A brawl broke out in a comedy club when a heckler challenged comic Roger Monkhouse for telling risque jokes.

A woman in the audience at Nottingham's Glee Club reportedly took issue with the veteran comedian’s gags about the terror attacks in Brussels and Jimmy Savile’s paedophilia.

One witness said closing act Monkhouse tried to explain his material, but was drowned out by heckles and boos, so he left the stage.

The room then erupted into a mass fight between up to 30 people – a group backing the heckler and another table who shouted at her to shut up and let the show continue, according to 24-year-old Stephen Wright. 

He told the Nottingham Post: ‘It was mayhem. There were fists going everywhere and tables were being pushed around.

‘Men were hitting women, women were hitting men. It all got out of control very quickly and I was just doing everything I could protect my wife.’

Another audience member Daniel Buckroyd tweteed that ‘a little blood’ was spilt, adding that he  ‘wasn't expecting boundaries of what satire can/can't deal with to be tested quite so physically’.

And a third tweeted: ‘‘Feel bad for the comedians tonight because of drunken idiots.’

The fight last Friday fizzled out after about 10 minutes, witnesses said.

But general manager Bradley Seagrave insisted the fracas was broken up in ‘seconds’ – and claimed that the number of people fighting was smaller than 30, as ‘members of security and other members of the couple's respective parties trying to cool things down’ made the disturbance appear bigger.

He added: ‘Some of the material our comics talk about will always be contentious and we encourage that. This is live stand-up not tempered TV comedy so I'm afraid it's not all "garlic bread". Mocking ISIS and Jimmy Savile are almost compulsory in comedy now and we make no apology for being cutting edge and contemporary.’

• An earlier version of this story stated that police wer called to the club, when in fact they were not.