Cafe chain wants comics' material for free

It made £36million profit last year – but cafe chain Costa Coffee has launched a new-act comedy competition that offers no cash prize.

The company is trying to cash in on the comedy boom by asking would-be stand-up to give up their material to go on to the company’s website.

Yet the only prize on offer in its Costa Light Comedy Challenge are two gigs at the Comedy Store.

The venue already has an open-door policy at its King Gong new act nights, although the winner of Costa’s competition gets a ten-minute Friday night set at both the London and Manchester venues, with no chance of being ‘gonged off’.

Entrants must submit minute-long videos of original material – which cannot ‘offend common standards of decency’ – from now until the October 23 closing date.

Rules say: ‘Each contestant agrees to grant Costa a worldwide royalty free irrevocable perpetual licence to use the video clip that it submits for the competition... for the purpose of promoting the competition and reporting on the same.’

The top ten video entries in five regions, as decided by public vote,will take part in live heats, to be hosted by Paul Tonkinson. Two winners from each, decided by ‘a combination of crowd reaction and Tonkinson’s judgement’ will go on to a final at the London Comedy Store in November.

Costa commissioned market research to launch its competition, which found that a third of the 2,000 adults questioned claimed not to know a single gag. The press release claimed: ‘One reason for the decline could be down to technology – 27 per cent prefer to text jokes to friends rather than tell them face to face.’ Although it offered no comparison of how many Britons knew jokes before the age of text.

Gennaro Pellicia, Costa’s chief coffee taster, said:  ‘To launch our new drink, Costa Light, we wanted to poll the nation to find out just how light-hearted Brits are and whether Brits do in fact have the sense of humour they’re famed for.

‘Our new coffee, Costa Light, is a light-hearted drink.’

Published: 21 Sep 2011