The Advisory Panel supports the Directors of the Live Comedy Association with advice and insight. Each individual volunteers their time throughout the year to support the Directors and members of the Community Interest Company.

If you would like to volunteer your time, or have thoughts as to other people who might join, do email us hello@livecomedyassociation.co.uk We are especially interested in people who might help us fill gaps on the panel, in terms of experience or DEI.

Katy is one of the Artistic Directors at Gilded Balloon, Scotland’s leading producers of live comedy and entertainment. Katy is passionate about providing a supportive platform for performers annually at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe as well as at year-round events across Scotland.

Katy specialises in running unique cultural events from curating diverse artistic programmes to managing first-class venue operations providing unique experiences for artists, staff and audience alike.

Adnan is a scripted comedy producer who has worked across Television, Radio and Podcasts.  Currently working at Sky Studios, his credits include Bad Tidings starring Lee Mack and Chris McCausland and Christmas Carole starring Suranne Jones.

Before Sky, Adnan worked in audio, producing various award winning (and losing) radio shows and podcasts with comedians like Darren Harriott, Sarah Keyworth and Felicity Ward plus devising and producing the companion podcast to Inside No.9. He started his career as a live comedy producer working for Leicester Comedy Festival and running his own comedy club.

Ailish has been a regular on the comedy circuit in Ireland since 2018. She is a mentor with Minding Creative Minds and was part of setting up comedy supports for artists. 

She is an Ambassador of Safe Gigs Ireland and a member of a group that rolled out training and a code of conduct for Irish gigs. Ailish is an advisor to the Night Time Economy in Ireland and she is one of the founders of the Irish Comedy Guide.

Since 2023, Ailish has been advocating for comedy (improv, sketch and stand up) to get the same supports as other artists by the Arts Council of Ireland. She is the catalyst for the Comedy Amendment Bill 2024, a piece of Irish legislation proposed for comedy to be a named artform in the Arts Act.

Bruce has been the Comedy Critic of the London Standard (formerly the Evening Standard) for over twenty years. He also founded comedy website Beyond The Joke in 2013.

He has written extensively about stand-up comedy both onscreen and onstage and is the author of a number of books, including biographies of Reeves and Mortimer, Billy Connolly and Rowan Atkinson. He also wrote Beyond A Joke, an exploration of comedy minds from Joseph Grimaldi to the present day. 

Chris has, over 25 years, founded and curated festivals, music venues, club nights and exhibitions, as well as promoted gigs across the North of England. He transformed The Fulford Arms into a dedicated music venue and helped create York Music Venue Network. 

He joined Music Venue Trust in 2020 where his background in process mapping and improvement, alongside an understanding of the challenges faced by venue operators, has helped him deliver projects including the Pipeline Investment Fund and GMV Training whilst also researching and authoring policy representations to UK government.

Most recently he has been working on ensuring venues can best communicate their values and programmes to funders and supporting on purchasing and securing cultural venues through community ownership.

Donald owns DLT Entertainment, a London and New York based independent producer and distributor with comedy at the heart of its business. Best known as the producer of TV shows like Three’s Company based upon Thames TV’s Man About The House, As Time Goes By, My Family, and Dara O’Briain’s Go 8 Bit. DLT expansion into audio production has produced BBC Radio 4 shows Time of The Week and The Many Wrongs of Lord Christian Brighty.

DLT owns and manages The Shaftesbury Theatre which has hosted several comedians over the years including Sara Pascoe, Baddiel, and Vigjo Venn and has ownership stakes in comedy agencies and promoters Blue Book Artist Management, Gag Reflex, Impatient Productions, and Milburn Bowning Associates.

DLT has sponsored the Edinburgh Comedy Awards the last two years and will again this year where Donald will see 128 shows, one more than he did the previous year.

Janice has a wealth of professional comedy experience.  Her award winning character Barbara Nice is much loved circuit headliner and compere with 30 + years of experience of working in live comedy from upstairs rooms in pubs to The Albert Hall.  She is an Edinburgh festival veteran and tours her shows up and down the country to arts centres and theatres.  She has also worked in Panto at The Lowry , Manchester Opera House and Bristol Hippodrome.  Her TV credits include playing Holy Mary in Phoenix Nights and guest roles in Man like Mobeen and Coronation Street. 

She was a semi finalist for BGT and has done warm up work for Vic and Bobs House of Fools.

The Artistic Director and founder member of Women and Theatre for 40 years means that Janice has hands on experience of all aspects of running a company and working with a wide variety of individuals and organisations.  She has excellent knowledge around employment rights , health and safety -indeed all aspects of what it takes to support professional standards in the creative industries .

Jill has been supporting and facilitating new comics to emerge and progress for over 30 years. Her comedy courses have been the most established stand-up courses in the UK since 1994. Jill has trained some of the UK’s top comedy writers, performers and award winning television comedians, including Romesh Ranganathan, Shaparak Khorsandi, Hal Cruttenden, Francesca Martinez, Simon Evans, Liz Carr, Shazia Mirza, Jimmy Carr, and his agent Hannah Chambers. Brighton’s own Seann Walsh, Angela Barnes and rising star Jack Skipper. Plus award winning writers Toby Whithouse, Jenny Colgan, Tasha Dhanraj and BBC Studio’s Lulu Baker. 

Jill Edwards Comedy Workshops are currently based at Brighton’s Komedia, which is also the home of her Chortle Award winning comedy club “Comic Boom.” Jill created Comic Boom to help fill in the experience gap for exciting new comics between playing new act nights and performing at bigger comedy clubs. She’s been tracking down the UK’s most interesting, original new comics, and helping them to develop through performing at Comic Boom comedy club at Komedia Brighton since 2006. 

