The Comedy Store Players are to embark on their first national tour in a decade.

Apart from annual performances at Shakespeare's Globe and Regent's Park Open Air Theatre, the improvisation troupe only appear at the Comedy Stores in London and Manchester.

Now the group, whose members include Paul Merton, are to appear at nine venues across the country.

Their tour kicks off at the Leicester Comedy Festival on February 10, and includes a performance at the Royal Shakespeare Company's Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. Click here for full dates.

Merton is not scheduled to appear on the tour, but it will feature such Whose Line Is It Anyway favourites as Richard Vranch, Josie Lawrence and Jim Sweeney.

Neil Mullarkey, who performed at the very first Comedy Store Players gig in 1985, alongside Mike Myers, said: "Before stepping out on stage, we don't know which direction the show is going to go since we have no way of knowing what suggestions the audience are going to give us.

"One night we could be improvising an opera about stamp collecting and the next we could find ourselves inventing an epic tale about Chekhov and a fish slice."