Comics ready for festival launch

British comics are preparing for the start of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival tomorrow.

Lee Mack, Daniel Kitson, Ross Noble and Dave Gorman are among the UK acts with solo shows at at the three-week event, the world's biggest assembly of comics outside Edinburgh.

Rich Hall, Glenn Wool, Mike Wilmot, Noel Fielding, Dan Antopolski, Ed Byrne, and Adam Hills are also among the more than180 full-length shows on offer.

Other comics performing sets in ensmble shows or at the lively Festival Club include John Maloney, Jason-John Whitehead and JoJo Smith.

Gorman will be unveiling his new show, inspired by Googlewacking - the web surfers' game of finding combinations of words that produce only one result when punched into the Internet search engine.

Mack, will be making his Melbourne debut at the 17th annual festival, and will be hoping to capitalise on the success of ITV1's The Sketch Show, shown on Network 10 in Australia.

Published: 26 Mar 2003