While researching this post on Newcastle Comedy Festival 2004 I was also looking for The Hyena (or The Hyena Café or The Hyena Comedy Club or The Hyena Comedy Café). Situated on The Leazes Arcade it was set up by comedian Dave Johns around 1989-ish and seats 250.

I’ve been trying to find details of Jimmy’s appearances there ever since it was mentioned in the 2021 Have a Word podcast.

That pod features Dan Nightingale and he’d brought up that he’d been a sound tech at The Hyena when Jimmy “came up to do a weekend” about 20 years before (which he said would make it 2001, early 2002).

Apparently, Jimmy was closing the show and Dave Johns was on before him and was “being a selfish compere” and taking too long over Jimmy’s intro. Jimmy was leaning out of the dressing room (which was beside the stage) and pointing at his watch and mouthing “WTF is going on”. Dan said he thought that Dave reckoned Jimmy was “on his way up” and was trying to make a point (by showing how good a comic HE was). Bit of professional willy waving there.

Listen to it from around this point.

Adam Rowe throws in that the first time he’d met Jimmy was at a gig for Dave and Jimmy goes on to talk about early Edinburgh’s – as a diversion to ramblings about my quest, that section of the pod is def worth a listen. Details of the topics covered are in this post.

I digress.

While reading old interviews about Newcastle Comedy Festival Jimmy also references going “up to play the Hyena” a number of times…and I found other references to him playing a Dave Johns benefit gig (or gigs), one of which was where Adam first met him. And this 2013 article about a Bobby Robson charity gig (at The Hyena) references this stage “has been graced by big names like Peter Kaye, Ross Noble, Jimmy Carr in the past”.

Despite a lot of searching / reading on Newspaper and Venue archives – nothing to be found, other than vague references.

Finally, just to put some more context around how important this little venue has been, in the history of comedy, it came up again (on Have A Word) with John Bishop. As described in this Comedy.co.uk article (full interview here, on YouTube), John threatened to punch Dave Johns because he’d made a joke (as the compere) after John had died on the Hyena’s stage. At that point John was still a pharmaceutical sales rep and just starting out in comedy.