Tim Vine has announced his first stand-up tour in four years. The punslinger is back with new jokes, silly songs and – as if that weren’t enough – twitchy dancing. It’s a case of joke, joke, joke, prop, prop, prop, song, song, song. The tour starts in Bristol, aptly, on April Fool's Day, 2015 and finishes in Southend on June 12.

A new batch of BBC Comedy Feeds pilots, due to be released in July, have been announced today. All nine comedy pilots have been commissioned for iPlayer and BBC Three by Shane Allen, Controller BBC Comedy, Victoria Jaye, Head of TV Content for BBC iPlayer and Zai Bennett, former Controller BBC Three. 

This year’s Comedy Feeds include:

Eddie Izzard is to play a one-off show at Croydon's Fairfield Halls to raise money for his favourite football club Crystal Palace. Izzard will be headlining a line-up that also includes Mark Steel and Holly Walsh. Kevin Hunter Day and Jim Piddock will be sharing compering duties. The show, entitled Stand Up For The Palace, takes place on Thursday, July 17. All proceeds from the event will go to the Crystal Palace Football Club Academy. Izzard became an Associate Director of the Premier League club in 2012.

Critics are constantly bemoaning the lack of cutting edge, hard-hitting political engagement on the comedy circuit these days. These must be the critics who don't get out much, or they would have come across the work of Josie Long, Tiernan Douieb and Chris Coltrane to name three. And then there is Matt Forde, who has crossed the metaphorical chamber as it were and gone from being a political advisor to the Labour Party to being a stand-up comedian.