Wow! It’s looking like a great start to the year for live comedy fans as a host of stars is set to warm the cockles of our hearts this winter. Lee Evans, Phil Kay, Victoria Wood, Jack Dee, Simon Munnery, Peter Searles, Dan Antopolski and John Moloney are all bound for these shores in the near future, we’ll keep you posted as to dates and times… It all kicks off tonight with john hegley in Belfast’s Waterfront Hall.

To counteract this invasion, Laughlines hears that several of our home grown talents are off to far flung places including Ian Coppinger and Brendan Dempsey who leave for Australia any minute now, and Michael Mee and Des Bishop who travel to New York for a series of shows this spring…

A must for all you electric woodbine fans out there is the Smuggler’s Tour, hosted by Snowblind writer Robert Sabbag and featuring spoken word contributions by Howard Marks and fellow importer Allen Long, which visits Vicar St., Dublin on February 18th. Hope we’re allowed smoke. Incidentally, Robert Sabbag’s follow-up to the epic Snowblind, titled Smokescreen is now available.

The Comedy Cellar at The International Bar continues to pack them in, and all the old favourites were back in January including Michael Downey, who appears to have adopted a new-year’s resolution of never telling the same gag twice, and Tommy Nicholsan, who admitted to Laughlines’ female companion that he was in fact married…

Tongue-Tied Comedy Agency supremo (or should that be supreme-ess) Fiona Byrne kindly agreed to be interviewed by Hoot Press in a forthcoming issue, promising to lift the lid on the cess-pool that is Irish comedy and tell us who is gay and who does drugs, who is a prima donna and which famous double-act refused to share a limousine in real life. Actually, maybe we’ll sell the story to The Sindo…

Phantom FM’s Thursday Challenge crew continue to offer their particular brand of mayhem from 8pm. Tony Diviney’s still our favourite though, particularly the phone call to RTE when he attempts to purchase tickets for Kilcoran’s next game. That’s the On Home Ground GAA team for the uninitiated. The confused RTE telephonist explains that you can’t get tickets because “It’s fictionalised!”.

Great to see RTE’s New Comedy Awards finalists continuing to gig all over the country. Jerome Holland was tearing it up in Galway recently and Neil Delamere hasn’t stopped since walking away with the top-prize. That’s the spirit. Perhaps Louis Walsh should maybe start to sign comedians…

Speaking of Louis, did anyone else think that Popstars was the funniest thing on TV this season? It should be interesting to see what they come up with since the candidates obviously have no interest in music whatsoever but will do anything, that’s ‘anything’, to become ‘famous’.

Hmmm. Many thanks to the kind person who sent me the Frank Skinner autobiography this Christmas. I loved it, despite the fact that he’s a teetotal football fanatic who’s also a staunch Catholic and I’m an alcoholic agnostic whose only exciting experience on a terrace happened in a house on Celtic Park Avenue in 1978…

Mind you, I love Apres Match and I’m thrilled that their Vicar St run has been extended (again) until January 20th. Send me free tickets to the usual address Sorcha...