, and only, international research centre devoted to the academic study of comedy. Her research interests include critical comedy studies, identity politics and comic media representations and the sociology of popular culture and she is widely published in these areas in books, journal articles and blogs.