The week's best live comedy

The best of the week's live comedy, picked from the 5,230 events Chortle currently has listed. Use our search panel to check our full listings by date and region.

Sunday January 29

LONDON: The jam-packed Vault festival continues in the arches underneath Waterloo station all week, with tonight’s comedy offerings including works in progress from stand-ups Luisa Omielan, Darran Griffiths and Tadiwa Mahlunge. See all the listings on the festival website

Monday January 30

LONDON: Pierre Novellie brings his satisfying hour of high-status rants - Why Can't I Just Enjoy Things? - to the Soho Theatre for a week, ahead of a nationwide tour later this year. Review and tour schedule

Tuesday January 31

LONDON: Former Musical Comedy Awards winner Alex Mackeith offers a selection of witty tunes, sophisticated in execution but usually silly in their lyrics, in his debut show, which is at the Soho Theatre tonight and tomorrow. Review

Wednesday February 1

ARBROATH: Janey Godley kicks off what she says will probably be her last tour, after she undergoes a new round of treatment for the ovarian cancer she thought she beat. Despite the prognosis she said: ‘I am determined to get back on stage. I don’t want to just fade away. I want to go out with a bang.’ She said she had ‘always been a kind of "die on your feet not your knees" type of person’ , but added that it would be ‘fair and honest to say it might be the last time you’ll see me live on stage’. Although don’t go expecting anything maudlin from a comic used to laughing in the face of adversity. Janey Godley tour dates.

BIRMINGHAM: Facing the tough challenge of keeping up with real events - let alone staging a live puppet show - Spitting Image comes to the stage for the first time. In Idiots Assemble, which opens at the Birmingham Rep tonight, Tom Cruise is tasked by King Charles with saving Great Britain while Greta Thunberg duets with Stormzy as Putin and Xi watch on from their premium seats in the stalls. It’s been written by comics Al Murray and Matt Forde along with Sean Foley, the theatre’s artistic director who also directs this. Booking to March 11. Tickets

NORWICH: Following her Edinburgh Comedy Award winning show The Twist…? She’s Gorgeous - later turned into a Netflix special - New York’s Catherine Cohen embarks on her first tour of the UK. The show is described as ‘an openly glamorous, decidedly horny musical exploration of what it means to enter your thirties as a woman online, in love, and inspired to romanticise the prospect of freezing your eggs.’ After tonight’s Playhouse gig, she visits the Hackney Empire, the Lowry in Salford, Brighton Komedia, Glasgow Glee, Birmingham Old Rep and Leeds City Varieties.

LONDON:There’s a strong international bill at Laugh Train Home at the Four Thieves in Clapham tonight, with New York’s Janine Harouni, Yorkshire’s Scott Bennett, Vancouver’s Kate Barron and Peter Rethinasemay, born and raised in Belfast to a Malaysian father and Irish mother.

Friday February 3

CRICKHOWELL: Is this the world’s smallest comedy festival? The Black Mountains Comedy Festival comprises just two gigs in this picturesque town of 2,000 people: tonight’s headlined by Kiri Pritchard-McLean and tomorrow’s with Gary Delaney.

Published: 29 Jan 2023