Abstract
This opening chapter will discuss the importance of understanding comedy as a cultural industry, as well as outlining some of the debates around whether or not comedy should be understood as an art or as a commercial form. After placing the book within the context of these debates, the chapter then goes on to provide an outline of the book and the methodology used to carry out the research. The chapter will then outline the comedy ecosystem in the UK and why the East Midlands was chosen as a case study in the book.
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Notes
- 1.
Ethical approval: ETH2223-2403.
- 2.
In 2023, for venues under 80 it cost £72 for the first performance, £60 for the second and £38 for subsequent performances. For venues between 80 and 199, it is £84 for the first performance, £62 for the second performance and £40 for any subsequent performances. For venues between 200 and 399, the price is £170, and for 400 and up, it is £290.
- 3.
A side note, for a brief period I performed stand-up comedy. There is not space within this text to discuss the methodological impact of this, but I will note here that it was part of the impetus for the present research.
- 4.
Academic and policy research has often focused on the north/south divide, for example the Institute for Public Policy Research’s Divided and Connected: Regional Inequalities in the North, the UK and the Developed World (2019) and Paul N. Balchin’s Regional Policy in Britain: The North South Divide (2021) are recent examples.
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Sedgwick, C. (2024). Introduction: Understanding Comedy as a Cultural Industry. In: Inequality in Contemporary Stand-Up Comedy in the UK . Palgrave Studies in Comedy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-55932-7_1
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