Lee is founder and director of Gag Reflex a promoter, producer and talent agency based in Manchester managing talent in the UK and internationally.  The agency produces, promotes and presents shows all over the world including UK tours, Las Vegas residencies, Australian festivals and more.  

Lee started working in the arts and entertainment at Manchester’s Frog and Bucket Comedy Club back in 2003.  Talent management and show creation was the natural next step. 

Lynne is the award-winning founder of Funny Women created in 2002 in response to a comedy promoter who said that 'women aren't funny'. The Funny Women Awards are central to this acclaimed non-profit community, empowering women to perform, write and develop their own distinctive voice professionally and personally. 

Lynne describes Funny Women as her ‘life’s work’ providing a safe, diverse, creative environment for women. She also uses her experience in comedy to coach and encourage people to perform in business and public life with her 'Stand Up to Stand Out' workshops, 'Comedy in the Community' and bespoke events under ‘sister’ brand HERlarious.

Lynne was recognized with two awards in 2024: Most Inspiring Businesswoman in the Best Businesswomen Awards and Leader of Social Impact in the Athena40 Awards. She has just been recognised by Wise100 as one of the TOP 100 Women in Social Enterprise 2025.

Michael has worked in the arts and charity sector for 15 years across Leicestershire and the Midlands. With key roles as Theatre Manager for The Y Theatre, Melton Theatre, and other organisations, he is now Chief Executive for Big Difference Company.

Big Difference Company offer a year round programme of arts and culture activities and projects and is notably the charity behind the hugely successful Leicester Comedy Festival & UK Kids Comedy Festival’s. It aims to promote health and wellbeing through the arts and raise the profile of Leicester and Leicestershire as a cultural destination.

Michael has decades of executive-level experience spanning independent, corporate, and public sectors, specialising in Marketing, Operations, Licensing, Logistics, and System Implementation. Holding significant positions at Luminar Leisure Plc, Rank, Northern, The Drinks Group, University of East Anglia, and currently as Chief Executive of the Night Time Industries Association.

He has led high-level initiatives with local and national governments and key stakeholders, focusing on best practices for venues, bars, pubs, festivals, and live venues, swell as been a high level media advocate for the night time economy throughout the pandemic, featuring in central Government strategy and over 20,000 media interviews during this period.

Mick began his career in the arts world playing in punk bands and somehow ended up as a promoter/producer and comedy agent.

Mick has worked with up and coming acts from the start of their careers to star status with names such as: STOMP, Eddie Izzard, Reg D Hunter, Dylan Moran, Julian Clary, Tommy Tiernan, Ardal O’Hanlon, Bo Burnham, Revor Noah, to name but a few. In 2003 Mick produced the first ever UK Comedy Arena tour with Eddie Izzard’s ‘Sexy Tour’ – which opened the floodgates for touring comedy in Arenas across the UK and Europe.

Cabaret shows La Clique and La Soiree earned him Oliver Awards, and as well as various Chortle Awards for comedy he also received an Emmy Certificate for Eddie Izzard’s ‘Dress to Kill’.

Biog to follow.

Sharon is an experienced Comedy Studies research and founder of the Centre for Comedy Studies Research (CCSR) that is based at Brunel University of London. She has served as President, Past President and Elected Executive Board Member-at-Large for the International Society for Humor Studies (ISHS). Sharon’s research focuses on the sociology of comedy, critical comedy studies, comedy and identity, and the ethics and aesthetics of comic discourse, and she is widely published in these areas.

She is on the editorial boards of a number of journals including Comedy Studies, HUMOR: The International Journal of Humor Research and the European Journal of Humour Research. Sharon is founding co-editor (with Professor Roger Sabin) of the Palgrave Studies in Comedy book series.

Sian is a multi-award winning comedian, writer and activist from the North West of England. She is the driving force behind sell out fringe phenomenon’s Best in Class and Comedy Queers.

Sian’s latest show, Band of Gold, was award nominated and critically acclaimed at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe before it’s successful UK tour.  Her 2023 show, This Charming Man was produced by Impatient, directed by Elf Lyons and supported by Homotopia. The show received 4 star reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and was nominated for The Biggest Award in Comedy.

Sian’s first comedy show, About Time debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2022 before being recorded as a stand up special for Next Up streaming service. It is currently available to stream on ITVx.  Sian has appeared on Comedy Central Live and has been a guest on several podcasts including Menkind with Mark Watson and Thats Me on Screen with Evelyn Mok. She has written articles for The Guardian, The Museum of Liverpool and British Comedy Guide. Sian has led Comedy workshops at Angel Comedy and Soho Theatre. In 2024 Sian was selected for the comedy showcase at the Edinburgh TV Festival. Sian is a member of Union24 alumni from The Northern School of Arts and Activism.

Sian Davies is working class and queer, and fiercely proud of belonging to both communities.

Simon is a Reader in Media and Communications at Brunel University. He is an internationally recognised expert on humour and comedy, who has researched humour and comedy from a number of perspectives and is always open to new projects and collaborations. Most of his research to date has focused on the connection between identity, politics and our enjoyment of humour and comedy. Simon is a founding member of the Centre for Comedy Studies Research (CCSR) at Brunel University. 

Steve set up www.chortle.co.uk 25 years ago, and it has since become the leading website covering the live comedy scene, with around 50,000 visitors a week. As well as overseeing the day-to-day running of the site, Steve is a prolific reviewer, having critiqued almost 3,000 shows at the Edinburgh Fringe alone over the years.

He is also producer of the Chortle Awards, the Fast Fringe in London and Edinburgh, the nationwide Chortle Student Comedy Award and the Chortle Comedy Book Festival, and this year launched the Chortle Hotshots to give some financial help to comedians making their Edinburgh Fringe debuts.