Comedy
Review
King Gong: comedy at its most brutal
Think you can last five minutes on stage at The Comedy Store? You can’t. But watching others try makes for one of London’s best nights out
King Gong describes itself as “London’s most brutal open mic night”. Reader: this is not marketing waffle. Budding comics are challenged to try and last five minutes on stage, but really, most don’t make it past 90 seconds. This is an audience that will turn on you the moment they sense you’re not champion material. They will start booing and heckling. As if to make sure all this is well and truly underlined, The Comedy Store are playing ‘Eye of the Tiger’ right before the show starts.
To be fair, King Gong wouldn’t really function if the audience were playing nice. 30 acts are giving this a shot. We’ve got homes to get to. They can’t all have five minutes. And hey: there’s never going to be a shortage of aspiring comics who are very willing to take on this challenge. You may as well make a spectacle out of it – something that feels properly gladiatorial. The hottest fire forges the strongest steel, right? I’m not sure the venue will thank me for saying so, but at times it’s surprisingly like Prime Minister’s Questions. Just with fewer arguments about scrapping jury-led trials.
Speaking of which: three audience members are picked at random to hold giant red cards. If all three cards get held up, that’s when the comic has to leave the stage. But in essence, the acts that successfully keep the whole room on-side are the ones that make it to the finish line.
It gets wilder: at points our host and ‘Gongmeister’ Jarred Christmas asks if anybody in the audience wants to step on stage and give it a go, meaning you are quite literally sometimes witnessing people trying stand-up for the first time ever. Most would-be comedians would choose to debut in front of a gentle 30-person audience in the back room of a pub, not this mad bearpit environment. It’s quite something to witness.
All of which might be making you think “hmm I’m not sure I’d want to be, say, a female comedian in that environment.” It’s certainly true that if an audience member shouts something at you, it’d be good if you’re able to robustly respond. But also, thankfully, it’s 2026. Those that most deserve to make it to five minutes generally do so. In a nice touch, everybody is also warmly supported as they get on stage.
It’s worth giving all of February’s finalists a follow – these are the names that may well be on everybody’s lips soon if they aren’t already: Ellis Strong, Freya Mallard, Valeria Vulpe, Shadi Ahmed and the evening’s glorious champion, Jahn Gorakh.
And besides, although many new comedians might find this environment terrifying, the fact that the audience is the most powerful force in the room only makes things more unpredictable. And therefore fascinating. Who knows what’s going to happen? Well, literally nobody. And it only happened tonight. It’s a simple, distilled thrill of what live comedy offers you.
King Gong runs at The Comedy Store on the last Monday of every month. Find tickets here
