Features

Coventry-born Emma Fryer has enormous, googly eyes and a willowy demeanour that has informed her comic persona - first as Johnny Vegas's stoned-sounding, kleptomaniac ex-girlfriend Tanya in 'Ideal' and then as the star of the self-penned 'Home Time'

Broad comedy: A new wave of funny women

Gerard Gilbert introduces the best of the next generation

Inside Features

Made in Manhattan: John Oliver - taking satire stateside

Wednesday, 7 April 2010

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is an institution of American TV. So how did John Oliver become its rising star?

Observations: A comic Strip in Westminster

Friday, 19 March 2010

Unofficially, the Houses of Parliament plays host to comedy every day, with its corridors full of bungling MPs and the Punch and Judy of Prime Minister's Questions.

The 100 club: Artists who signed up for comedian Josie Long’s self-improvement odyssey reveal fruits of their 100 days labour

Sunday, 7 March 2010

Can you become a better person in 100 days? The comedian Josie Long reckons so, as do the 900 people who signed up to her online movement and pledged to do one thing – from writing haikus to scrawling sketches – every day for three-and-a-half months. Robert Epstein sifts through the results

Alex Horne - How to invent a word

Tuesday, 16 February 2010

How hard can it be to break into the dictionary? Comedian Alex Horne recounts his long journey to linguistic immortality

Heard the one about Eddie Kadi and the O2?

Monday, 8 February 2010

From obscurity to sell-out: how a comedian from Congo hit the big time in London

Observations: Aczel is a shambles of a comic success

Friday, 15 January 2010

"There will be some mild amusement and a little boredom," says the comedian Ed Aczel, introducing his act. It's hardly the ringing endorsement that you would expect, but that's the way Aczel rolls.

Our culture critics’ picks for 2010

Friday, 1 January 2010

From Picasso’s politics to ‘The Prisoner’ and Beethoven to Big Boi, our experts choose their cultural highlights for the next 12 months

Comedy Store feud is no laughing matter

Wednesday, 30 December 2009

A bitter family legal battle threatens to undermine the future of Hollywood's most famous stand-up venue. Guy Adams reports from Los Angeles

Talent 2010: The comedians, Frisky & Mannish

Saturday, 26 December 2009

Meet Frisky and Mannish. Or, to give them their full names, Felicity Fitz-Frisky and Hansel Amadeus Mannish. Or, to give them their real names, Laura Corcoran and Matthew Jones. Together they form a comedy cabaret duo so deliriously entertaining, one hard-bitten critic was moved to declare: "If you don't enjoy this, you have no soul." The show which drew this breathless praise, alongside a cluster of five-star reviews at this year's Edinburgh Fringe, was School of Pop, a glorious hour which saw the pair sing and play their way through "twisted" musical parodies, retooling the Pussycat Dolls as end-of-the-pier entertainers and reading "Eternal Flame" as a stalker's rule-book. "We're trying to surprise people into laughing," explains Jones.