More than 40 years after the unlucky antihero first appeared on TV screens, the writer who helped to bring him to life is thinking about a comeback

Name: Blackadder.

Age: The first episode of Blackadder aired in June 1983, so just shy of 41.

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The comedian’s claim that wokeness is the reason why comedy is no longer as funny is lazy – and inaccurate

Jerry Seinfeld is currently at saturation point, promoting his new Pop Tarts movie Unfrosted . Still a canny operator, however, Seinfeld understands that the last thing anyone in the world wants to hear about is his new Pop Tarts movie. After all, there is realistically only so much available media interest in a streaming period comedy film about a breakfast product. And so Unfrosted has taken something of a backseat to a much more newsworthy proposition: Jerry Seinfeld mouthing off for clicks.

Until now, Seinfeld’s targets have included the film industry (the people he worked with “don’t have any idea that the movie business is over”) and his disdain for dabblers (“There’s nothing I revile quite as much as a dilettante”), despite being a man who has just directed his first film at the age of 70. True, he has also tried talking about things he actually enjoys, like his love of watching surfing videos on YouTube, but that isn’t really what gets the clicks these days. And so, with some inevitability, Jerry Seinfeld has pulled out the big guns and declared that the left is destroying comedy.

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Inaugural contest at Crab Museum in Margate allows crustaceans to pick the winner, with the help of tinned fish used as bait

How did the crab get out of prison? And why did the crab get bad grades?

The answers to these conundrums and other clawsome jokes were among the competitors for the inaugural World’s Funniest Crab Joke competition, held by the Crab Museum in Margate to celebrate International Crab Day.

What do you call a red crab piggybacking another red crab all around the town? A double-decapod.

A horseshoe crab walks into a bar. “Why the ventral face?” the bartender asks. The crab replies: “Mind your own business and please tip a pint of lager and a packet of crisps on to the pub carpet.”

How did the crab get out of prison? It used its escape claws.

Why didn’t the crab help the chicken cross the road? Because it was eaten by a pelican crossing.

What did the sea urchin say to the crab? Please sir, can I have some claw?

What format do you have to save photos of crab soup on to? Floppy bisque.

A man walks into a restaurant with a crab under his arm and says: “Do you make crab cakes?” The manager answers: “Yes, we do.” “Good,” says the man, “because it’s his birthday.”

How do barnacles get around? A taxi crab.

Why did the crab cross the road? It didn’t. It used the sidewalk.

Why did the crab get bad grades? Because it was below C level.

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Former talkshow host discussed her controversial exit from daytime TV after reports of a toxic workplace in new standup set

Ellen DeGeneres has addressed the controversial end of her eponymous daytime talkshow after allegations that it was a toxic workplace.

While performing the opening night of her new Ellen’s Last Stand … Up Tour at the Largo in Los Angeles on Thursday evening, the former daytime host joked about getting “kicked out of show business” for being “mean”.

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Soho theatre, London
Phil Burgers made clowning hip after winning the Edinburgh comedy award in 2012. Now older, if not wiser, his new show is a little undercooked, but his skill as a performer is undeniable

Clown is the hippest thing in comedy right now, thanks in no small part to the American act Doctor Brown , who launched its new wave by winning the Edinburgh comedy award in 2012 . Now wicked, now innocent, now sensitive, now sexy, Phil Burgers’ alter ego staked out a fresh, stripped-back, non-gurny brand of silent comedy, and influenced a generation. Now he’s back, with his first solo show in a decade – a little older, a little greyer, if not as geriatric as the version of himself he offers up here, swaddled in bathrobe and surgical socks, tapping his way across the stage with a walking stick.

The significance of those stylings takes time to reveal itself, and then fairly obliquely. For much of the hour, Beturns is a loosely connected assemblage of playful clown routines, as Burgers invites an audience member to thrash his backside with a rolled-up newspaper, and another to wheel him around the stage on a swivel chair. Using little more than his expressive eyes and a suite of eloquent gestures, the Doctor asserts total if unpredictable control over the crowd. He’ll seduce us with mimed sequences of throbbing hearts and soaring birds – then puncture proceedings with a sarcastic hand-clap, mocking our delight, or some barely appropriate rough-and-tumble with another hapless volunteer.

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Video series launched in which comics translate climate science into down-to-earth language

Scientists can struggle to get their message across about the climate crisis to the wider public, so now comedians have been brought in to help cut through the science jargon and get widespread attention. In a series of videos , titled Climate Science Translated, scientists are paired up with various comedians who express climate science in down-to-earth language that pulls no punches.

In one of the videos , Prof Mark Maslin, of University College London, explains: “The climate crisis is progressing faster much faster than anticipated.” This is translated by the comedian Jo Brand as: “We’re still going to hell, but we’re getting there faster.”

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The annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner returns this Saturday for a night of comedy ‘roasting’ – where the great and the good are ruthlessly mocked in celebration of the freedom of the press.

In recent years, however, the night has taken on a different tone, with the atmosphere of warm self-deprecation and bipartisan bonhomie replaced by something more scathing and serious.

This week Jonathan Freedland is joined by Jeff Nussbaum, a former senior speech writer to Joe Biden, to discuss the art of writing gags for presidents and whether there is still space for humour in US politics.

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While other comedians spend more time complaining than cracking jokes, the former Late Show host remains gloriously unhinged and hilarious

With every advance in human technology comes an advance in weird new emotional situations. For example, the Germans should invent a word for the specific drop in the stomach that occurs when you open X to see a celebrity you like trending globally. No one 20 years ago could ever have imagined this specific feeling. Depending on the person, my brain leaps to conclusions. If it’s an older person, I worry they’ve carked it. If it’s Sydney Sweeney, I assume her breasts are up to something again (existing). And if it’s a comedian I’ve loved since childhood, I assume they’ve been cancelled for doing something shitty (due to patterns).

A few weeks ago, I got a Tower of Terror-size gut drop when I saw Conan O’Brien, one of my biggest comedy heroes, trending. Luckily I didn’t need to worry. He had gone viral for his appearance on the YouTube show Hot Ones, where a celebrity is interviewed while eating progressively hotter wings. Conan had given a completely unhinged and hilarious performance, including rubbing hot sauce on his nipples. In a sentence I’d never thought I’d say, thank God it was just more breasts discourse.

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Aniston’s production company will reportedly reimagine the hit 1980 Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton comedy about sexism in the workplace – with a script by Diablo Cody

Jennifer Aniston’s production company, Echo Films, are to reimagine classic comedy 9 to 5 for a modern day audience, according to reports. The script is being written by Juno and Young Adult writer Diablo Cody.

No plot details have yet been revealed, but the 1980 original centred on three female colleagues in an office who team up to take revenge on their “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot” boss. Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton and Dabney Coleman starred in the film, which was scripted by Patricia Resnick with Colin Higgins, who also directed. It was based on an idea by Fonda, who commissioned the film as a vehicle for herself and Tomlin before bringing Parton on board.

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