The Archive · 2018
Lebanon's first branded stand-up comedy collective. Before awk.word, before the sold-out shows, before Al Jazeera — there was The Regulars. Two seasons that built the foundation for everything that followed.
In 2018, Lebanon had an agency — Knockout Media — but what it didn't yet have was a recurring, branded stage that comedians and audiences could count on week after week. The Knockout Stand-Up Comedy Regulars changed that.
Conceived and produced by Ramzi Hobeishy, The Regulars was Lebanon's first-ever branded stand-up comedy collective — a structured showcase with a consistent identity, a consistent lineup model, and a consistent standard. It ran for two full seasons and established several things that the Lebanese scene had never had before: regularity, branding, and a pathway from open-mic to headline.
Hobeishy's philosophy for The Regulars was radical in its simplicity: keep showing up, and make the standard high enough that audiences will too. The bet paid off. Shows filled. Names emerged. And when a bigger platform — awk.word — arrived, The Regulars provided the audience base and the comedic community it needed to hit the ground running.
Season One of The Regulars launched in early 2018 across Beirut's intimate venues — including Forty Licks Tavern in Hamra and KED in Karantina. The formula was deliberate: a mix of established names and emerging voices, all under the Knockout banner.
Hobeishy operated in three simultaneous roles — promoter, host, and performer — a juggling act that defined the DIY spirit of the early Lebanese scene. He handled everything from venue negotiations to lineup curation to warming up the crowd between acts.
Season One introduced what would become the scene's founding generation: Stephanie Ghalbounie, Mhamad Baalbaki, Michele Nehme — names who would go on to anchor the Lebanese comedy circuit for years. The Regulars gave them their first consistent stage.
The season also established a critical precedent: that Lebanese audiences would pay for, and return to, stand-up comedy. Before The Regulars, that had been an untested assumption. After it, no one doubted it.
Season Two arrived with a bigger lineup, a more confident identity, and a clearer sense of what Lebanese stand-up could be. The audience base Hobeishy had cultivated in Season One was now returning — and bringing people with them.
The format evolved. Shows got tighter. The bar for what counted as a Knockout Regulars set went up. The collective began to feel less like a new experiment and more like a permanent fixture of Beirut's cultural calendar.
More importantly, Season Two coincided with the emergence of awk.word — a platform being built in parallel, with a more specifically underground, boundary-pushing mandate. The question of how these two Knockout initiatives would relate to each other was becoming harder to avoid.
Hobeishy saw what was coming and made the call early: the scene was too small to divide. Rather than compete for the same audience and the same comedians, The Regulars would fold its energy — its audience, its momentum, its roster — into awk.word, giving the underground platform the community base it needed to take off at scale.
Before they were headliners, they were regulars. The Knockout platform gave this generation their first consistent stage — and the confidence to keep going.
The first performer ever at awk.word's launch in February 2018 — a debut made possible by the path The Regulars had already cleared. One of the Lebanese scene's most consistent voices.
Known for rage-fueled social rants that challenged Lebanese norms. Found his comedic voice in The Regulars and went on to define a specific strain of politically engaged Lebanese stand-up.
Among the earliest featured performers in KnockOut's club nights. Shared the stage with Hobeishy at the landmark May 2018 show at Forty Licks that put Beirut stand-up on the map.
First performed at an awk.word show in early 2018. The Knockout ecosystem gave him the room to tackle religious and social taboos — material he has since taken to international stages.
One of the sharpest voices to come out of The Regulars. Built his stage presence across both seasons and went on to become a consistent name on the Lebanese circuit.
A more experienced comic who became part of the Knockout circle as the scene matured — eventually appearing on Comedy Central Arabia alongside Hobeishy, representing Lebanese stand-up regionally.
The Decision · 2018
When awk.word arrived, Ramzi Hobeishy faced a choice: run two parallel platforms and split a still-small audience, or combine forces and build something truly sustainable. He chose the scene over the brand. The Knockout Comedy Regulars merged its audience, its comedians, and its momentum into awk.word — and what followed was Lebanon's most significant stand-up renaissance. By 2019, awk.word was running multiple nights a week, regularly selling out, and had been recognised by Al Jazeera as Lebanon's most important comedy platform. The longest-running stand-up event in the country's history — built on the foundation The Regulars laid.
Back to the Full Story →Every show in the archive. Every face on stage. Seventeen photographs from two seasons of Knockout Comedy Regulars — Beirut, 2018.
