No laughing matter: Why didn’t a top Soho comedy club pay its performers?

When 21Soho opened in February 2020, it was a moment of excitement for the comedy industry. A slick new venue in the West End, this was a dedicated space for standup and improv — not just the usual room above a pub or a bar basement. Big-name comedians such as Romesh Ranganathan, Marcus Brigstocke and Mawaan Rizwan graced the stage for its debut show.

At the club’s helm was Nick Mills, a then 30-year-old entrepreneur who’d made his name through a slew of other successful entertainment businesses. First there was Ticket Text, an online sales platform created eight years previously when Mills was fresh out of university. Then, in 2017, came 2Northdown, a small comedy venue beside King’s Cross station that hosted everyone from up-and-coming artists to legends like Frank Skinner. In 2019, Mills expanded again, launching Laughing Around, a new production arm of his empire.

But 21Soho would be the jewel in the crown, a 200-seater venue on Soho Square, surrounded by the most prestigious theatres and bars in the capital. The timing of its opening wasn’t ideal — only weeks later, the Covid-19 pandemic hit. But when live shows returned in August 2020, the likes of Jamali Maddox, Aisling Bea and Phil Wang were fronting shows. When I was there one evening for an Abandoman show, Peter Crouch, Abbey Clancy and an entourage of friends breezed in to watch, lingering at the bar afterwards. Over the years, some of the UK's biggest comedians — including Michael McIntyre, Russell Howard, Jo Brand, Dara O'Briain and Ed Gamble — performed on its stage.

But in February 2024, four years after its launch, 21 Soho Square Limited, the company behind the venue, entered voluntary liquidation. At the start of June that year, 2 Northdown Limited was put into compulsory liquidation. Meanwhile, Ticket Text Limited has been subject to a winding up petition since October 2024.

Now, artists who helped attract crowds to the venues say they were never paid. Former staff members describe a company in chaos, with payment issues stretching as far back as 2019, and wages that often arrived late — or not at all. Artists, promoters, agents and staff say when confronted, Mills presented a wall of silence or a variety of excuses, leaving them wondering what was real.

But despite this, the doors to 21Soho (now under Navy Blue Entertainment) are still open — and Mills is still in charge. Those affected have questions about his practices. “Either pay everyone, or stop,” says John Stansfield, who runs Manchester-based comedy company A Lovely Time and was owed nearly £500 for two years. “Because you don’t deserve to make money off the backs of other comedians when you’ve screwed so many over.”

“I’ve got lots of sympathy for someone trying to run a comedy club,” says one agent whose acts were left unpaid. “But it’s the lack of communication, accountability and acknowledgement, in addition to continuing putting on shows. It’s willful ignorance.”

“There was so much potential” 

“It was such a cause for celebration to have a new venue of that size and quality right in the heart of town,” says Graham Dickson, actor, comedian and co-founder of improv company The Free Association. “The first time we started doing FA shows there, that feeling of playing to a nice big room, right in Soho, just felt so great.”

Sam Burkett, who worked as bar staff and stage manager at Mills’ businesses for a year from March 2023, felt that too. “They took chances on people. They had more diverse line-ups than some other comedy venues. There was so much potential.”

At some point, potential gave way to concern. As 2023 unfolded, rumours spread on London’s comedy scene: if you put on a show at 21Soho or 2Northdown, prepare to wait a long time for your money. “There is a level of non-payment that people in comedy will put up with. It’s an example of how bad it was getting that people were like: ‘Where is the money?’” says one former employee. 

While there are a few well-established London comedy venues like Soho Theatre and The Bill Murray, other comedy nights shift between pubs, clubs and bars, promoters and new nights appear and disappear. Not everyone — including some big-name companies — prioritise paying artists. People might tolerate consistently late pay, if the money eventually arrives, many said. But generally, says one agent, “people come clean, because they don’t want their name completely tarnished.”

The set-up at 21Soho and 2Northdown was different from many other venues. Every show programmed was sold through Mills’ ticket platform, Ticket Text, and Mills would then pay the artists’ cut of sales to them directly. 

Comedian Alexandra Haddow performed at 2Northdown a few times before she was invited to appear on bills at 21Soho and run her club night, Indie Amnesty. From around 2021, she says: “I thought there were issues with late payment and the attitude to it. But I was eventually getting paid within two months or something, so I sort of put up with it. Then a couple were really outstanding. I started to think: Is it worth it?”

When the liquidation happened in February 2024, panic set in for the dozens of artists, promoters and staff awaiting payment: would they ever see the money they were owed?

Who is Nick Mills?

