on the street · down a ramp, not a flight of stairs · no cover, no two-drink minimum
A comedy club on the street
Laughingstock
Tonight: disabled comics, on their own terms
Comedy is a form of knowledge. When disabled comedians take the stage, they bring a perspective shaped by daily navigation of a world that was not designed for them — and they do it on their own terms, in their own voice, controlling the frame. They make audiences do their own thinking.
Disabled comedians are not inspiring for being on stage. They are comics who happen to be disabled. And these sets map the gap between how disability is publicly discussed and how disabled people actually live, laugh, and relate to their own bodies and communities.
From our Campfire Learn Together, Being Disabled Can Be Pretty Funny, where the community watched Josh Blue and Tina Friml together and talked about what their work reveals about disability, identity, and the world.
Who is on
In this room, the only thing that stands in the light is what the comics said. Everything else — our write-up, our notes, the house rules — is out here in the dark with the audience, which is where it belongs.
Josh Blue
Josh Blue has cerebral palsy and is a Paralympian in soccer. He won Last Comic Standing in 2006 and has been touring for over twenty years. His specials center disability without apologizing for it: life with a palsy arm that “has some stuff to do” after dark, a restaurant server who asks his friend “what will he have,” getting put on the disabled list after an injury at the Paralympics, and Botox, which in his telling was developed to help people with cerebral palsy before somebody noticed it would sell.
“shouldn’t that somehow make me better?”
Josh Blue
“I’m guessing: talk with your manager.”
Josh Blue
“well, fuck cerebral palsy, we could really be helping people.”
Josh Blue
Tina Friml
Tina Friml has cerebral palsy. She frames herself as “the bisexuality of ability” — not fully committed to either side — and names three perks of being a disabled comic: she can never be a hack (“nothing about this is relatable”), CP is the most interesting thing about her (otherwise she is just “a liberal white girl from Vermont”), and nothing she does can fail, because an audience will file all of it under inspiration. That last one is not a boast. It is a critique. She calls it being on “free play” — a baby who cheated death and has been in the bonus round ever since.
“I don’t suffer from cerebral palsy, I suffer from people”
Tina Friml
“nothing about this is relatable”
Tina Friml
“the bisexuality of ability”
Tina Friml
Every line in the light is quoted from our write-up, belongs to the comic who said it, and is 30 words or fewer. The write-up does not say which set each one comes from, and neither do we. The line under each is ours.
The whole night
The whole night, in the order we put it in, and it runs until you stop it. No runtime on this one: it is a list we keep adding to, and a total here would be wrong the next time it changed.
Disabled Comedy, on YouTube, from our own channel.
The bill
Or pick one. Every set says how long it runs before you press it, and nothing plays until you do. Each one plays where it hangs, or goes up on the stage in place of the whole night, and taking it off puts the whole night back without starting it.
Every set on the bill
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Being Disabled Can Be Pretty Funny
Josh Blue
The special our Campfire Learn Together watched first, and the title that Campfire took for itself.
24:39 · on YouTube, via Dry Bar Comedy
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I’m Like the Bisexuality of Ability
Tina Friml
The other half of that Campfire.
11:09 · on YouTube, via Comedy Central Stand-Up
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Freak Accident
Josh Blue
A full special, a little over the hour.
1:11:00 · on YouTube, via 800 Pound Gorilla Media
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I Have a Disorder
AJ Wilkerson
AJ Wilkerson is Autistic, and goes by Captain Autism.
39:14 · on YouTube, via AJ Wilkerson Comedy
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The Disabled List
Josh Blue
25:49 · on YouTube, via Popcorn
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Tourette’s Is Sort of the Abstract Art of Disabilities
Benny Feldman
5:35 · on YouTube, via Comedy Central Stand-Up
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Disabled John Wick
Steve Way
10:09 · on YouTube, via Don’t Tell Comedy
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Handicap Crowd Work
Ahren Belisle and Fiona Cauley
14:21 · on YouTube, via Ahren Belisle Comedy
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Navigating the Airport with a Disability
Fiona Cauley
6:15 · on YouTube, via The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
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Doctor’s Note
AJ Wilkerson
1:07:13 · on YouTube, via AJ Wilkerson Comedy
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Captain Autism
AJ Wilkerson
1:03:48 · on YouTube, via AJ Wilkerson Comedy
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Inbred Magic
AJ Wilkerson
Filmed at a brewery in Michigan.
42:51 · on YouTube, via AJ Wilkerson Comedy
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Side Quest
AJ Wilkerson
A half hour, put together from three shows.
