Comedy

Join Gavin & Stacey's writer and performer team – James Corden and Ruth Jones – as they tell the backstage story of this multi-award-winning BBC show and how its audience grew from 500,000 to 23 million. In this exclusive Hay Festival event, the pair talk to Hay Festival Global Chair Jay Hunt about the show's origins, its meteoric rise, and that epic Christmas special, as well as sharing insights into their 25-year friendship, working relationship. Together they have written When Gavin Met Stacey and Everything in Between: A Story of Love and Friendship, out later this year.

Mark Watson is generally accepted to be alive. And yet he’s died many times. Not just on stage – though he’ll tell you about that – but in other ways, too. There’s been the death of a childhood dream. The death of his panel-show career. And then there was the time he died inside and nearly lost it all…

Revealing and painfully funny, Mark will tell us all about mortification, failure and the times life doesn’t work out as planned. But he also wisely questions whether the things we strive for – recognition, success, the approval of others – are really the things that matter. He might be talking about death, but he reminds us how to live.

There’s no show like a Jason Byrne No Show. No Show is a show with no comedy safety net. By the end of No Show you’ll have experienced a once in a lifetime show or No Show. Jason, along with the audience, will begin No Show with no show whatsoever. Witness Jason use his infamous audience interactions with a sprinkle of props, both on and off the stage, to create No Show!

The biggest selling comedian at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Jason’s inspired, original brand of high-energy intelligent lunacy ensures that there is no other comedian like him, and his sell-out shows have attracted accolades including the Perrier Newcomer Award Nomination and the Perrier Award Nomination. His television work includes Live at the Apollo (BBC One), Comedy Annual (ITV1) and The Channel 4 Comedy Gala (Channel 4).

Marcel Lucont (Comedy Central at the Comedy Store, Sky Atlantic’s Set List, BBC1’s John Bishop Show) presents a feast of international cabaret, coming to Hay Festival for one night only! Cabaret Fantastique has no fixed abode – a cult hit at festivals worldwide, each programme of entertainment is handpicked by Marcel. You’ll be served up a luscious plate of the finest performers from the world of cabaret, comedy, circus, poetry, magic and music, all held together with dry wit and a dry white.

The show has been a sell-out success at Soho’s Crazy Coqs for the past seven years, featuring a different line-up each night, and has been staged at London Wonderground and Glastonbury Festival among others. “Debaucherous, delightful and debonair, Marcel Lucont knows how to put on one hell of a show” PerthNow, Fringe World Festival.

The UK’s most apologetically posh comedian shares a deep dive into the various facepalms of his recent past, and a live diary of his unravelling present.

After coming last by quite a distance on Taskmaster Series 15, and seeing his emotional frailties laid bare in a series of memes of him with his head in his hands, Ivo Graham is adapting to an increasingly irreversible reputation as a man better known for his chaos than his comedy.

Longer-term resolutions of rest and relaxation can wait; in the meantime he’s trying to host the greatest club night of all time, run a Sub-3 marathon while pushing a wheelchair, and put his heart on the line in a show unlike anything he’s ever done before. Can these dreams become a reality, or will they just become more yardsticks for failure?

Al Murray is back with his alter ego, the Pub Landlord, making sense of the questions you probably already had the answers to but want to discuss anyway. In Guv Island, the Pub Landlord takes a look at politics, TikTok addiction and more.

Murray has toured as the Pub Landlord for more than 20 years and won accolades including the Edinburgh Comedy Award. His books include Watching War Films with My Dad and, most recently, Command, an entertaining and sharp analysis of the key allied military leaders in World War II.

With whip-smart wit and a cavalcade of cads, dashing gents and fierce heroines, this is a legendary comedy experience for Austen fans and newcomers alike!

Austentatious is the improvised Jane Austen novel which has become a West End institution. Marking Austen’s 250th birthday this year, an all-star cast in full costume takes an audience suggestion for an unknown Jane Austen book, and then you watch it unfold before your eyes. Previous suggestions have included Mansfield Shark, Double O Darcy, Bend It Like Bennet and The Taking of Pemberley 123.

Austentatious took the Edinburgh Fringe by storm in 2012, and from those humble roots has continued to grow and grow, performing everywhere from the RSC in Stratford to Hampton Court Palace.

Welsh comedian Kiri Pritchard-McLean, host of Radio 4 panel show Best Medicine, hosts a night of comedy with Michael Akadiri and Fatiha El-Ghorri.

As well as performing comedy, Akadiri works as a junior doctor in the NHS. His natural charm and cheeky, observational style have made an impact, and he’s the inaugural winner of the Komedia New Comedy Award. He has a growing list of TV and radio credits, from Comedy Central Live to BBC Radio 4’s Loose Ends.

