COMEDY

"These days you can consume comedy more readily than ever before – there are pratfalls on YouTube and Peep Show on your BlackBerry, while all three seasons of Father Ted are now available as a zingy spearmint mouthwash.

For me, though, there’s still something too bitty about grabbing gobbets of comedy on the go. I’m also, incidentally, a horror to tell jokes to outside a darkened room – watch me screw up my face in alarm as I try to make sure I’m following you – while the last time somebody played a practical joke on me a clifftop mansion in Cornwall almost burnt down as a consequence.

But if you actually want to do a bit of comedy, rather than just watch it, and if you want a helping hand, well, you have got options. There are well-regarded stand-up courses such as those run in London by Logan Murray. Whether any of your fellow night-class students will be Grock-influenced class-warriors who perform in whiteface, as in Trevor Griffiths’s wonderful 1974 play The Comedians, we can only hope."

DOMINIC MAXWELL