This BSCC award-winning  platform pioneered the market for English language stand up comedy aimed at multi-lingual and multi-cultural, international audiences. Establishing comedy club culture in Switzerland and laundering tons & tons of comedy gold into the Swiss joke bank from 2006 onwards, in 2022/23 International Comedy Club aka Funny Laundry embarked on it’s final year of Funny Laundering.

Guy Stevens, son of well-known British comedy & character actor Ronnie Stevens, arrived in Switzerland jobless. With decades of experience in show business under his belt he found no interest in his skill sets locally and  decided to create regular, touring comedy club nights as a means to making a living for his new family  whilst sharing top quality English language laughs around the country at the same time. Establishing a regular programme of authentic comedy club culture in Switzerland brought something brand new to the entertainment landscape and filled the (yawning!) gap that existed for  professional English language entertainment, catering to both local anglophiles and long and short term international residents alike.

From the  first night in Zurich in May 2006 and totalling 676 shows until the last in 2023, only the very best English speaking comedians were presented, including Eddie Izzard,  Michael McIntyre, Trevor Noah, Dylan Moran, Simon Amstell, Alan Davies, Sarah Millican, Jim Jefferies, Russell Brand, Dara O’Briain, Arthur Smith, Paul Merton’s Impro Chums, Ari Shaffir, Ed Byrne, Russell Howard, Jimmy Carr, Matt Kirshen, Nina Conti, Kevin Bridges, Omid Djalili, Tom Rhodes, Ross Noble, Ardal O’Hanlon, Guy Pratt, Tommy Tiernan, Lucy Porter, Rich Hall, Josh Widdecombe, Daniel Sloss and the legendary punk poet John Cooper Clarke, to name just a few.

A consistent, dedicated spotlight was always given to notable up and coming talent in the English speaking stand up comedy world, especially the new wave of non-native  English speaking comics, such as Magnus Bendtner, Christian Shulte-Loh, Dag Soras, Francesco di Carlo, Luca Cupani, Sofie Hagen and others, who were championed as part of regular line-ups as early as 2008. With Swiss comics Thomas Wiesel, Noman Hosni, Nathanaël Rochat and Javier Garcia amongst them.

From the outset an open spot was made available at club shows and for many years this gave the very few that were interested in trying stand up an in-at-the-deep-end experience, sharing the stage with the pro’s. Funny Laundry/International Comedy Club offered advice, time and expertise to those who wished to learn more about comedy stage craft and potentially take the next steps towards a full-time comedy career too. But there were none that ever expressed that desire.  Those that did decide to  ‘have a go’ usually did so just for fun and so fun, and quite a few laughs, was what they and the very supportive audiences generally had whenever people  bravely stepped-up onto the stage.

However, after years of struggling to maintain and develop the platform more widely, seeking collaborations with local entertainment and media and trying to find Swiss sponsorship support that never materialised, in 2017 a group of overly enthusiastic, would-be ‘comedians’ appeared out of nowhere.  Jostling themselves individually and en masse onto club stage open mics at exactly the same time as a Swiss Re sponsored ‘British Comedy Night’ was being mounted at an established Zurich klein kunst venue, fronted by a Swiss journalist.

Soon enough, an outsized number of paid entry open mics and ‘comedy nights’ accompanied by fairly broad media coverage – some in flagrant contradiction to its own prior reporting – began to appear. It was clear that the self-titled ‘comedians’  instigating these efforts, and those either pulling their strings from a distance abroad or im Schatten (in the shadows) locally, were neither sincere in their comedic endeavours, nor in any professed aims to help grow the platform.

Disrupting the established club shows, dividing the increasingly developed and integrated audiences and saturating the limited niche market was the order of the day. With numerous pointless ‘brands’ proliferating throughout the Covid pandemic, despite there being no public demand for them, the integration clock started to run in a  counter-clockwise direction and ‘die Expats’ began to be put back into the decades old box of Swiss segregation once again.

Maintaining the highest standards built International Comedy Club’s reputation. Keeping those standards high is what set it apart, made it a respected entity amongst professional UK, US and international comedians and a unique and influential entity in the social and cultural landscape of Switzerland and Europe as a whole.

But one person working alone,  am langen arm verhungern lassen (hung out to dry) by passive-aggressive, oligopolist entertainment and media industries, mobbed by a stand up comedy put-up job and its small army of puppet clowns and string-pullers, can only take so much. Especially, having only just enough in his pockets from his turnover to survive on for all those years.  In one of the richest, most expensive and unfriendly countries to live in, in the world.

The last International Comedy Club show in Switzerland was on May 26 2023 at Mascotte in Zurich.

By early 2024 Guy Stevens was forced to leave the country permanently, having keine Wohnung to live in, oder Geld left to live on.

Funny Laundry & International Comedy Club are on  hiatus.

International Comedy Festival is weighing-up its options.

Guy Stevens is slowly writing a book – email: funnylaunderer[at]pm[dot]me

Updated September 2025

 

“Seymour” + Red Hot Chili Peppers – Foxy Lady [One Hour with Jonathan Ross – UK C4 – 16th March 1990]