Underneath Fatiha El-Ghorri’s colourful hijab is a mind full of cutting observations and engaging witticisms on the life and times of a British Muslim woman. She smashes Muslim stereotypes and challenges people to think about what they think they know about Islam, Muslims, and Muslim women especially. She’s appeared on The Jonathan Ross Show, The Russell Howard Hour, Outsiders and the BBC New Comedy Awards.

“I feel like there’s a leopard in my house, locked in a room. I’ve contacted the leopard authorities and they assure me they are used to dealing with leopards like this, and they have a plan for removing the leopard. It will take a while, though, and once in a while I can hear it growl. And that’s all very reassuring. Even so, several times a day I think to myself: ‘Hang on, there’s a leopard in my house.’”

One morning, while shaving, comedian Mark Steel noticed that one side of his neck seemed larger than the other. After a whistlestop tour of assorted medical professionals, a consultant delivered the ominous words that would define the next months of his life: “I’m afraid it’s not good news, Mr Steel.” And so began a journey into the heart of the NHS, as he embarked on the long and uncertain road to cancer recovery via a range of mildly tortuous and entirely miraculous treatments. What, if anything, might he learn about himself – and our capacity for coping with life when times get tough – as he becomes part of a club that one in two British people will ultimately join?

What are men for? Most heavy things can be lifted by machines and most problems can be solved by computers and most puddles can be crossed without us gallantly draping our capes over them – so are we fellas of any use at all? Award-winning man Marcus Brigstocke thinks we might still serve some useful function. But what is it?

This new show will resolve the entire issue once and for all (in a non-patriarchal, open minded, progressive sort of way). DaVinci’s Vitruvian Man is the image of the ideal male form. Brigstocke’s Vitruvian Mango is the same, but sweeter, softer, seasonally available and, when ripe, delicately perfumed.

The hilarious Adam Buxton, of comedy duo Adam and Joe, shares his follow-up to Ramble Book with broadcaster Samira Ahmed. I Love You, Byeee is a second volume of wonderfully idiosyncratic memoirs that veer off on unexpected tangents and cover topics from David Bowie to parenthood.

Joe Cornish, David Bowie, Louis Theroux, The Adam & Joe Show, Stephen!, Rosie – the great and the good of the wonderful world of Dr Buckles all make an appearance as Adam explores the joys of comedy. He also navigates adulthood, losing loved ones and working out how to be a parent. Full of funny anecdotes, cut through with Adam’s rambling asides – buckle up for a delightful event about growing up, growing old and figuring it all out.

Prepare for brutal honesty and lots of laughter as friends Kathy Lette and Ruby Wax discuss growing older, the problems and joys of being a feminist of a certain age, and how to deal with life-changing events.

The pair, who met in the 1990s, look at their work and lives, and give a glimpse into their friendship. Lette’s latest book HRT: Husband Replacement Therapy is an outrageously funny, heartbreaking novel about a woman who is diagnosed with cancer on the eve of her 50th birthday, and who decides to start living instead of complying.

Lette has written 20 books and has recently completed a tour of her one-woman show, Girls Night Out. Wax is a comedian, performer and bestselling author who also campaigns on mental health.

Comedy powerhouse Katherine Ryan performs a routine that will make you laugh until you cry. Ryan has recently been touring her new stand-up show Battleaxe, which includes discussions about her marriage and family, and looks at how male comedians reacted to revelations about sexual misconduct in the industry.

The award-winning comedian, writer, presenter and actor has starred in a number of television shows and performed the stand-up specials In Trouble and Glitter Room for Netflix. She is a regular on our screens, with multiple appearances on game shows including Celebrity Gogglebox, Never Mind The Buzzcocks and A League Of Their Own.

Her debut book The Audacity went straight into the Sunday Times bestseller list and her podcast Telling Everybody Everything frequently tops the charts.

The original People’s Poet comes storming out of the gate to share his uproarious new poetry collection. James Brown, John F Kennedy, Jesus Christ: nobody is safe from the punk rocker’s acerbic pen – and that’s just the first poem.

Don’t miss this opportunity to hear the dazzling, scabrous voice of Dr John Cooper Clarke for yourself – it’s reverberated through pop culture for decades, his influence on generations of performance poets and musicians plain for all to see. WHAT is his most trenchant collection of poems yet, vivid and alive, and eclectic as only a life as varied and extraordinary as Cooper Clarke’s could summon. He talks to journalist Miranda Sawyer.

