The best of the comedy week ahead

The best of the comedy week ahead.

Monday March 7

RADIO: Les Dawson returns to Radio 4 Extra with another series of the sketch show Listen To Les. This is the tenth and final season of the show, which originally aired on Radio 2 in 1985, and features such sketches as the lecherous Cosmo Smallpiece hosting his own chat show. 8.30am

THEATRE IN LONDON: Catherine Tate returns to the stage in Miss Atomic Bomb, a new musical comedy set in Las Vegas in 1952, when the nuclear bomb tests in the Nevada desert were a major tourist attraction - with a beauty pageant designed to cash in. The show, by Adam Long, Gabriel Vick and Alex Jackson-Long, runs at the St James Theatre until April 9.

LIVE IN CARDIFF: The penultimate heat of our search for the best student comedians takes place in Y Stiwdio in Cardiff University’s student union tonight. The last one is in The Library pub in Leeds on Tuesday.

LIVE IN KINGSTON: Another typically strong bill at Outside The Box features funny smart-arse Adam Bloom and the laid-back storytelling of Carl Donnelly, with fine support from Paul McCaffrey and Tom Craine.

Tuesday March 8

LIVE IN LONDON: There are a couple of gigs in the capital marking International Women’s Day. At the Leicester Square Theatre Lou Sanders, Luisa Omielan, Mae Martin, Shazia Mirza, Tiff Stevenson and Zoe Lyons provide the laughs in an Oxfam fundraiser, while over in the East, Dana Alexander, Eleanor Tiernan, Grainne Maguire, Kerry Godliman, Mary Bourke, Susan Murray and Wendy Wason play Ye Olde Rose & Crown in Walthamstow. And up in Watford there’s a fundraiser for a local women’s centre in the Attico Arts Centre. And on Twitter, Richard Herring’s feed will be full of him telling men with the hump that International Men’s Day is November 19.

Wednesday March 9

RADIO: Sketch duo Hannah Croft and Fiona Pearce embark on their first Radio 4 show, with a four-part quarter-hour series. In the opening episode, listeners will meet June and Jean, two middle-class ladies driven to the brink by the strain of village life in the Home Counties,a rowdy Geordie called Brown Owl and an over-excited work experience girl. 11am.

LIVE IN EDINBURGH: Comedians, musicians, poets and politicians come out in support for Jeremy Corbyn at the JC4PM gig at the Festival Theatre. The comedy element is supplied by Jeremy Hardy, the increasingly potent Mark Steel and the super-charming Barbara Nice on hosting duties.

Thursday March 10

LIVE IN GLASGOW: The 14th Glasgow International Comedy Festival kicks off tonight, running right through until March 27 and featuring 420 shows across 42 venues. Tonight’s pick: Alun Cochrane’s A Show With A Man In It at the Stand at 7pm. Website.

LIVE IN ABERYSTWYTH: Mark Watson’s new tour hits Wales. I’m Not Here, which plays the Aberystwyth Arts Centre tonight, is about seeking identity and meaning in the modern world. It then moves on to Newtown tomorrow and Cardiff on Saturday.

Friday March 11

LIVE IN NOTTINGHAM: Maybe it’s the info he’s gleaned from the scores of interviews he’s done for his always-fascinating Comedians’ Comedian podcast, but Stuart Goldsmith’s latest show - ambiguously titled An Hour - marks an impressive leap forward for the nice-guy comic. It gets a run-out at Das Kino tonight.

Saturday March 12

RADIO: This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band going ‘professional’, with a TV performance on the bastion of psychedelia and avant-garde: Blue Peter. In this hour-long celebration, band member Neil Innes looks back at the influence and legacy of the aracho-comic group, including interviews with the likes of Terry Gilliam, Adrian Edmondson, Kevin Eldon and Stephen Fry. The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band: Anarchy Must Be Organised. Radio 4, 8pm. And to complement the new documentary, Radio 4 Extra broadcasts the first of three freewheeling Radio 1 shows presented by man at the band’s centre, Vivian Stanshall. The station gave Stanshall his own two-hour Saturday afternoon show, produced by John Peel’s long-time producer, John Walters - of which four were made. Episode one is lost, but the remaining three idiosyncratic episodes are to be repeated, starting with this one, featuring The Who’s drummer, Keith Moon. Also pause to think that this was a time when Radio 1 would broadcast an experimental show such as this… Vivian Stanshall’s Radio Flashes. Radio 4 Extra, 10pm. Here they are on Do Not Adjust Your Set, being introduced by David Jason:

Published: 6 Mar 2016