London has its own version of The Comedy Store that opened, in its first iteration, on May 19^th 1979 (post here about its 30^th anniversary celebration gala, which Jimmy featured in).

Like its American cousin it is also a revered venue, on the UK Comedy scene.

Originally The Store was located in the old Gargoyle Night Club, 69 Dean Street, Soho. As a little side step there is a brilliant history of the Gargoyle’s history and place in pop history here.

In 1982 The Store had moved to The Subway Night Club, 28 Leicester Square and then, in 1993, it moved to 1a Oxendon Street, Piccadilly, SW1Y 4EE (and is still there now). This is the location where Jimmy made his appearance, in a 400-seater basement (see the Store’s website, here, section titled Version 3.0).

This Alamy pic is identified as the front of the Soho venue but it’s actually the Oxendon Street location. See the images on the history page of the club’s website here (that page also has images of Mike Myers and Robin Williams, appearing at the London Store).

In a 2009 article The Independent (here) did a good job of writing about how the store came about.

It has reminiscences from Alexei Sayle, Julian Clary, Jack Dee, Eddie Izzard, Shappi Khorsandi, Michael McIntyre, Jimmy Carr, Russell Howard, Lucy Porter and Alan Carr.

Jimmy’s contribution said:

I would liken the first Store gig as the first gig with the big boys; you move from the junior school of open-spots, where you find incredibly friendly and supportive people, on to senior school, where you are being judged on your merits rather than, ‘Oh you’ve given it a go, well done.’

I did my first gig there within a year and a half of starting. It’s amazing how long it takes to get five minutes of one-liners. You had to do exactly five minutes – if you didn’t, you weren’t coming back.

I passed through other clubs pretty quickly, but The Comedy Store was always a treat. When I get a break from manic touring, I go back there and hang out.

Seeing people, including some of my favourite comics like Adam Bloom, John Maloney and Sean Meo, do 20 minutes of their best stuff at the Store is an absolute joy.

As he had started in comedy in late 1998 a gig in 2001 (the year attributed to his gig, in the article) was a smidge more than a “year and a half”.

So far, I’ve not been able to pin down this show’s exact date, so this is just a breadcrumb trail to show that he’s played there and I’ll have to stick with using 2001 (for now).

Always the problem with these early gigs, where comedians were running around London, dropping in and out of venues, for performances that are not always announced in the press.

And his statement of “I did my FIRST gig there” suggests more appearances than I’ve been able to track down.

Background

In 2001 he still hadn’t put together a named tour and was yet to do Rubbernecker (here) but was travelling up and down the UK and had started to appear on TV with E4 shows and the BBC’s Liquid News (here).

Other posts about the UK Comedy Store can be found here.

Details of how the UK Comedy Circuit functioned, who was on it and the names of venues Jimmy has performed at is here.

The page Pubs & Clubs 1998-2001 (here) is an overview of where he performed in the early days.