A tight 5: March 4

TICKETS for Mel Brooks’s first UK stage performance have gone on sale – priced at up to £502.25. Most seats were snapped up immediately at prices of between £74.75 and £180; and only the top-price VIP tickets and the second-priced ones – still at an eye-watering £262.25 – didn’t sell out quickly.

UNCLE BUCK is to be made into a sitcom. Stand-up Mike Epps has signed on to the new show for America’s ABC network – playing the lead role of a childish goof made famous by John Candy in the 1989 movie. It is the second time the idea has made the leap to TV following a short-lived  CBS series starring Kevin Meaney in the 1990s.

EDDIE IZZARD has landed a straight acting role in a new HBO pilot The Devil You Know, set in the 17th Century Salem Witch Trials. The comic plays the conservative, rigid and devoutly Puritan farmer Thomas Putnam, Hollywood bible Deadline reports.

Frankie Boyle and John Cleese have called for the government to take action agains media monopolies. They have put their name to an open letter published in today’s Guardian and signed by more than 100 campaigners, including union leaders and academics, calling on all parties to make an election commitment to ‘prevent damaging media concentration’.

DANIEL VON BARGEN, who played George Costanza’s slacker boss Mr Kruger on Seinfeld, died over the weekend at the age of 64. He also had a recurring role on Malcolm in the Middle as Commandant Spangler.

Published: 4 Mar 2015