Here comes the pun!

Leicester Comedy Festival to release wordplay joke book

Organisers of the UK Pun Championship are to release a book of one-liners celebrating wordplay.

Comedians including Adele Cliff (pictured), Tony Cowards, Masai Graham, Leo Kearse and Darren Walsh have contributed gas to the collection, All Puns Blazing.

The anthology has been compiled by the Leicester Comedy Festival and its founder, Geoff Rowe, and features many contestants and champions from the annual punfight.

Rowe said: 'I'm absolutely thrilled to be able to bring together so many brilliant, groan inducing puns in one place, kindly donated by some of our comedian friends. This book will help support Leicester Comedy Festival so I’m really grateful to all the acts who have allowed us to use their jokes and help us continue to celebrate British comedy.’

Cliff, who was last year's UK Pun Champion said: 'I was thrilled to be asked to donate some jokes to help support Leicester Comedy Festival. It’s a wonderful festival that really supports the UK comedy scene each February. I love puns, they're a joyful and silly escape from reality. Having so many pun champions and rising stars all together make this collection a pun of a kind.’

The book also features a foreword from stand-up-turned-comedy-academic Dr Oliver Double.

Publishers Ebury, which will release the title in November, describe it as a ‘wealth of hilarious (and occasionally groan-inducing) material from some of Britain's finest stand-up comedic talent… a fun and fitting celebration of grassroots UK comedy.’

Sample gags include: 'I don't like to brag but I can control a kayak brilliantly. Canoe?'; '"pardon" is the only French word that I know. I can only apologise' and 'my umbrella is useless in the wind, it turns out'.

The full list of more than 30 contributors is: El Baldiniho, Lovdev Barpaga, Zahra Barri, Adele Cliff, Tony Cowards, Henry Dawe, Pauline Eyre, Friz Frizzle, Masai Graham, Sean Hegarty, Kevin Hudson, Leo Kearse, Colin Leggo, Nigel Lovell, Iain MacDonald, Kat Molinari, Laura Monmoth, Joseph Murphy, Graham Musk, Sean Patrick, Richard Pulsford, Paul Savage, Philip Simon, Rob Thomas, Andrew Tymms, Stevie Vegas, Chris Norton Walker, Darren Walsh, Richard Woolford, Jenan Younis