Mills is now 35 and, apart from brief stints as an intern, has been his own boss since leaving education. According to multiple people, he attended the Dragon School, an elite preparatory school for public schools such as Eton, before being sent to Rugby School from 2003–08 — where termly fees are currently £18,352 for boarders. He then attended the University of Manchester, and was listed as secretary of his mother’s food publicity company Network London PR, where he’s now a director, while studying. 

In an interview from March 2021, he talks about being part of an accelerator programme after university, where he established Ticket Text. He says an uncle who was “big in private equity” was a great source of advice and warns aspiring entrepreneurs that running your own business is “significantly harder than you could ever imagine. It doesn’t get easier.”

First impressions of Mills from those who worked with him vary. “I got on really well with Nick. He’s very charming and personable, and seemed passionate about doing good stuff at his venues,” says Dickson. “More than anything else, like a lot of people, I was blown away that this guy I’d never heard of had managed to open this extraordinary venue in the middle of Soho.”

One former worker, who spent around four years at Mills’ businesses, says: “A lot of the time he was a nice guy, really funny. He was a good salesman, good at blagging. A bit of a showman. I think he thought, no matter what happened, it would always work out for him.”

Burkett was less impressed: “He was a posh man, lots of bravado, no real substance. No knowledge about venues, events, comedy. But there were so many competent people around him, it kind of hid things.”

Many of those who’ve had dealings with Mills reach for the words “posh” and “rich”. One person who worked at 21Soho for three years tells me that, when they first worked there, there were expensive Cowshed toiletries in all the bathrooms: “It made me think: This is a guy with money to burn.” Other people recall him drinking champagne, buying pricey gifts, boasting about expensive meals, showing off a motorbike. 

Burkett remembers one shift when they and fellow workers were discussing the issues of precarious employment (while working for Mills, Burkett raised concerns to their union Equity, including around worker status, lack of holiday pay, national insurance contributions, failures to check right-to-work documents and lack of accident report forms). Mills joined the chat, joking that he didn’t make much money, Burkett recalls. “Then he drove off in his Jaguar.”

He loved the reflected glow of celebrity, said multiple people. “People got paid in terms of how famous they were, and how much Nick wanted to foster a relationship with them,” says one former worker. Despite telling industry press, “I care so much about this industry”, some suspected he wasn’t that interested: “He was not a comedy fan. He liked celebrity and famous people.”

“From the outside, he just seems like a rich guy,” says one comedian who held a charity fundraiser at 21Soho and then spent months begging for the money raised. “But as time went on, I came to understand he’s a particular type of conman.”

Naming and shaming

The average annual income of a UK comedian is £26,778 — for most, every gig counts. But naming and shaming someone is not an easy decision. The industry relies on reputation, and those branded “difficult” might lose out on work.

Nevertheless, in March 2024, post-liquidation, multiple comics went public with their grievances, calling out Mills and his payment practices on social media. In response, he told industry press that “everyone is getting paid”. Going public worked for some — John-Luke Roberts took down his post after his invoice was settled, and Drunk Women Solving Crime, who’d hosted a series of shows at 21Soho and were owed around £1,000, say they were paid after they took to X (formerly Twitter). Qin Wang put on a series of shows at 21Soho in April 2023 — she chased payments of around £3,000 on Instagram and X in March 2024, and was finally paid a few months later after chasing further over email.

Others weren’t so lucky. Manchester-based standup Tom Lawrinson said on social media in May 2024 that he was owed £1,600 for a show he played in the previous year. Leila Navabi performed at 21Soho in September 2023 and never received her fee. A queer comedy night that took place at 2Northdown around two years ago say they never received any takings. Two comedy agents and two production companies confirmed their acts are owed money too. 

Multiple sources said influential promoters Avalon and Off The Kerb were left thousands out of pocket and advised their acts to no longer play Mills’ venues. They were added to the list of creditors as part of 21 Soho Square Limited’s liquidation process — Off the Kerb has now been paid, while Avalon is receiving payments in instalments. 

Performers were forced to try multiple different routes to get what they were owed. Some were more official: comedian Amy Mason told the company she’d get Equity union involved in October 2023. Soon after, they paid. Others were ad hoc: a group of comedians who’d held a charity fundraiser in 2023 had to confront Mills over multiple WhatsApp messages when the thousands of pounds they’d raised failed to materialise. At one point, they messaged Mills five times in a row, spanning two months, before the businessman responded. After many months, they finally received the charity money, but describe the delay as causing great distress.

