As the nation celebrates the 25th anniversary of Comic Relief, we discover a new kind of clowning which delivers a new kind of slapstick. The kind that makes you sit up and think. The innovative Social Clowns have developed the art of putting serious issues in the spotlight. ‘Sometimes people don’t really want to talk about stuff, they find it scary or difficult. We see our job as breaking down barriers. We ...

A sea of television comedy acts filled the yawning stretch of eternity known as New Year's Eve, and BBC 4 promised Simon Amstell's 'Numb' which toured the UK in 2012. Some stand-ups take unlikely situations to extreme conclusions, others invent larger than life characters, and there are those who avoid life's real problems by focussing on insignificant ones, exaggerating them until they become so ridiculous ...

He was not thrilled to be 'doing Crawley' on a Wednesday evening, poor thing. But spare a thought if you will for his poor audience. He tried to cheer us up with the idea that he disliked posher Dorking even more. It nearly worked. For Julian is an acquired and fairly expensive taste. An intelligent man with a once beautiful face, he stars on Radio 4's Just a Minute, frequently bringing more literary types ...

Wit Tank... A Laugh on the Dark Side Wit Tank out performed at the last minute to support Al Murray, Pub Landlord at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. They looked as if they had just met up in the sixth form centre and stayed behind after school. Three young, fresh-faced men who could have been brothers. Except that they are not. Kieran Boyd, Mark Cooper-Jones and Naz Osmanogru are all stand-ups in their own r ...