The New Year starts with a blast from the past: Lenny Henry returns to the live arena with a date at London's Hackney Empire (12 January), temporarily forsaking his senior role as TV writer-star-producer in order to stand on a stage in front of 3,000 people and tell jokes.
Other TV-polished acts returning to the basics of theatre include Victoria Wood, at the Royal Albert Hall (6-12 September), and the League of Gentlemen - though you can probably expect their show at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane (12-19 March) to be rather more elaborately staged than the average stand-up show.
For a rawer and broader look at the modern comedy circuit, the place to be this winter is the Leicester Comedy Festival (9-18 February), where a big and talented cross-section of comedians will perform longer-than-usual sets. Much the same can be said for the Newcastle Comedy Festival (November), though at least the host city is more exciting. There's a similar bill, too, at the Kilkenny Comedy Festival in Ireland (31 May-5 June), but with the added attractions of warmer weather and a more charming locale, plus endless cheap pints of Murphy's, the brewery that sponsors the event.
By this point, many acts will be honing the one-hour shows that they will take into the month-long madness of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (5-27 August), by far the biggest comedy event (and, despite all the competing attractions of theatre, music, dance and juggling, it is essentially a comedy event) in the European calendar. For those unable or unwilling to brave the snaking queues of American tourists, though, it's worth going to the BACS Festival (July) at Battersea Arts Centre, where the hottest acts iron out the flaws in their shows in front of smaller and less critical audiences.
In September you can see the results of the Edinburgh Festival in the shapes of the winners and nominees of the Perrier Award, who play three consecutive Sunday nights at Her Majesty's Theatre. Predictions of who might be performing on those nights are far too risky to mean much at this distance, but it might be worth a long-term, each-way bet on Dave Gorman (who was nominated last year), Omid Djalili (who should have been) and Noble & Silver (who won the Perrier Best Newcomer award).
Noble & Silver are among several innovative live acts being given the chance to make their own television show by the main terrestrial broadcasters through the medium of new digital channels. In their case, it is Channel 4's brand new E4, which starts transmission this month and will feature experimental arts and entertainment programmes.
The probability is that few people will watch it, but those few will be highly important television producers who will use the channel as a testing ground for new talent. This process has already worked in the case of Simon Munnery (see panel) who hosted two series for the BBC-owned UK Play.
Closer to the TV mainstream, the hottest expectations surround the second series of Spaced! on BBC2, which will do well to maintain the critical and commercial success it achieved at the end of its first run, and Sacha Baron Cohen's first foray into televisual comedy post-Ali G, with what Channel 4 are describing as a 'Jewish family sitcom'.
Less intensely anticipated is the new series by Baron Cohen's former 11 O'Clock Show cohort Iain Lee, who will then either disappear from our screens entirely or become the newer, thinner version of Nick Hancock.
My Highlight of the Coming Year
Attention Scum is not perhaps the most ingratiating of titles, but here at least is a comedy TV show that does not treat its viewers like imbeciles. It is the creation of Simon Munnery, who has been one of the most innovative, intelligent and acclaimed comics in Britain for the past five years, but who can still walk the streets of London with his unmistakably weird and ratlike face going completely unrecognised. Munnery's curse and gift is to be ahead of his time, which makes it entirely appropriate that he should finally become famous in that most futuristic-sounding of years, 2001.
For, while British television has spent the Nineties awash with mediocre stand-ups like Phill Jupitus and Lee Hurst, Munnery, whose live show has always been centred around the televisual image, has been banished to its edges, too smart and proud to appear on dumb gameshows, mobile phone adverts and The National Lottery Show. Then again, Camelot would hardly be likely to sanction a comic character whose act contains the line: 'Is life so unfair that we need a lottery and a justice system? Oh yes, we punish the guilty and reward randomly chosen people.'
This is not Munnery himself speaking, but his fascistic alter-ego, The League Against Tedium, an alien Nietzschean superbeing who assails his audience with home-made cartoons; self-glorifying slogans ('Fluent in 99 languages! Inventor of 98 languages!'); violent threats ('He who disagrees with me in private, call him a fool. He who disagrees with me in public, call him an ambulance'); and wise sayings ('Many are willing to suffer for their art. Few are willing to learn to draw'). Every line is delivered in a robotic, high-pitched whine, spoken so quickly that you are left straining to keep up.
The advance word on Attention Scum has been almost breathlessly positive. Industry insiders have described it as 'awesome' and 'unique', and it is top of most people's lists for the comedy show they're most looking forward to in 2001. I heard the same kind of superlatives just before Black Books came out, and look how good that was. Conventional wisdom may suggest that a comedy show presented by a nerdy-looking man who hates his viewers will go down like a lead balloon, but as The League Against Tedium himself says: 'If conventional wisdom is a forest, then I am a chainsaw.'
Attention Scum goes out on Sundays at 11.15pm on BBC2, starting on 18 February. BBC Choice viewers can see it from Tuesday at 10.30pm
