THE laughs just kept coming at a late night bar as performers attempted to break the world record for the longest-running comedy show.

Atic in Banbury staged the marathon gig to raise money for the Katharine House Hospice over the Easter bank holiday weekend.

Racking up 96 hours of live performance and with a no-sleep rule for audience members, some punters certainly got their money’s worth.

The club broke the previous record set in Nashville, United States in 2015 – where an 80 hours and five minutes long show was held – despite Banbury having a population a 10th of the size of the American city.

Owner Ryan Mold said: “Comedians are always trying to break records and there are lots of awards in comedy recognising the best venue or best show, we thought we would try and go one better.

“Everyone put a shift in, most staff ended up working 12 to 17 hours.

“It was a really nice community event and we had a great time doing it.”

More than 130 comedians took to the stage over the course of the event, with each asked to do a minimum of 15 minutes of material.

The club runs a regular comedy night and acts from across the country were quick to get on board when they heard about the plan, according to Mr Mold.

Putting in the longest shift was Russell Hicks, who made full use of his improvisation skills during a mammoth two and a half hour set.

Other names getting used to performing at odd times of the day and night included Andrew Bird, Joe Jacobs and Olga Koch.

Brian Gittins, who stars as Kev in Ricky Gervais’s TV comedy Derek, wrapped everything up in the last hour to complete the record-breaking show.

All the footage and paperwork now has to be submitted to the Guinness World Records before the club is officially given the accolade.

Mr Mold added: “A bit of a competition developed between some of the audience members.

“I heard there was a group arguing over who had been in the longest, with some claiming upwards of 60 hours.

“We had to adhere to lots of strict rules and regulations.

“If anyone fell asleep they weren’t counted as part of the audience anymore and we had to have at least 10 people at any one time for it to count.

“At one point we were down to dangerously low numbers but we put a call out online and people kept coming in.

“They could buy a day or weekend ticket or pay-as-you-go and stay for as little or as long as they wanted.

“Filling it at prime times was easy but we also had some real community heroes who kept it all going through the early hours of the morning and lazy afternoons.”