At the world’s biggest barrel of laughs, Hannah Gadsby, John Kearns and Rose Matafeo rub shoulders with homegrown stars-in-the-making. Our writer has the time of his life

What’s the biggest comedy festival in the world? Parochial Britons would say Edinburgh . Internationalists may consider Montreal’s Just for Laughs . They would all be wrong. Just for Laughs is out of the running: it filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this year, its future in doubt. And the Edinburgh fringe is a performing arts festival not just comedy. So for now, if only on that technicality, Melbourne has the biggest comedy festival in the world: a three-week carnival of standup, sketch and beyond, dedicated to nothing but the art of making people laugh.

In 20-plus years writing about comedy, I had never been – until now. But I have felt its influence. Twice recently, the winner of its most outstanding show award went on to win the Edinburgh equivalent. One was Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette , arguably the most significant standup set of the last decade, which launched in Melbourne before conquering the world. And as recently as 2022, a former Melbourne champ – recent Taskmaster star Sam Campbell – won Edinburgh’s top prize, of which Australia has now provided more winners than any other non-UK country. The festival also played a weathervane role in the “trans debate”, when its main award – for years known as the Barry, after Barry Humphries – was re-named after the Dame Edna star’s divisive comments about transgender people .

The This is Going to Hurt author is Very Online – so he has some gems to share, including 7,000 fireworks going off at once and a parody of every comedy heist film ever made

According to my nark of a phone, my screen time exceeds five hours a day, with almost all of that spent on the internet. What a waste of a life. I could write about 10 books a year if I managed to knock that on the head. I’m struggling to think of any major benefits of my very-online life, beyond the fact that this article only took me about three minutes to write. Oh, and I met my husband on Twitter.

Zany caper follows Jo Hartley as a big-veg enthusiast defending her patch from elaborate ill-doings

Chaos reigns in this strange, funny and amiably anarchic mockumentary about dirty tricks in the cutthroat world of competitive marrow-growing, written and co-directed by film-maker Brook Driver. Maybe the script could have gone through another couple of drafts, but that might have removed some of the flavour. As it is, it feels like Thomas Pynchon had emailed Ricky Gervais an idea he’d had for a British comedy, and the result certainly has some laughs.

Jo Hartley (a stalwart of Shane Meadows’s movies Dead Man’s Shoes and This Is England) is Caroline, a marrow-grower and a divorcee who pretends her ex-husband is dead and is now in a kind of NSA relationship with her needy neighbour Willy (Celyn Jones); they are both mates with conspiracy theorist and fanatically competitive prize-veg enthusiast Paul (Richard Lumsden). When Caroline’s marrow is disqualified one year for having a hairline crack and then her other marrow (called Ricky Hatton because it’s such a fighter) is stolen from her garden greenhouse by masked raiders, Caroline sets out on a desperately dangerous quest to find what on earth is happening. But this involves hiring a supremely louche pair of private detectives: Louise (Aisling Bea) and Lawrence (Ray Fearon) a married couple who also run swinging parties that Caroline has attended.

Baywatch star will return to the big screen in the remake of the 80s and 90s crime spoof, directed by the Lonely Island’s Akiva Schaffer

Pamela Anderson is headed back to the big screen for a remake of the Naked Gun, opposite Liam Neeson .

The Lonely Island alum Akiva Schaffer will direct the as-yet-untitled remake, based on the series of crime spoof comedies released in the 1980s and 90s, for Paramount. Schaffer, Doug Mand and Dan Gregor – the trio behind the popular Emmy-winning Disney+ movie Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers – will pen the script.

Joining Grace this week is the multi-talented actor, comedian and rapper, Kiell Smith-Bynoe. Long before becoming a household name as the exasperated boyfriend in the hit series Ghosts, Kiell (AKA MC Klayze Flaymz) tells Grace how, as a teenager, he combined his performance skills in the ultimate London arena: the chicken shop. With the taste of success, Kiell and Grace chat about his journey to the stage and screen, via several years working in a call centre for unemployed actors. Answering the big question: what is an appropriate lunchtime meal to eat at your desk?

