Think comedy’s a man's world? You must be stuck in the 1980s, says Holly Williams

Comedy and booze go together, says stand-up Seann Walsh. Good gig? Celebrate with a drink. Bad gig? Consolation tipple. The trouble is stopping at just the one – he once drank so much he collapsed on stage. So when do the hangovers stop being funny?

Last year, Notaro contracted pneumonia, lost her beloved mother and broke up with her girlfriend. Then she was diagnosed with cancer. But she didn't let that stop her performing a gig in LA, which her friend Louis CK called a "truly great, masterful stand-up set"

I moved to England after having a gun held to my face I was in a situation with an old high-school buddy back in Georgia in the US, playing cards and gambling. He was on crack and he caught me cheating. That thing they say about your life flashing before your eyes – it's true. I'd always wanted to see England and I promised myself that, if I got out of that situation, I'd go. I was mad, too, that I'd got busted by a crackhead!

Hugh Montgomery profiles the faces to watch, from the sitcom star to the surrealist

'Most of what I write is really bad'

The political journalist takes his one-man show Rock N Roll Politics to the Fringe

Nick Clark meets a performer who wants to tell a different Arab story

Like an over-pampered pageant princess with underlying confidence issues, it seems that London can't quite leave Edinburgh alone to have its moment in the spotlight.

Alice Jones' Arts Diary

Last year, this critic was bowled over by the Australian comic Felicity Ward and her confessional tour-de-force The Hedgehog Dilemma. This time around, in Irregardless (Underbelly Bristo Square, underbelly.co.uk, Wed to 26 Aug, she's applying her spiky wit to topics including autotune and junkies.

He swapped the fame of Fantasy Football, 'Three Lions' and arena comedy gigs for a quiet life writing books and raising kids. So what has tempted David Baddiel back behind the mic?

A former comedian is on a serious mission to instil humour into our working lives – but this isn't about creating more David Brents, she tells Nick Harding

With the Edinburgh Fringe gooning for attention on the periphery of every stand-up's vision, much of Cambridge's bash has comics limbering up with their new stuff.

Why would a well-balanced, perfectly sane woman approaching middle age suddenly decide to become a stand-up comedian? And why would she then subject herself to playing 100 gigs in 100 nights? Blame the women who paved the way: the TV comedy goddesses of an earlier age.