The last laugh for Hyena Lounge as comedy club leaves York

Soon the joke won't be funny anymore as Yorkshire comedy promoter Toby Clouston Jones calls time on his long-running comedy club in York.

"Our last Saturday Night Lounge show is on Saturday at The Duchess. We're doing the three Fridays and Saturdays in the big tent as part of Great Yorkshire Fringe in July, and then that’s it for York," says Toby, putting it bluntly.

"I've no plans on relocating as not only is there nowhere else suitable, the numbers have really struggled for both our Saturday nights and most of the tour shows on weekdays. Sunday is such a dead night that it wasn't a possible solution either."

Toby will continue running comedy bills at the HiFi Club in Leeds and Fruit in Hull and Hyena Lounge nights at Harrogate Theatre, but the upcoming upgrade of Stonebow House, and with it the demise of The Duchess, has brought matters to a head.

Panella Mellor

"We're homeless as of June 4, which was always going to be our last gig before the summer," he says. "Commercially, we've always lost money on those three summer months, even when we were in The Basement at City Screen, as there's a feeling that York city centre on a Saturday night is getting rougher and rougher.

"One thought was to go back to The Basement, but the truth is that street [Coney Street] is becoming a no-go zone on Saturdays. It's now just like being in Blackpool in the summer. That's why we made the decision to move from The Basement in the first place because I just didn't feel the street was safe late at night on Saturdays anymore."

The Hyena Lounge did not run its usual Edinburgh Fringe previews in Summer 2014 when no dates were available in The Basement diary and last summer, the inaugural Great Yorkshire Fringe in Parliament Street drew potential Hyena acts. "We missed out on so many tour shows as agents didn't want to go against the new Fringe event," says Toby.

"So we started losing previews and tour shows and then we found were 30 to 40 per cent down on business purely because of the knock-on effect of the flooding in York. We were still getting calls in February asking if York was still flooded, and maybe the city was still grieving about it too, after losing possessions or their house being damaged. Maybe people were feeling guilty about going out and having a laugh."

Mick Ferry

York's comedy scene still will be served by big-name gigs at the York Barbican and the Grand Opera House; Al Greaves's Burning Duck Comedy Club, Tom Taylor's Sitting Room Comedy Club and Daniel Triscott's Duke's Comedy Night will continue to draw burgeoning talent to the Black Swan Inn, the Monkbar Hotel and the Duke of York respectively; and the Great Yorkshire Fringe will be Greater, in size and status, in its second festival run from July 15 to August 1 after last year's impactful debut.

However, the loss of a major comedy player in Toby Clouston-Jones is an undeniable blow. "We've tried to find other spaces in York, even looking at leasing a venue for ourselves but it's just not viable. The rent is too much and as much as it pains me to say it, it's true that people are willing to go to Leeds from York for shows, so I think we'll have to go down that route. We'll keep the HiFi gigs going in Leeds, the nights at Fruit in Hull and the once-a-month nights in Harrogate.

"But we're essentially leaving York after 15 years here, the first five run by Dan Atkinson, and then ten years after I took over from Dan at The Basement. I feel sorry for York because it's now going to miss out on the kind of acts who have come through the Hyena Lounge. We brought Micky Flanagan, Sarah Millican, John Bishop, Russell Howard here first; they all played here before becoming famous and that's now going to stop."

Reflecting on comedy's peaks and troughs, Toby says: "Stand-up in the UK and America always has its highs in times of crisis and unrest; Beyond The Fringe was a reaction to stoicism in the Fifties; in America, Steve Martin and Richard Pryor came in as a reaction to the Vietnam War; British alternative comedy emerged at the time of Margaret Thatcher's leadership and the Falklands War.

"There was another surge in new comedians at the time of the first Iraq conflict and the latest breed responded to the financial meltdown, though one trend in the recession has been for people to now associate comedy with big names playing big rooms. There seems to be this mentality that someone playing to 15,000 people has to be better than someone playing to 150."

Steve Shanyaski

You will not be surprised to learn that Toby does not share that view. Instead, he will continue to prefer presenting comedy gigs in more intimate settings. This weekend, the Hyena Lounge will bid farewell to The Duchess with a Saturday Night Lounge bill of Steve Shanyaski, Mick Ferry, Panella Mellor and compere Andre Vincent at 8pm, before a final Hyena hurrah for 2016 at the Great Yorkshire Fringe with 9.15pm shows on July 15, 16, 22, 23, 29 and 30.

Across those nights, Andy Askins, Jason Cook, Andre Vincent, Rob Rouse, Justin Moorhouse, Gordon Southern and Stephen K Amos will be keeping up with their Jones appearances.

All the best, Toby; thank you for the gigs and the gags, the laughs and the leaps of faith, the names on the rise and the newcomers. Exit the Hyena, no longer a laughing matter in York.