Ivor Dembina's Ten Quid New Year's Eve
London
New Year's Eve has always been a great opportunity to get ripped off something rotten, and comedy clubs have proved especially astute at squeezing a few extra quid out of punters in search of a few festive laughs. Many clubs simply book the same old comics, and expect you to pay two or even three times the usual price to see them. A noble exception to this avaricious rule is Ivor Dembina's Ten Quid New Year's Eve. The headline act is Britain's most prolific stand-up poet, John Hegley, performing with his old backing band, The Popticians. And if you think a poetry recital is far too tame a way to see in the new year, think again. Hegley cut his comic teeth at the original Comedy Store and his manic mandolin playing has to be seen to be believed.
· Chats Palace Arts Centre, E9, New Year's Eve
Shazia Mirza
Perth
It's an ill wind. Five and a half years ago Shazia Mirza was just another jobbing club comic, with one small difference: she was a Muslim. Then 9/11 happened, and everyone seemingly started crying out for a funny, friendly face of Islam. "My name is Shazia Mirza," she told the audience at Amused Moose in Soho. "At least, that's what it says on my pilot's licence." That joke brought the house down, and she hasn't looked back since. She's played comedy clubs in New York and San Francisco. She's been written up in Newsweek magazine. She's been voted Asian Woman Of The Year by Cherie Blair. But she had the wisdom and humility to realise it was all too much too soon. "All of a sudden I was well known," she told an interviewer, "but for what I was, not for what I was doing." Since then the gags have got even better: "I've never drunk alcohol. I've never smoked. I've never gambled. I've taken ecstasy, though. There's nothing in the Koran about that."
· City Nightclub, Fri 5
Ken Dodd
On tour
Ken Dodd will be 80 years old next year, but thankfully there's still no sign of him hanging up his tickle stick. He did his first show when he was a schoolboy, and turned professional over 50 years ago. He still gigs several times a week, all around the country, performing marathon shows which would severely test the stamina of a comic half his age. "If you don't laugh at the jokes," he says, "I'll follow you home and shout them through your letterbox." However, Doddy isn't just the hardest-working man in showbusiness. He's a slice of showbiz history, a living relic of a seemingly forgotten world where variety artistes played twice nightly every night in hundreds of theatres across the country. Most of those theatres are, alas, long gone, along with many of the acts who played them, but Dodd provides us with a welcome glimpse into that lost age when comedy really was fun for all the family - and every comedian could sing and dance as well.
· The Marine Hall, Fleetwood, New Year's Day; Civic Hall, Ellesmere Port, Wed 3
