Covent Garden comedy club rapped over ads

Ads for a well-known comedy club have been banned for using apparently false testimonials and overstating the background of performers.

The Comedy Club, based at a hotel in London’s Covent Garden, claimed on websites and a sponsored search that it features “award-winning stand-up comedy”, adding: “Every night we have acts from TV and Bafta-nominated shows, many of them will be instantly recognisable and none of them will be easily forgettable.

“The London Comedy Club has received more than 100 recommendations, awards and top-rated reviews from the media. We are the critics’ choice.”

A line it attributed to the BBC said: “Definitely the funniest show in London.”

The website londoncomedyclubtickets.com included a number of testimonials on the home page beneath a Reviews heading, such as: “Personally recommended by the Evening Standard comedy critic Bruce Dessau,” and: “Recommended as both critics’ and comics’ choice Time Out London.”

Others read: “Rated ‘First rate’ and ‘Hilarious’ The Stage”, “’Amazing Venue’ Metro”, and “Unmissable’ The Times.”

Rival Leviathan Entertainment challenged whether the testimonials and quotations were genuine.

The Comedy Club provided quotations with references to the original publications, a list of regular performers and the awards they had won and a list of the TV shows in which they had appeared.

It said a regular performer appeared in TooMuchTV, which it said was nominated for a Bafta, but did not provide any evidence to support this.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said advertisers were required to hold documentary evidence to demonstrate testimonials were genuine.

It said: “We noted the advertiser provided a list of quotations with references to the publications in which those quotations appeared. However, we had not seen any evidence to show that those quotations were made by those publications. We were therefore concerned that we had not seen sufficient evidence to demonstrate that the testimonials were genuine.

“We noted the list of TV shows that the regular performers had appeared in related to less well-known productions and performers. We also noted we had seen no documentary evidence to demonstrate that the performers had been booked to appear ‘every night’ or to show that the performers appeared in the TV shows listed.”

It ruled: “The ads must not appear again in their current form. We told The Comedy Club to ensure they had evidence to show that all testimonials and discounted prices were genuine in future.