For those of you that weren’t there – the premiere night of Komeediklubi stand-up comedy club was great fun. I’m not sure whether it was more fun for the audience, for the acts or yours truly; in that sense it was almost a competition in having fun. (Luckily there were no losers in that competition.)

As a marketer I was pleasantly surprised about the apparent effortlessness of selling out a week ahead of the event. I wrote a blog post, a funny (I think) description of the event and created a Facebook page. Then a couple of people shared the link, added people to the event and retweeted and voila! all the tickets were gone. Probably a combination of unmet demand, novelty factor, a product I believed in, good friends (thank you!) and the fact that on some level marketing had started years earlier. Over the years I’ve invited tens and tens of people along to gigs in London and spoken about going to many more. It’s just that at that point I didn’t know inviting people along would turn out to be marketing for an event I will organise myself.

Some of you know that I had been thinking about the standup gig since February. At first I couldn’t decide on the venue all the way from London. Then I couldn’t find a date that would work for all parties. Then summer started. Then it was almost Christmas time where people have so much to do anyway. All this time I just didn’t want to get this done bad enough, one of the reasons being that there is a notable level of risk but not that all much money. And then I thought of Tallinn animal shelter that I really wanted to say thanks to, that I should donate all profits to them and my perspective changed. Risks remained the same but the payoff was not a bit of money but a good feeling inside. Zero pounds was suddenly more motivating than some hundreds of pounds. Never before had I felt so clearly first hand (first head? first heart?) the difference between doing something for a reason and doing something for a reward.

Before this gets too sentimental – hope to see everyone there at the next event some time in January; new dates will be announced on the Komeediklubi Facebook page.

There’s three things I miss about places like London and San Francisco: hummus, smoothies and stand-up comedy. While you can make the first two in the comfort of your kitchen you can’t really use your food processor to make people laugh. (Unless you’re a really bad cook.) Luckily there’s Jan Uuspõld with his shows and a couple of months ago Comedy Estonia popped up but this is far from enough. As I’m spending a bit more time in Tallinn these days it only made sense to add my little contribution. And so I’m very happy to present the first night of Komeediklubi, to take place on Wednesday November 24th in Von Krahl theatre. Komeediklubi badly translates to ‘Comet club’, just so you know.

When I’ve invited people along to stand-up shows in London I’ve sometimes been nervous whether others will enjoy the gig. I tend not to see the same acts over and over again and there is a bit of hit and miss when going to see new names. I have the same nervousness multiplied by ten because I’m inviting so many more people this time but at least the lineup is pretty awesome.

I saw John Gordillo back in February and almost immediately contacted him to ask whether he’d theoretically be interested in a gig in Estonia. The fact he agreed shows what a great sense of humour he has. John’s material is a bit more intellectual if not philosophical compared to the stand-up average (if such a thing exists) and at the same time he manages to be funny as hell. He’s killed it at the Fringe, worked with Eddie Izard, he has a Wikipedia page and whatnot but at the end of the day what matters is that he can make you think and laugh at the same time. Also, John insisted on arriving early so he could acclimatise and write some jokes about the place.

Erich McElroy is an American turned Brit that I saw MC’ing in the Comedy Cafe a couple of months back and I thought to myself: this guy is much funnier than the acts. He’s likeable and his style of comedy is almost well-wishing, yet sharp. Erich manages to take the best of both American and British stand-up and blend them into a positive stream of humour which I think will go down well in Tallinn.

And last but not least there’s Brett Goldstein who probably has the most ‘classic’ style of the trio. His bio illustrates this well: originally an actor, he turned to stand up because he was bored of depressing people through plays. “If I could depress them through the medium of laughter…” he thought, “that would be something…”. Brett’s first question after we had agreed on gig details was whether things like swearing and sex were off limits in Estonia. I might have created a monster but I replied It would be rude not to swear and not to talk about sex

So there you go, it should be a fun night. If enough people will turn up and the event will turn a profit, this will be donated to the Tallinn animal shelter. They helped to find a new home for Snoopy the german shepherd last summer and this is my way to say thank you to them.

If you decide to come, I warmly recommend to book ahead, tickets for Komeediklubi are available through Ticketpro.