Jack Dee

Jack Dee in Dubai - interview

Laconic comedian Jack Dee on touring, sitcoms, Dubai and fellow comic Josh Widdicombe.

Exclusive: Latitude festival comedy line-up announced

Latitude's full line-up is announced tomorrow but we can exclusively reveal the star comedy names today. Stand-ups include Jason Manford, Alan Davies, Jack Dee and, most excitingly, America's Rob Delaney, who has just made a splash in the UK as co-star of painfully realistic C4 romcom Catastrophe. There is also a strong selection of female comics, with pithy feminist Sara Pascoe, storyteller Sarah Kendall, frighteningly frank Shappi Khorsandi and ventriloquist Nina Conti.

Radio Times review

Sometimes this celebrity whinge party gets up a head of comic steam. The mix of guests doesn't always gel but when it does - as here - you feel as if you're eavesdropping on a heated chat in a pub full of famous people.

In this episode that means Gary Lineker, Jack Dee and Fay Ripley offering up their personal peeves: Dee hates white vans and hand dryers; Lineker hates internet trolls; Ripley hates jeggings - and people who tell the truth.

In railing against "people who tell it like it is" Ripley includes a nice story of meeting up with an actress she used to work with, whose deflating first words were "Oh Fay! Oh my God, how we've all aged!"

Radio Times review

"I'm quite surprised they've let me on as well," Frankie Boyle tells his audience before he insults the celebrity guests and makes tasteless jokes about Glasgow's view of Hepatitis B and Oscar Pistorius's future girlfriends. He counters this with "If you are offended by any jokes tonight, feel free to tweet your outrage on a mobile phone made by a 10-year-old in China." Boyle isn't to everyone's taste, but this crowd isn't affronted by anything.

Also on the bill are Aisling Bea (riffing on the joys of sitting down and doing nothing) and growly-voiced Simon Evans, whose witty Jack Dee-style take on life is delivered with the occasional smile. Or maybe grimace.

The show about opinion polls, surveys and statistics is back for its 18th series, and provides plenty of raw material for the comedians to come up with hilarious gags.

Jimmy Carr returns as host, with his classic sardonic delivery and infamous laugh.

"It's a honk," he explains. "My laugh has its own Facebook page!"

Team captains Jon Richardson and Sean Lock are also back, and they're joined by comedian Jack Dee, Radio 1 DJ Gemma Cairney and comic Rob Beckett in the first episode.

Opinion: why is comedy hooked on misery?

Comedy loves misery. That's the theory. That's why grumpy Tony Hancock was so funny. That's why Les Dawson made a hit out of rarely cracking a smile. And more recently Jack Dee's perma-scowl has been part of the secret of his success.

Edinburgh comedy awards: explore all the winners

From Cambridge Footlights in 1981 to Bridget Christie in 2013, explore the history of the Foster's Edinburgh comedy awards. Find out who won, who they beat and how the art of comedy changed each year. When did standup come to the fore rather than sketch humour? Who was the first female winner? Who won in the year that Jack Dee, Lily Savage and Frank Skinner were in the running? The winners of this year's awards will be announced on 23 August.

10 best things to see at the Edinburgh Fringe 2014

Muslim female boxers, freak yogurt accidents, Dr Seuss with bouncing balls, a grumpy Jack Dee and a live outing for Whose Line Is It Anyway? Here's what caught our eye at the world's largest arts festival