Mark Watson

Funny Way To Be announce autumn comedy gala

Giggle Beats can exclusively reveal that Mark Watson, the award winning stand-up, is to headline a comedy gala celebrating the re-opening of Barnard Castle's leading arts venue.

With the aid of string, a brace of willing stool pigeon comedians and a resident boffin, Dara O'Briain: School Of Hard Sums (Dave) is a noble attempt to cross-pollinate maths and comedy.

For me, it's rather more successful at multiplying giggles than explaining the intricacies of high-flown formulae but, hey, that's just the way my algorithms groove.

Under the banner title Does Crime Add Up? (just ask the Ndrangheta), Professor Marcus du Sautoy set O'Briain and the willing duo of Mark Watson and Andrew Maxwell the task of cracking assorted conundrums, from a relatively simple trick involving lining up in coloured hats to a mindbender of a murder mystery worthy of Poirot, wherein the lads had a high old time tracking the movements of a killer through a park, using mathematical logic to nail the killer.

No idea how they did it but it looked like a right old lark.

A new series of Dave's maths-themed quiz. Funnymen Andrew Maxwell and Mark Watson join Dara to figure out puzzles posed by Oxford professor Marcus du Sautoy. This week's conundrums include a take on a popular problem involving hats, and a murder that can only be solved using logic. A bunch of able students do the working-out with probability trees and wordy explanations, but the comics often come to the same conclusions, and viewers at home can pause and play along, too.

Does crime add up? That's the question providing the notional theme as maths mad Dara O'Briain returns with his brain-baffling numbers game. On a mission to persuade us that sums can actually be fun - as well as useful - O'Briain sets his guests, fellow comedians Mark Watson and Andrew Maxwell, a series of head-scratchers. Hopefully it's not every day we'll be asked to solve a murder mystery but a Cluedo-style puzzle is one of tonight's challenges, providing a jolly table-top adventure as the gathered throng try to work out whodunnit: the jogger, the park keeper, the dog walker or the parent with a toddler. You'll need a lot of string to solve it.

A second series of mathematical problem-solving, with Dara O'Briain now up against two arithmetically challenged comedians.

Andrew Maxwell and Mark Watson use trial, error and jokes, while O'Briain relies on his maths degree, with the contest refereed by Professor Marcus du Sautoy.

You'll want pen, paper and pause button to play along, especially for the teaser about people entering and exiting a park without their paths crossing, which could keep you going for hours.

What you might not see is which mathematical principle you're using - in fact they're oddly infrequent throughout. The comics' efforts to get laughs from bare terrain are remarkably successful, though.

My 25 hours of being funny for money

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