Before comedian Chris McCausland wowed audiences on Strictly Come Dancing, he spent years honing his stand-up skills and appearing on some of the UK’s best-loved panel shows, from Have I Got News for You to The Last Leg.

And yet, he’s still often called an ‘overnight success’, despite being on the stand-up scene for years. Join McCausland for a masterclass in stand-up comedy, one that has been yonks in the making!

Mars: humanity’s next moonshot? Or massive, expensive, ethically complicated suck pile? Let’s find out!

There’s a lot to be excited about on Mars, it’s true. But Teslas in Space aside, very few talk about what it really means to build a settlement on another planet: we’re asking female astronauts to give birth and raise babies on Mars. And we don’t entirely know what’s going to happen when they do. Some fantastic and weird new scientific research is starting to shed light on that problem–mostly by hurling pregnant rodents into space!–but a lot like the knowledge gap around women’s health here on Earth, we actually aren’t sure how those intrepid space frontierswomen will fare. We do know that Mars only has 38% of Earth’s gravity. We do know that radiation is bad. And we know that the human body has long evolved to live—and make babies!—on Earth. So what might it really look like to be pregnant, give birth, and nurse babies on Mars? And how can we help these poor women?

Bohannon’s Eve: How The Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution was Foyle’s Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2023, and Weinersmith’s A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? won the 2024 Royal Society Science Book Prize. Join Cat and Kelly for a science comedy fashion show, where models and dancers will present new wearables on a hilarious science-focused catwalk. Each piece is designed in collaboration with Cat, Kelly, and a prominent feminist artist, using the latest cutting-edge scientific research to model what pregnant and postpartum bodies might really need to make it on Mars.

The wearables and artworks for Moms on Mars are conceived and created by a team of feminist artists and scientists including Cat, Kelly, Zach Weinersmith, Lucy McRae, Erika Moen, Jenna Woolf, Ani Liu, and Hazel Lee Santino.

Comedian Suzi Ruffell takes a funny and moving look at some of the big questions of modern life, from whether peaking in school messes you up forever to the best way – scientifically – to mend a broken heart.

Ruffell shares stories from her memoir Am I Having Fun Now? and discusses masking anxiety with musical theatre, her obsession with the Titanic, and coming out, falling in love and becoming a parent.

The award-winning stand-up comedian, writer, radio presenter and podcast host appears regularly on TV favourites such as Live at the Apollo and Mock the Week, and sells out headline shows at leading venues around the country.

British-Sikh comedian Daman Bamrah hosts a night of comedy with Desiree Burch and Huge Davies. Bamrah is a rapidly emerging comedian known for his topical writing, acute observations and imaginative storytelling.

Desiree Burch is an NY-to-London transplant. She quickly and firmly established herself as one of the UK’s breakout comic stars, winning the 2015 Funny Women Award. Host and voice of Netflix’s smash reality hit Too Hot Too Handle, she also recently hosted BBC2’s Live at the Apollo. Her TV credits include the BBC’s Have I Got News For You and C4’s Taskmaster.

Huge Davies combines a confident on-stage presence with dark humour, surreal material and his one-of-kind customised keyboard. His first show, The Carpark, received an Edinburgh Comedy Award Nomination for Best Newcomer, and on transferring to the Soho Theatre was featured as Time Out’s No.1 comedy show to see. His sitcom The Artists is on Channel 4.

Comedian and musician Rob Deering presents Beat This, the live-music, stand-up comedy game show. Deering delivers mash-ups, megamixes and mayhem, as four great guests from across the Festival compete to win this pop quiz with a difference.

A twenty-first century one man band, Deering creates “a highly impressive one-man soundscape powered mainly by energy and excellent guitar skills” (The Scotsman) at the centre of this fun show. It’s a festival favourite from the Edinburgh Fringe, Green Man, Machynlleth Comedy Festival, Latitude and more, making its Hay Festival debut in 2025.

“As sharp and versatile as a Swiss Army knife” – The Independent.

“Hello to you, I am with news. I have a new book: I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest with You. I know – what an intriguing title!”

Comedian Miranda Hart has been keeping a secret or two, but she’s ready to reveal all now. From surprising joys to challenging lows, via love and chronic illness, Hart shares the values and practical tools that led her to a sense of freedom, joy and physical recovery she never would have thought possible. Life now, amazingly, with what she will share, is – SUCH FUN!

Hart is a writer, comedian and actor. She is best known for her much-loved and multi-award-winning sitcom Miranda, as well as her BAFTA-nominated role of Chummy in Call the Midwife. She is the first female comedian to do an arena stand-up tour with her ‘My, What I Call, Live Show’.