Politics, as the saying goes, is showbusiness for ugly people. Having had a go at one career, former Liberal Democrat MP Lembit Opik is now trying his hand at the other, hoping to carve himself an unlikely niche as a stand-up comedian.

Ex-MP Lembit Opik said today he wanted to see whether stand-up comedy was "like being an MP but a bit funnier" as he prepared for his first gig.

John Cleese is to embark on his first-ever UK tour next year at the age of 71. The comedian, who recently agreed a divorce settlement believed to be in the region of £12m, has dubbed it the "Alimony Tour".

Magners Pear Cider and The Independent have teamed up for a night of laughs with some of the best UK-based breakthrough comedians at The Roundhouse, London on the 11th November and The Glee Club, Birmingham on the 18th November. We’ve got five pairs of tickets to giveaway for this invite-only gig at both venues.

Regulator Ofcom imposed an £80,000 fine today after a prize-fix incident at ITV1's British Comedy Awards which wrongly named Ant and Dec as the People's Choice winners.

He riffs quirkily on which animals he could (or couldn't) fit into and the domestic conundrums of characters called Gladys and Anne – but the performance poet and stand-up Tim Key was speechless when he won the main Edinburgh festival comedy award yesterday.

A comedian is being sued by her mother-in-law after making her the punchline of too many jokes.

Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer hit out at the "stale" and old-fashioned state of comedy nowadays.

Possibly the only comedian to have received both a Sony Award and a Kurdish National Congress Medal of Honour, Mark Thomas (www.markthomasinfo.com) is as renowned for his political activism as he is for his hearty yet acerbic stand-up.