Some even tried to approach Mills in person. In September 2024, after waiting over a year for the £460 he was owed from a show in June 2023, Stansfield reached the end of his tether. He was chasing payment on email, often without reply for months at a time. After a promise of payment in November 2023, then another in March 2024, still no money. So, visiting London for work, he dropped in on the elusive founder. “He looked like he’d been caught out,” Stansfield says. “He was quite nervy and said they’d had a lot of changeover. He said the person he’d had a partnership with had been lying to him, and something about drink and drugs and gambling.”

But he also told Stansfield he “didn’t appreciate” his visit. “It was the way he tried to turn the argument around on me, coming in and daring to ask him, like it was a bit gauche to ask him for money. But you haven’t paid us for over a year!”

Stansfield watched as Mills sent an email about the invoice with him on copy. But in October 2024, Mills claimed his details were “being rejected by our payment system.” That’s never been an issue when settling past invoices, Stansfield says, but he re-sent his bank details. The money never arrived.

They weren’t the only ones who had to chase for payment for months. Liam Pape, a comedy promoter at West End Comedy Club, was organising a show for US standup Marie Faustin in August 2023 and felt that 21Soho, with its large capacity, was “the natural venue”. He was glad to have an opportunity to finally work with Mills, who he’d admired since meeting in 2022. “I remember saying: ‘there’s finally someone in the industry, in his early 30s, who has his own venue and the things they’re programming are diverse and interesting’. That’s aspirational.” The two shows went well; Pape was owed nearly £5,000. After 28 days since invoicing, he sent a nudge. A couple of days later, a comedian told him: “21Soho are bad at paying people.” It was the first he’d heard of it. He was concerned — at West End Comedy Club, he says, he’d pay comedians as soon as they invoiced, often the night of the gig.

It had been three months since Faustin had performed, and despite weekly chases Pape still hadn’t been paid. On 30 October, he emailed Mills and other staff members saying he’d be forced to go to Equity, post about the situation on social media, and speak to the press if the payment wasn’t made immediately. Finally, Mills responded over text. He said he was “beyond disappointed by your threatening and aggressive email” and that he’d been dealing with a “challenging” time in the business: “Regardless. No message from you to check in with me…” he wrote (Pape shared copies of multiple emails sent to Mills before the text message arrived). After this exchange, 70 days after the shows, Pape finally received payment.

Stansfield and Navabi finally received their money after The Londoner approached Mills with these allegations. In the latest liquidators’ statement, posted on Companies House last month, HMRC is estimated to be owed £328,384.86, while debts to trade expenses and creditors amount to £330,767.43. Some artists say they are still awaiting payment.

Excuses, excuses...

The explanations that Mills alluded to in his communications with Stansfield and Pape — that former business partner Dan Fry had left Mills high and dry when he resigned as director in August 2023, and that there were issues with banking systems — are familiar to many.

Former staff members tell me that Mills had met Fry after the latter rented a desk in the offices of 2Northdown. They became business partners in 2019, becoming co-directors of 21 Soho Square Limited and MillFry Group Limited — 21Soho was their joint venture. Eight individuals say that, between late 2023 and late 2024, they were told by Mills that Fry was an alcoholic, that he’d lied to Mills and left the company’s finances in disarray. Comedians and former staff who had dealings with Fry expressed surprise at this, but took Mills’ explanation at face value. 

Fry says that during his time in business with Mills he became aware of payment issues, which he says were caused by Mills failing to transfer money made from ticket sales from Ticket Text (a business controlled solely by Mills) to 21Soho. “Payments of ticket money from Ticket Text to 21Soho were frequently delayed and, in the period leading up to my resignation in August 2023, the payments of ticket money stopped entirely,” Fry says, adding that the money accounted for around 50% of 21Soho’s overall revenue, leaving the business “untenable”. He says he raised this repeatedly in board meetings and advised that the business should cease trading but, as a minority stakeholder in the business, was powerless to change the situation.

“My family and I had invested significantly to support 21Soho,” Fry tells me. “But the ongoing non-payment of ticket revenues by Nick Mills from Ticket Text to 21Soho ultimately left me with no viable option but to resign, resulting in substantial financial loss.”

“I am saddened that Nick has chosen to focus on personal attacks rather than addressing the professional and strategic issues that led to my resignation. My sole concern throughout this period has been the welfare of the business and its stakeholders, and I had hoped that discussions would remain centred on those professional matters.”

Other explanations for long silences and unpaid invoices from Mills, seen in messages shared with The Londoner, include: being unwell with Covid-19, family issues, family illness, invoices not being added to an accounting system and auto-payments not working. Multiple people interviewed said Mills also blamed payment issues on recently departed staff members. “Other promoters at the time were like: This is what he does, he blames Dan, then he blames his family, then he blames his banking system,” says one promoter who was forced to chase payments in 2024 for a show held at one of Mills' venues in 2023.

