It is customary at this time of year to suggest stocking fillers - or should I say sack-fillers given that the most prized gifts from the comedy world will be the plethora of stand up DVDs currently available. Frankie Boyle, Michael McIntyre and Russell Howard spring to mind as good buys.

It goes without saying that someday you will be offended by a joke. You might have been one of those 30,000 recruits to the Brand/Ross complaints bandwagon, you might well have cringed when Billy Connolly made his infamous Ken Bigley joke a few years ago or you might hide behind the sofa when Frankie Boyle is in full swing with Madeleine McCann jokes to the right of him, paedophile jokes to the left of him.

"If I pull back this curtain you can see the rest of the venue. It's massive, and at the end of it there's a big picture of Lee Evans." So went Russell Howard's self-deprecating take on a concertinaed Wembley Arena and previous comics who filled the full version. Nevertheless, the gig rounds off a sold-out 70-date tour that has included a number of nights like this where Howard's audience has topped 3,500.

Last week’s row concerning Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand could be described as a culture war between those who respect traditional standards of decency, and those who don’t. It could be more precisely represented as a culture war in which the over 45s and the under 30s are pitted against one another.

There was a 10 per cent drop in ticket sales at this year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival box office, possibly due to a lack of public interest or thriftiness as recession looms. But this gig at central London's world-famous Comedy Store was sold out.

Regular viewers of Channel 4's Mock the Week tap into a rich vein of humour from some of the sharpest knives in the comedy drawer, including the presenter, Dara O'Briain, Andy Parsons and the young pretender Russell Howard. But one of the keenest blades is Frankie Boyle, the caustic one with the spectacles. So it was with high hopes that I went to see the scathing Scotsman on the Midlands leg of his first national tour.