Kim Kinnie: Comedy Store talent spotter who helped bring alternative standup to national attention in the 1980s

The scout booked the likes of Ben Elton, Jo Brand and Frank Skinner at a time when live comedy was undergoing something of a renaissance

Kinnie leaves a generation of comedians grateful to him for their first gig at the venue (Comedy Store)

Kim Kinnie, who has died of cancer, aged 74, was one of the unsung heroes of British comedy. From the mid-1980s to the early Nineties, he booked the acts at London’s Comedy Store, and played a leading (if largely unseen) role in that anarchic movement known as alternative comedy.

Kinnie didn’t just book comedians – he also nurtured them. During The Comedy Store’s creative heyday, from 1985 to 1993, he was the club’s unofficial artistic director.

The list of acts that Kinnie worked with reads like a who’s who of modern comedy: Jo Brand, Jack Dee, Lee Evans, Eddie Izzard, Paul Merton, Frank Skinner. It’s a testament to his eye for raw talent that so many of the young hopefuls he promoted are now household names.

He was born Thomas Anthony Kinnie in Glasgow in 1943. He worked as an actor, stage manager and choreographer, and ended up directing topless dancers at a Soho strip club called the Nell Gwyn. In 1979 the club’s owner, Don Ward, got together with an insurance salesman called Peter Rosengard, to launch a late night comedy club in a private members club above this strip club, inspired by the famous Comedy Store in LA.

Paul Merton (left) joined fellow Comedy Store Players to raise a glass of red to Kinnie after the news of his death (Comedy Store) (Twitter/comedystoreuk)

At first, Kinnie’s artistic contribution was largely confined to teaching Julian Clary how to wield a feather boa, but when The Comedy Store moved to new premises, a cramped basement in Leicester Square, he became the club’s driving force. Patient and supportive, yet always brutally honest, he gave comedians the freedom to fail, but he also gave them guidance. Under his watchful eye, a new generation of comics found their feet.

When the club moved again, to more spacious premises near Piccadilly Circus (where it remains today) Kinnie returned to his native Glasgow, to work as a television producer for STV. He produced The Funny Farm, which gave valuable TV exposure to emerging Scottish comics like Fred MacAulay and Bruce Morton. He also produced numerous children’s programmes, a dating show, Club Cupid, and the game show Win, Lose or Draw.

Kinnie’s partner for nearly half a century was the actor, writer and director Michael Burrell – they met in 1966. Burrell died in 2014. In 2016, Kinnie directed a production of Burrell’s one-man play, Hess (about Hitler’s deputy) at the Edinburgh Festival.

Yet it was as the svengali of The Comedy Store that Kinnie was most influential. “It coalesced everything I’d ever done before,” he said. “Suddenly, I was able to use all that knowledge.” He knew which comics would never make it and he wasn’t afraid to tell them, but he also knew which comics were special, and took the time and trouble to help them hone their acts.

“This little camp, intense choreographer had an instinctive eye for what works as comedy,” said the standup comic Kevin Day, who made him the godfather of his first child. However Kinnie was always self-effacing about his special empathy with comedians. “My job was to care about them,” he said. “That’s all I did.”

Kim Kinnie, comedy talent scout, born 6 December 1943, died 11 February 2018