The best of the week's live comedy

The week's best live comedy

Monday March 4

NORWICH: It's a fair bet this tour has changed a bit since it was first mooted. After This One, I'm Going Home was postponed when Seann Walsh went into Strictly Come Dancing - and he was not to know how that show would make him so infamous. Even the title is now out of date, as Walsh told Jonathan Ross that he'd quit drinking after his drunken snog made the tabloids. Hear his version of events in the tour that kicks off at the Norwich Playhouse tonight. Dates.

LONDON: The Chortle Student Comedy Award heats continue at Drapers Bar and Kitchen in Queen Mary Students' Union in Bethnal Green tonight, followed by the University of Bristol Students' Union on Wednesday and Derwent College in York on Thursday.

Wednesday March 6

LEEDS: Ardal O'Hanlon spends a few months of the year in the French-Caribbean island paradise of Guadeloupe filming the recently-renewed Death In Paradise. But this week he's in Leeds, Huddersfield and Barrow-in-Furness as his new stand-up tour, The Showing Off Must Go On kicks off. In it he, as a white, middle-class, middle-aged man rides into the culture wars in an attempt not to wind up on the wrong side of history. The dates are here.

Thursday March 7

LONDON: It took a while to get here – and the pull of International Women's Day – but the Comedy Store today has its first ever all-female line-up for a regular gig, with Angela Barnes, Gina Yashere, Kerry Godliman, Laura Lexx and Lauren Pattison.

MANCHESTER: Nor did the venue's Northern branch miss out, with Allyson June Smith and quadruple Chortle Award nominee Kiri Pritchard-McLean kicking off its first all-woman weekend.

LONDON: Tim Key headlines the 100 Club Presents gig in Oxford Street, with a strong line-up of new wave comics in support: Josie Long, Lou Sanders, John Kearns and Moon.

Friday March 8

LANCASTER: A comedy show about the 1975 EU referendum featuring the likes of Harold Wilson and Ted Heath as pivotal characters does not sound like box office gold. But Kieran Hodgson earned an Edinburgh Comedy Award nomination last summer, for this smart and involving show which used political history lesson as a backdrop to the personal story of how he and his mother had become a family divided over Brexit. At the Fringe we said '75 was 'not half as niche as it sounds, and ten times funnier'. All the dates are here.

BRIGHTON: Another International Women's Day line-up at the Dome - and a mighty strong one too as Felicity Ward, Lolly Adefope, Sara Barron, Josie Long and Sara Pascoe take to the stage.

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Published: 3 Mar 2019