The week's comedy highlights

The week's comedy highlights

Tonight

LIVE IN MANCHESTER: Silly knockabout fun as Monty Python's Spamalot has just embarked on a UK tour. It's first sop is the Manchester Opera House, where it is until Monday then on to Richmond in Surrey, Birmingham, Oxford any beyond. We're not sure how Joe Pasquale will fill the crown of King Arthur, but the show is great fun.Here are the tour dates and a review from back in 2006, when it was new to the West End.

Monday  January 19

TV: Tonight's the launch of Catastrophe, Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney's keenly anticipated (and much-trailed) new comedy about an American man and Irish woman who have to form a relationship in an intensely condensed amount time after she becomes pregnant after the brief fling.  Read an interview with the pair here. Channel 4, 10pm

LIVE IN LONDON: Comedy Support Act UK is a new benevolent fund set up by professional comedians to offer emergency help to colleagues who find themselves in financial trouble through serious illness or accident. And to start filling up the pot, a benefit gig is being held at the Comedy Store tonight with a packed bill that includes big-hitters Alan Davies, Milton Jones, Phill Jupitus, Sara Pascoe and more.

Tuesday  January 20

LIVE IN READING: Mark Thomas is reviving his wonderful show Bravo Figaro, about his sometimes difficult relationship with his opera-loving dad as a warm up to taking the show to Australia and New Zealand. The short UK tour starts at Reading's South Street Arts Centre tonight.

Wednesday  January 21

TV  

LIVE IN LONDON: Alan Davies does his second benefit of the week, this one at the Bloomsbury Theatre raising money for a teenager to get a special new chair after major spinal surgery. The line-up also includes prospective MP Al Murray, punman  Gary Delaney, and the familiar telly faces of Josh Widdicombe, Katherine Ryan and Susan Calman.

Thursday  January 22

LIVE IN LONDON: It pretty much kept remained the radar at the Edinburgh Fringe, but Matthew Highton's engrossing storytelling show Good Luck Sleeping Jerks contains a mix of laughs, drama and emotion. And like at the Fringe, tonight's reprisal at the Camden Comedy Club (formerly the Camden Head) is free to get in - pay what you want on the way out. Here is our review from Edinburgh.

LIVE IN LONDON: If you like your comedy downbeat, Joe Wilkinson  - most recently seen as a head in a bell-jar in 8 Out Of 10 Cats Do Countdown - is at the Bloomsbury Theatre for three nights from tonight, supported by Impractical Jokers star   Paul McCaffery and the similarly low-key Jarlath Regan.

LIVE IN NEWCASTLE: The Stand has a strong bill this weekend, including the unpredictable Ian Cognito - who has the dubious honour of being banned from more clubs than any other comedian - and metalhead, pun-cracker and 'pharmacist baffler' Andrew O'Neill.

Saturday January 24

RADIO:  Kevin Eldon, with the occasional help of his poet alter-ego, Paul Hamilton, introduces three hours of programmes featuring or about comic verse. Poetry Puh-lease includes Tim Key's Late Night Poetry Programme; The Simon Day Show; the life of the cult poet Hovis Presley, a classic episode of Hancock's Half Hour, The Poetry Society and a new interview between Kevin Eldon and John Cooper Clarke. Radio 4 Extra, 9am

Published: 18 Jan 2015