37:10 · on YouTube, via AJ Wilkerson Comedy
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A Vision for an Autistic Future
Joe Wells
Joe Wells is Autistic. This one is from Rosie Jones’ Disability Comedy Extravaganza, on Dave.
6:13 · on YouTube, via U&Laughs
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I Am Autistic
Joe Wells
Filmed by Go Faster Stripe.
59:32 · on YouTube, via Joe Wells
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King of the Autistics
Joe Wells
Self-produced, and put up for free.
57:09 · on YouTube, via Joe Wells
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Power & Chaos
Fern Brady
Fern Brady is Autistic. Filmed in Glasgow.
55:58 · on YouTube, via 800 Pound Gorilla Comedy Exports
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How Not to Talk to a Disabled Person
Tim Renkow
Tim Renkow has cerebral palsy. Very dark humour. From What I Wish I’d Said, where a comic replays a moment and says the thing that did not get said at the time.
2:56 · on YouTube, via Comedy Central Asia
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Being intimate when you are a disabled person
Tim Renkow
Very dark humour. From Live at the Apollo.
2:29 · on YouTube, via BBC
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Three-Way
Stuart Laws
Stuart Laws is Autistic. Cut between three nights, in Machynlleth, Manchester and Bristol, so the same jokes land differently in each room.
31:48 · on YouTube, via Stuart Laws
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Is That Guy Still Going?
Stuart Laws
Filmed in London, directed by Nish Kumar.
1:00:32 · on YouTube, via 800 Pound Gorilla Media
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Why Can’t I Just Enjoy Things
Pierre Novellie
Pierre Novellie is Autistic.
1:05:27 · on YouTube, via 800 Pound Gorilla Media
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How Hannah Gadsby’s High-Functioning Autism Works
Hannah Gadsby
Hannah Gadsby is Autistic, and a lot of Gadsby’s work is about gender too. A clip from Douglas, on Netflix.
6:25 · on YouTube, via Netflix Is A Joke
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Three ideas. Three contradictions. Or not.
Hannah Gadsby
A TED talk rather than a set, given by a comic on their own terms, which is not the same thing as a set being turned into one.
18:34 · on YouTube, via TED
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GRL/LATNX/DEF
Lara Ricote
Lara Ricote is deaf. In the description, in Lara Ricote’s own words: “It starts kinda bad but it gets better as it goes along.”
58:08 · on YouTube, via Lara Ricote
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The disabled elephant in the room
Rosie Jones
Rosie Jones has cerebral palsy. From Live at the Apollo.
2:20 · on YouTube, via BBC
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Triple Threat
Rosie Jones
Rosie Jones’ first full special, filmed at the Theatre Royal in Brighton.
1:11:27 · on YouTube, via 800 Pound Gorilla Comedy Exports
Chalked up off the playlist on 2026-10-03, in the playlist’s own order. The playlist is ours and we keep adding to it, so the whole night may have more on it by now than the bill does. Not on the playlist yet, so putting the whole night on will not reach them: Three-Way, Stuart Laws; Is That Guy Still Going?, Stuart Laws. They play from the bill like every other set.
The bill takes suggestions. If you know a set by a Disabled comic, working on their own terms, send it through the Stimpunks contact page or in our community. It goes on our playlist first and onto the bill once somebody has watched it, and it is checked to see that it plays and can be shown here before it goes anywhere.
What the laughs are doing
- “I suffer from people” — not from cerebral palsy. That is the social model of disability in one sentence. Comedy delivers it where argument bounces off.
- Even bombing is treated as a TED Talk. Inspiration exploitation means disabled people cannot lose, and that is not a compliment: it removes disabled people from the possibility of being judged on their actual work. “Free play” is the same trap from another angle. It sounds like freedom. It is also a way of being taken out of ordinary life.
- “Nothing about this is relatable” is not a limitation. It is a position. Comedy from genuinely outside perspectives makes an audience aware of the frame it was inside without knowing it.
- Asking somebody’s companion “what will he have?” while the disabled person is sitting right there is not a rare failure of manners. It is a routine expression of the assumption that a disabled person at the table is not the one to address.
- The same person with the same walk gets read as a celebrity, a drunk, or a danger, depending on who is looking. Disability legibility is not neutral. It is shaped by race, gender, class and context.
- The disability community is the only minority group everyone will eventually join. If that is true, why is it still treated as other, and why is joining it coded as loss?
- Being around other disabled people — where your disability is the norm, not the exception — changes what you can say, how much energy you spend, and how you move through space. That kind of community is not a luxury. It is a need.
From the takeaways of the same write-up, lightly trimmed.
For the bar afterwards
The Campfire ended with questions rather than answers. Three of them, to take home with you:
- What would it mean for a disabled person to just be bad at something — unremarkable, having a normal day?