Venue workers say they received similar explanations when their wages were late. There’d be “all these excuses” as to why they hadn’t been paid, but these felt false, says one former worker, because they all believed Mills was paying them directly from his phone banking app: “It was always stuff to do with the bank, or the accountant, and processing invoices. It was like [he was] using these words as smoke and mirrors.”

Fry says that while he and Mills had joint access to the 21Soho accounts, Mills had sole control of the Ticket Text accounts. “Payments depended on 21Soho collecting its revenues, 50% of which were the ticket sales managed and controlled by Nick through Ticket Text, which were paid late or not paid at all to 21Soho,” he said in a statement to The Londoner.

Burkett involved Equity when their final pay cheque failed to arrive. But even prior to this, they say pay was often late. Two other former workers described pay frequently arriving a few days late, sometimes longer, so that staff would regularly refuse to come in for their next shift until they were paid for previous ones. “Everyone knew it was a consistent problem. But prior to Dan leaving, staff were mostly getting paid on time,” they say. By the time they left, the situation had worsened, “salaried staff weren’t getting paid for months at a time. The longest I waited was 3.5 months.”

The chaos behind the scenes

But while Mills has blamed payment issues on the departure of Fry, former workers claim issues can be traced back further.

Documents from 2019 show that months before 21Soho had even opened, artists and promoters had cancelled shows because previous performances had not been paid for. 

Staff were aware that artists weren’t being paid because they were often the people fielding complaints. “I got so much flack from people chasing payments — I could either say, ‘My boss isn’t paying you and I don’t know why’, or make up a lie,” says one person who worked with Mills for four years. 

One worker recalls: “I heard [Mills] a few times say things like: ‘I’m borrowing off Peter to pay Paul.’ I think he genuinely thought it was fine.” They couldn’t understand why there would be cashflow issues — the business appeared to be doing well — and believed missing payments were down to disorganisation: “Some people [were owed] as little as £100. If you can’t pay someone £100, what’s going on?”

Many suspected that only Mills had access to company accounts and made all payments himself. In messages seen by The Londoner, when artists were chasing unpaid invoices, venue managers and programmers resorted to cc-ing Mills into emails to resolve the issue. One producer says they were told in 2022 that Mills controlled all payments. “I learned you had to go directly to Nick directly if you needed your money,” says one former venue worker.

By February 2024, when news of the insolvency spread around London’s comedy scene, most people say they weren’t surprised. But they were disappointed. After months of chasing invoices, they now had to deal with liquidators, and while many have been added to the list of creditors for 21 Soho Square Limited, they feel they’re unlikely to recoup their money.

The future of 21Soho: “His reputation is dirt"

The excitement and potential of February 2020 now seem a distant memory for 21Soho and its founder. The industry is built on relationships and trust. “He’s burned a lot of bridges,” says one former staff member. “It’s down to a poorly run business and confidence that outstrips ability.”

Yet the show goes on. Last month, Navy Blue Entertainment secured a business loan from Bizcap UK, which describes itself as “the UK’s most open-minded lender”. 21Soho’s website advertises Friday and Saturday comedy nights (although acts are rarely listed), plus improv shows, although there are more music and literary events than before.

In a statement to The Londoner, Mills said: “The team at 21Soho are doing their utmost to remedy those impacted by the collapse of the previous companies. We are a staunch supporter of comedy and the creative arts in Soho, and are confident that we are rebuilding trust and support of artists and promoters, who are the lifeblood of our business. We apologise to anyone who remains affected — such parties should please contact me directly: live@tt-g.co.uk.”

But this may not be enough. Haddow says: “I’ve not met one person who’s got a nice word to say about him. His reputation is dirt.” She stopped performing at 21Soho in solidarity with other comedians. “I said: ‘I’m not going to cross the picket line, people haven’t been paid.’”

For those in comedy, you’re a “scab” if you know the situation and still work with Mills, says Stansfield. “There’s got to be a bit of having each other’s back, otherwise it’s just going to happen again.” And two large agencies confirmed they’ve advised acts not to perform there. “You can’t perform there because it looks awful,” says one promoter.

“There were loads of nights where it was like: this could be something amazing,” says someone who spent four years at Mills’ companies. “He wanted to be a big player in entertainment. He wanted to be friends with comedians. He wanted to be in the rooms where things happen. I thought he wasn’t a bad person — but at some point, he crossed a line.”

Have you been affected by 21Soho? If you know more about this story, please get in touch.