ANDREW HANKINSON
I'm a writer in Newcastle upon Tyne, northern England. I've written for Wired, Guardian, Observer, Spectator, New Statesman, FT Weekend Magazine and the BBC. I've reported from places such as Haiti, Iraq and Ukraine, and covered subjects including radiation, healthcare, and chemical weapons.


DON'T APPLAUD. EITHER LAUGH OR DON'T. (AT THE COMEDY CELLAR.)
My second book, Don't applaud. Either laugh or don't. (At the Comedy Cellar.), was published in the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand by Scribe in August 2020. It is available in shops, libraries, or to order online via Amazon, Bookshop, Foyles, Hive (to support independent shops) and Waterstones. In May 2021 it will be published in North America and available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Bookshop. It's a nonfiction book about the Comedy Cellar, a tiny basement club in New York which ended up on the frontline of the global culture debate. Some of the responses so far include:

"For all those interested in comedy, free speech and how they do those things in New York, Andrew Hankinson's Don't applaud. Either laugh or don't. is really excellent, and has made me immediately want to read his other book"
Dara Ó Briain

"It left me longing for the intimate club experience which it so vividly captures"
Daily Telegraph

"Thought-provoking [...] the author takes the history of the nearly-forty-year-old club as a microcosm of the comedy industry; Hankinson see its values, its unspoken rules and attitude to acceptable speech, onstage and off, as a useful reflection of American culture as a whole"
Times Literary Supplement

"Fascinating [...] the situation in the US seems many, many more miles down the track than it is here"
Al Murray