Chortle live comedy awards 2007: Best venue award the North, annual awards celebrating the best in live comedy, awarded by a panel of judges and by vote of comedy fans visiting Chortle.co.uk (news, reviews and listings for the UK comedy scene).

Runners up not listed.

Previous winners: 2006/05/04/03/02 XS Malarkey, Manchester.

Awarded tues 13/03/07.

Soho Revue Bar, central London.

By Dara O'briain, host of BBC2 show "mock the week".

Speel: This is unbelievably fabulous for us! Not only has Long Live Comedy (LLC) beaten of competition from large corporate venues like the Hyena, Jongleurs and The Comedy Store, it has also come out on top against all opposition from comedys second city Manchester, the european capital of culture Liverpool and all other major cities in the North of England. We at LLC love the fact that we are providing a platform for developing North East comedians ond others who travel from further a field. We also hate the reality that we are their only platform in the North East. This has encouraged us to expand and we are opening a second LLC night at the Chillingham Arms in Heaton. This will run on the first thursday of every month, opening night 5th april, taking a more traditional format with a professional opening act and headliner but keeping the open mike ethos with two slots in the middle for those who have honed their talent a LLC the Dog & Parrot. 

Brief History: We at LLC have just celebrated our first birthday. Initially running fortnightly on Tuesdays we quickly moved to weekly because of popularity and availability of acts. LLC ran a week of shows during the recent Newcastle Gateshead comedy festival, this was a tremendous success and we have just confirmed a two week run of our show, as part of the Free Festival, at this years Edinburgh festival. From the beggining we have had a happy mix of established comedians (Vladamir Mctavish, Steffen Peddie, Sarah Millican to name but a few) and open-mikers cutting their teeth many of whom for the very first time!

Why Founded: LLC was born of the frustration of its triumvirate of promoters, comperes and acts, namely Callum Cramb, Al Dawes and Pete Thompson. There were no opportunities for aspiring stand-ups to perform in Newcastle so with the utterly selfish aim of giving ourselves stage time we established Long Live Comedy in the great venue above the Dog & Parrot "the cedar rooms". A by product of this self serving act has been the establishment of a real comedy community without the notorious one upmanship and back stabbing of the normal circuit. we also get much enjoyment from developing new acts and providing the currently rare opportunity for the bravest of the brave, those all important first timers, long live comedy!(in a Black Panther sort of stylie, you know! Fist punching the air, looking solemn)