- When have you seen humor do something that more direct advocacy couldn’t? And what are the costs of always having to be funny to be heard?
- There’s a difference between laughing with a comedian and laughing at the subject of their jokes. How do you read the difference in a room?
The rest of them are in the write-up. Campfire Learn Together is where we watch things like this together, and it is open to the whole community.
On the bar: The Daily Tism
Not stand-up, and on the bar anyway. The Daily Tism is a satirical news site in the vein of The Onion, and every story in it is about being Autistic. Sara Gibbs and Elsa Williams founded it in 2024, and it is written by Autistic people for Autistic people — “and the people who like to laugh with us,” in their own words. It turns the usual coverage round the way the sets on the bill turn the usual frame round: Public warned to stop armchair diagnosing celebrities as neurotypical.
It makes a sitcom, too. It’s a Superpower?? is an audio sitcom, which they call the first made by a team of Autistic creatives for an Autistic audience: five Autistic people meet at a support group, end up with magic powers they cannot control, and have to save the world from a neurotypical supervillain. The question marks are part of the title. It is made to be heard on headphones, and we think it is really good.
Both are The Daily Tism’s and both live on their own site. Nothing on this page reaches it until you follow a link, and the sitcom plays there, from them.
House rules
- There is no cover and no two-drink minimum, and nothing in here is for sale. The water on the stool is free.
- The way in is a ramp, and so is the way onto the stage. The mic comes down to whatever height the comic wants it at, and nobody has to sit on the stool.
- Nobody in the front row is made part of the act without asking to be. Sit wherever you like.
- Talk to the comic. Not to whoever came in with them.
- Bombing is allowed. A set that does not land is a set that did not land, and nobody here will turn it into a TED Talk.
- Nobody is called brave for getting up there. Tell them they were funny, or tell them they were not.
- Nobody headlines, either. The bill runs in the order the playlist keeps, and a place on it is not a rank.
- Laughter is loud and arrives without warning, which makes a comedy club one of the harder rooms on any street to be in. Nothing here plays until you press it, the volume is yours, and leaving in the middle of a set is not heckling.
- Laughingstock is the name of the club. It is nobody’s job.
Whose these are
Every set belongs to the comics who wrote and performed it, who are named on every one, and to the channels that published it. None of them is affiliated with Stimpunks and none of them endorses us. Nothing here is hosted by us: each set is on YouTube, and nothing reaches YouTube until you press play. The playlist is ours, on our own channel.
The writing at the top, the takeaways and the questions are ours, from our Campfire Learn Together write-up. The lines in the light are the comics’ own, as that write-up quotes them.
The Daily Tism and It’s a Superpower?? are The Daily Tism’s. We link to them and host and play nothing of theirs, and they are not affiliated with Stimpunks either.
The name is an ordinary English word for the person everybody laughs at. In here it is the name of the one room where the comic decides what the joke is.
The neon is Yellowtail, by Astigmatic, under the Apache License 2.0, and it sets the club’s name, the comics’ names and nothing you have to read. Everything you do read is Bricolage Grotesque, by Mathieu Triay, under the SIL Open Font License — bricolage being making do with whatever is to hand. More in the liner notes.
HOW LOUD DO YOU WANT IT?
Starts wherever your device says. Nothing moves, flashes, or plays until you say so — and in here, MAX GLITTER is the water on the stool going sparkling.
Job marker — a set list taped to the floor of the stage
You have found a job marker. The Adventurer’s Guild is a shopfront on the street, and it posts jobs that send you round these rooms. Take the code below to its board and that job is done. Nothing here is scored, nothing expires, and one is a perfectly good number of jobs to do.
The job: Who ordered?
Before the code: A server asked Josh Blue’s friend what he would have. The friend guessed Josh would be talking with somebody. Who?
Hint 1
It is one of the lines standing in the light, under Josh Blue’s name.
Hint 2
It is the line his friend says, not the one he does.
Last hint
Whoever you ask for when the service has gone wrong.
Give me the answer
The answer is Your manager. “I’m guessing: talk with your manager.” The server had gone round the table taking everybody’s order and, when they got to Josh Blue, asked the person next to him. It is not a rare failure of manners. It is the routine assumption that a disabled person at the table is not the one to address.
Taking the answer is a real way through this, not a lesser one. Nothing is watching and nothing is written down.
Quest code: SETLIST
That is the one.
“I’m guessing: talk with your manager.” The server had gone round the table taking everybody’s order and, when they got to Josh Blue, asked the person next to him. It is not a rare failure of manners. It is the routine assumption that a disabled person at the table is not the one to address.
Quest code: SETLIST