Chortle is a British

comedy Comedy is a genre of fiction that consists of discourses or works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, film, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other entertainment medium. The term o ...

website launched in 2000 by Steve Bennett. The site is a major source of comedy news in the UK. It also reviews comedy shows nationwide, including extensively at the annual Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and presents the

Chortle Awards The Chortle Awards were set up in 2002 by the comedy website Chortle to honour the best of established stand-up comics currently working in the UK. A panel of reviewers draw up a shortlist, which is presented for public vote at the Chortle websit ...

to honour the best

stand-up comic Stand-up comedy is a comedic performance to a live audience in which the performer addresses the audience directly from the stage. The performer is known as a comedian, a comic or a stand-up. Stand-up comedy consists of one-liners, stories, ...

s working in the UK. In recent years, the site has also branched out into events promotion.

History

Prior to starting Chortle, Bennett, who graduated from

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

, had been working as a local newspaper editor for the

Informer An informant (also called an informer or, as a slang term, a “snitch”) is a person who provides privileged information about a person or organization to an agency. The term is usually used within the law-enforcement world, where informan ...

group of free newspapers in

Surrey Surrey () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant urban areas which form part of the Greater London Built-up Area. ...

and West London. He started the site after the newspaper group expressed a lack of interest in running a website. After considering his areas of interest, he decided to start a comedy site, since

IMDb IMDb (an abbreviation of Internet Movie Database) is an online database of information related to films, television series, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and personal biographies, ...

and ''

Empire An empire is a "political unit" made up of several territories and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the empire (sometimes referred to as the metropole) ex ...

'' already covered the market for film, and there were numerous music websites available. The site received some early support from investors during the

dot com boom The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Compos ...

which led to Bennett working from offices in Brick Lane, London. After that company went bankrupt, Bennett continued the site, as he felt the comedy section of '' Time Out'' was not covering the breadth of comedy in the city in sufficient detail. However, the site was not financially viable for several years afterwards, so Bennett worked as a

freelance ''Freelance'' (sometimes spelled ''free-lance'' or ''free lance''), ''freelancer'', or ''freelance worker'', are terms commonly used for a person who is self-employed and not necessarily committed to a particular employer long-term. Freelance w ...

for the ''

Daily Mirror The ''Daily Mirror'' is a British national daily tabloid. Founded in 1903, it is owned by parent company Reach plc. From 1985 to 1987, and from 1997 to 2002, the title on its masthead was simply ''The Mirror''. It had an average daily print ...

'' and ''

Mail on Sunday ''The Mail on Sunday'' is a British conservative newspaper, published in a tabloid format. It is the biggest-selling Sunday newspaper in the UK and was launched in 1982 by Lord Rothermere. Its sister paper, the ''Daily Mail'', was first pub ...

'' to support himself. The Chortle Awards were launched in 2002 and in 2014 Chortle launched a comedy literary festival with talks by Monty Python's

Terry Jones Terence Graham Parry Jones (1 February 1942 – 21 January 2020) was a Welsh comedian, director, historian, actor, writer and member of the Monty Python comedy team. After graduating from Oxford University with a degree in English, Jones and ...

, and comedy actor

Rebecca Front Rebecca Louise Front (born 16 May 1964) is an English actress, writer and comedian. She won the 2010 BAFTA TV Award for Best Female Comedy Performance for '' The Thick of It'' (2009–2012).Jennifer Lipma"Bafta for Jewish actress Rebecca Front" ...

. Although initially operated by Bennett alone, the site grew into "a proper online publication" with a team of writers including Jay Richardson, Julia Chamberlain and Paul Fleckney, as well as guest contributions from individual comedians.

Public perception

The site is seen as a "one-stop shop for breaking news, reviews and opinion" and is considered to offer some of the "more balanced reviews" of the annual

Edinburgh Fringe The Edinburgh Festival Fringe (also referred to as The Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe, or Edinburgh Fringe Festival) is the world's largest arts and media festival, which in 2019 spanned 25 days and featured more than 59,600 performances of 3,841 dif ...

. It has been said that for comedians, "a positive write-up from Chortle (particularly from editor Steve Bennett), is the holy grail of the Fringe." Satirical website FringePig called it "the conservative majority of the industry; far more people read it than will freely admit".

References

{{Edinburgh Festival Fringe British comedy websites 2000 establishments in the United Kingdom Internet properties established in 2000