Will Adamsdale

20 questions: Will Adamsdale

The award-winning writer, actor and comedian brings his new show Borders to The Invisible Dot this week.

Will Adamsdale: a joyous return

Where the hell is Will Adamsdale? This is a question that Fringe stalwarts have been asking since the comedian-cum-raconteur's last show in 2007 - and if they haven't, they bloody well should have been.

Will Adamsdale on comedy today

The comedian returns to the Fringe 10 years after winning the Perrier award at the first time of asking. How has comedy changed? And what is comedy anyway?

Stewart Lee returns and Will Adamsdale put his back out

The 'saint of division and dissent' is back in town with a new show, Much A-Stew About Nothing, but audiences will have to wait for their latest sighting of the 2004 Perrier award winner Adamsdale, who is presumably in agony.

Will Adamsdale interview

Will Adamsdale was an actor who became a comedian by mistake.

Coming from the makers of the the superbly surreal and absurd Green Wing, the show [Campus] about the fortunes of staff at the troubled Kirke University certainly sounds promising and features top talent such as Andy Nyman and Will Adamsdale.

However, judging by the short teasers currently being screened between scheduled programmes it's about as funny as a man with a loudhailer and a girl accidentily locking herself to a bike rack.

Oh, wait a minute, did you just say those are the funny bits Channel 4 is trying to sell it with? Oh dear.

Not before time, the creator of Smack the Pony and Green Wing, Victoria Pile, is returning with a new comedy. Campus, set in the fictional Kirke University, will screen on Channel 4 from 5 April. The semi-improvised sitcom piloted on the channel's Comedy Showcase in 2009 when it attracted good reviews and a smattering of criticism for describing Stephen Hawking as a "famously disabled spastic" in the first minute. I've now seen the first two episodes and can confirm that that joke, from David Brent-esque vice chancellor Jonty de Wolfe (Andy Nyman), has made the cut, but there is still much to appreciate in Campus. Like Green Wing, the hour-long episodes have a surreal, stop-start momentum, a woozy soundtrack from Jonathan Whitehead and a familiar cast of characters: lecherous lecturer Matt Beer and bespectacled spod Imogen Moffatt are already set to be the show's Guy and Caroline. Watch out, too, for the administrative office, staffed by rising stars Sara Pascoe and Will Adamsdale.

Will Adamsdale: the guru of nonsense

Looking for a new you for the new year? Well, help is at hand. Brian Logan meets a 'motivational life coach' with a difference.

At first blush, Earls of the Court (Wednesdays, Radio 4, 11pm) was a bizarre attempt to give us Flight of the Conchords again and hope we wouldn't notice. Two Antipodean innocents - Australians in this case - at large in London, give us a break . On second listening, though, there is a lot more subtlety to Stewart Wright and Will Adamsdale's six-part series, in which they also star as Lloydie and Johnno respectively. In fact, this could be the first example of post-millennial credit crunch expatriate comedy, no small achievement.

Lloydie and Johnno came over to Britain in 1996, when life was easy and any Aussie who couldn't get a job working behind a bar just wasn't trying. But things have changed - though not for Lloydie. He's been away from Britain for years, most recently being fired from a French ski resort, where his rugged attitude towards having fun is no longer cool. Johnno, too, has lost his job, but he is still living in the house that he and Lloydie once shared with a random assortment of other expats.

Lloydie invites himself back to crash in Johnno's shared house for a night that, everyone knows, means a month. Only the other housemates don't know that. There are complaints when Lloydie tries to turn the hallway from an internet centre back into a crazy-golf course. The other housemates conspire to get Johnno and Lloydie turfed out of the house, so they go to live with Johnno's girlfriend ("We're not living with her," Johnno says. "I'm living with her. You're just crashing").

So - two old friends reunited, one of them out of touch with a changed world. It's not Flight of the Conchords, it's Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads. And none the worse for that.