Entertainment Comedy

Over the course of a year, award-winning comedian Rachel Parris asked members of her live audience for advice. Here she takes those random bits of wisdom - such as 'Be Kind' or 'Never Pass Up the Opportunity for a Wee' - and explores them in ways that are funny and serious, hilarious and heartbreaking. This uplifting feminist manifesto of a book outlines the essentials of living in the modern world; dealing with everything from tampons to Tories and from #hashtags to staying hydrated.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Monty: His Part in My Victory, written and read by Spike Milligan. 'It's all over. Von Arnheim has surrendered, and he's very angry.' 'This could mean war....' The third volume of Spike Milligan's laugh-a-line account of life as a gunner in World War Two resumes on the eve of victory in North Africa.

Back in 1972, people had never heard of Samantha, Sven, nor Mrs. Trellis, and had no idea of the rules of Mornington Crescent, nor what points are for. The year 2022 marks 50 years of radio insanity—of the nation's finest comic minds being given silly things to do, with some of them set to music. Celebrate the Golden Anniversary of the greatest radio comedy of all time, the antidote to panel games, with the epic and exhaustive, fully authorized history of both I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again and its beloved spin-off, I'm Sorry, I Haven't a Clue.

Growing up, Jena Friedman didn’t care about being likable. And she never wanted to be a comedian, either. She wouldn’t discover her knack for the funny business until research for her college thesis led her to take an improv class in Chicago. That anthropology paper, written on race, class, and gender in the city’s comedy scene, was, in Jena’s own words, “just as funny as it sounds.” But it did lay the groundwork for a career that has seen her write and produce for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, the Late Show with David Letterman, and the Oscar-nominated Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.

In What Would Susie Say?, Susie Essman sheds the crasser layers to reveal how she went from an anxiety-ridden, struggling stand-up comic to being one of the funniest women on television, playing Susie Greene on HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Popular Instagram artist Beth Evans tackles a range of issues - from whimsical musings to deeply personal struggles - in this imaginative anti-guide to being your own person. Like Mindy Kaling meets Hyperbole and a Half, I Really Didn’t Think This Through gets at the heart of what makes life both so challenging and so joyful - figuring out how to be a person in the world.

In Seven Dirty Words, journalist and cultural critic James Sullivan tells the story of Alternative America from the 1950s to the present, from the singular vantage point of George Carlin, the Catholic boy for whom nothing was sacred.

Following her success with Playboy Swings, Patty Farmer looks at Playboy’s relationship with comedians and cartoonists in her new book Playboy Laughs. Playboy Laughs invites listeners onto the sets of the organization’s groundbreaking TV shows, Playboy Penthouse and Playboy After Dark. These popular variety series brought top-tier comedians, impressionists, and monologists—as well as the finest musicians—into people’s homes each week.

Mike Epps is one of America’s favorite and funniest people, but the path to fame was paved with opportunities to mess it up. And mess it up he did. Growing up in “Naptown” - what people who live there really call rough-around-the-edges Indianapolis - Epps was drawn to a life of crime, but as he quickly discovered, stealing and dealing didn’t really fit his sweet sensibilities. Not to mention he wasn’t very good at it - take, for example, the day he had to call the cops on himself when a dog wouldn’t let him leave a house he was burgling.

There was a time when Ralphie May was one of the biggest stand-up comedians in the country, both by ticket sales and by tonnage. While some things changed - Ralphie lost half his body weight - others did not: He will be remembered as one of the most successful comics of his time. Completed just months before his untimely passing, in This Might Get a Little Heavy, Ralphie takes listeners on a behind-the-scenes tour of his life and career, one that winds across the country, over obstacles, beyond heartbreak, and through the golden age of stand-up.

Hello there. Welcome to my autobiography. Throughout this audiobook I talk about my life and work, including Little Britain, Come Fly with Me, Bridesmaids, Les Miserables, Alice in Wonderland and, of course, Shooting Stars. The thing is, this is a bit different to most memoirs you may have listened to, because it comes in the form of an A-Z. Anyway, I hope you buy it at least twice. Thank you.

Tumbling from one love entanglement to another, 30-something teacher Izzy Comyn has a predilection for inappropriate men. Over the three hilarious series of Up the Garden Path, Izzy, played by Imelda Staunton, deals with the complicated ups and downs of her attempts to find true love.

Sol Bernstein, the oldest Jewish stand-up comedian still playing the clubs today, tells his favourite Jewish jokes so that they can be handed down to another generation. Told and adapted by Jews throughout the centuries from the Eastern Europe shtetls of the 19th century to the American Borscht Belt circuit of the 1950s and '60s Sol retells jokes on religion, assimilation, marriage and sex from a people and religion that has always had its humour no matter what the world throws at them.

What do the lives of Lincoln, Helen Keller, Joan of Arc, and other historical figures have in common with Paula Poundstone? In the hands of this wryly observant and self-deprecating comedian, the answer is outrageously funny and unexpectedly touching. Poundstone compares her crazy life to theirs, as she holds forth on her children, her career, and the time in her life when it appeared she would lose them both.

In President Me, Carolla shares his vision for a different, better America free from big issues like big government down to small problems like hotel alarm clock placement. Running on an anti-narcissism platform, President Carolla calls for a return to the values of an earlier time when stew and casserole were on every dinner table and there were no “service dogs” on airplanes. President Me hits right at the heart of what makes our country really annoying, and offers a plan to make all of our lives, but mostly Adam’s, much better.

Someone I love did a truly terrible thing, and I'm working three jobs on top of my one as a showgirl at the Benton Las Vegas Grand to make up for it before anyone finds out—too late. Cole Benton III, the ruthless CEO of the Benton Worldwide hotel empire, calls me into his glass office overlooking the Vegas skyline, demanding to know why I stole all the money from one of his grandmothers charity funds. I can't tell him that.

Welsh comic Rhod Gilbert has become one of the UK's top comedians through a combination of touring and many TV appearances. This hilarious recording was recorded live in concert. Rhod tells how a chance encounter with a mince pie at a motorway service station finally sent him over the edge!

Going back home was not exactly what Tim and the C&C gang expected. Trouble continues to follow them back to Gulf Coast Mississippi. Trouble...and a gnome...and an undead midget.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of 'Rommel?' 'Gunner Who?', written and read by Spike Milligan. 'Keep talking, Milligan. I think I can get you out on mental grounds.' 'That's how I got in, sir.' 'Didn't we all?' The second volume of Spike Milligan's legendary recollections of life as a gunner in World War Two sees our hero into battle in North Africa - eventually.

Often imitated but never bettered, I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue is the only authentic antidote to panel games. This collection finds unflappable chairman Humphrey Lyttelton giving silly things to do to regular panelists Tim Brooke-Taylor, Barry Cryer and Graeme Garden, as well as special guests Stephen Fry and Rob Brydon. Highlights include old favourites such as One Song to the Tune of Another, 84 Chicken Cross Road, Sound Charades, New Definitions and of course the brilliantly baffling, fiendishly funny Mornington Crescent.