The comedian on her favourite new painter, the downfall of Diddy, and wanting to save Britney Spears

Born in Ontario, Canada in 1983, comedian Katherine Ryan won the Funny Women award in 2008. Since then she has appeared on numerous TV sitcoms and panel shows including Taskmaster and 8 Out of 10 Cats . She has two Netflix standup specials, In Trouble and Glitter Room , and in 2020 created Netflix comedy series The Duchess . She has won the outstanding female comedy entertainment performance award at the National Comedy Awards twice, in 2022 and 2023. She lives in London with her husband and three children. Her new tour, Battleaxe , is coming to venues across the UK from 5 September.

The comedian on his rise from lockdown sensation to double Bafta nominee, approval from Stormzy and splitting apples with his bare hands

Munya Chawawa is a 31-year-old comedian whose satirical online videos made him a lockdown sensation. Viral hits included Craig Covid – Staying In, a Craig David parody, and his brutal takedown of health secretary Matt Hancock in June 2021 to the tune of Shaggy’s It Wasn’t Me. Chawawa has since appeared on Taskmaster and has twice been nominated for a Bafta for his documentary work: Race Around Britain in 2022 and last year’s How to Survive a Dictator With Munya Chawawa , about Robert Mugabe. He was born in Derby, grew up in Zimbabwe and Norfolk and now lives in south London.

You were recently on Celebrity Bake Off and you split an apple in two with your hands . When did you learn that was a skill you had?
The thing is, everyone keeps saying to me: “Oh, Bob Mortimer did it first.” Listen, there’s only one true test, isn’t there? Me and Bob Mortimer in the ring, unlimited supply of apples, whoever quits first. These days, the ultimate display of toxic masculinity is YouTuber boxing, and it’s time for some YouTuber apple-splitting with Bob Mortimer, one on one.

The comedian eats out at 670 Grams, run by rising-star chef Kray Treadwell, where carrots inspire joy and handbags get their own seat

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“I thought sweetbread was just bread that’s sweet,” admits comedian Joe Lycett, holding up a morsel of Kray FC, veal glands plucked from a bucket decorated to look like the Colonel’s famous fried chicken tub. The snack, a new version of one of chef Kray Treadwell ’s signature dishes, is golden and crisp, gently spiked with fermented hot sauce, zhooshed with garlic emulsion and bedazzled with tiny gleaming globes of oscietra caviar.

We’re side by side in Bodhi Boys, the pre-dinner lounge beneath restaurant 670 Grams, and I encourage Joe to shove the meat in his gob and trust the process. He needs little encouragement and I make fast work of my veggie version, a mouthful of fried cauliflower.

From helping out with a buddy’s sex life to becoming an accomplice to graffiti, there’s almost no lengths that Larry and his pals wouldn’t go to for each other – and it was a pleasure to watch

• Warning: this article contains spoilers for the series finale

How far would go for a friend? A favour, a white lie, pretend to be Orthodox to help them skip the line for a kidney replacement? Lend your skills as a plain-speaking “social assassin” to tell their girlfriend to stop saying “L-O-L” out loud or their mother to cease smacking her lips in pleasure after sipping her drink? Conspire with them to steal a doll from their daughter’s bedroom? Claim to have had vaginal rejuvenation surgery to encourage their hated girlfriend to get it so your friend can – of course – avoid having sex with her for the six to eight weeks during which he still needs her political influence?

In Curb Your Enthusiasm, as the season finale made very clear, there was no hugging and absolutely no learning, a continuation of the ethos behind creator Larry David’s previous show, Seinfeld. (“I’m 76 years old and I have never learned a lesson in my entire life,” the fictional Larry told a child.) It ended with the core gang on a plane, bickering furiously over whether Susie Greene’s open window blind counts as a “community shade”. But in Curb, there were also no limits on the lengths to which this dysfunctional group of friends would go to help one another out of a fix, or even just in pursuit of a good wheeze, from mooting the viability of a car that runs on urine to starting quick-fix businesses that always backfired. The notion would probably make Larry sick, or at least strain one of those famous eyebrows, but Curb’s legacy is as much about friendship as it is the most frivolous aspects of social intolerance.