It's a laugh a minute

"IF you’re alive and you’re a comedian, you’re on the bill," says Irish comic Jason Byrne.

“Those are the rules. Stand outside the gig and tell people you’re funny and you’ll be on stage – I guarantee it.”

It's hard to argue with him. The UK’s biggest stand-up show is a true who’s who of comedy talent and stand-up fans are delighted to welcome it back for a second year.

C4’s Comedy Gala, in aid of Great Ormond Street Hospital, offers the prospect of two-and-a-half hours of brilliant comedy, with an all-star line-up featuring Alan Carr, Andi Osho, Chris Moyles, Dara O Briain, Jack Dee, Jack Whitehall, Jo Brand, John Bishop, Jon Richardson, Jonathan Ross, Kevin Bridges, Lee Evans, Mark Watson, Michael McIntyre, Micky Flanagan, Rhod Gilbert, Rich Hall, Sarah Millican, Sean Lock and Shappi Khorsandi.

The trouble is, how do you squeeze so many brilliant acts into one set?

“You get five minutes,” explains Byrne.

“Five minutes? That’s a nightmare for people like me who take that long to get going. What can you do in five minutes? You just try and give them some of your best stuff as quickly as you can.

“You’ll probably see that when it’s on the telly. People will look nervous. It’s not because they’re frightened of the size of the gig – it’s doing five minutes. We do an hour or two normally. None of us do that any more.

“It was worse for Jason Manford. He was about to come out and the director said they were over-running, and could he cut it to four. There was a lot of swearing.

“All in all, it was a nightmare, but great fun. When they edit it and cut us down to three minutes, it’s crazy.”

Bryne lifts the lid on what it’s like backstage among so many brilliant comics.

“It’s funny the way you get these little groups,” he says. “You'll have Lee Evans and Jack Dee, Sean Lock and Jonathan Ross, these people who sort of came up together, and they’ll be in one group. I came in a few years after them in another faction.

Then there will be like me and Dara, John Bishop, Alan Carr, all chatting with the people who made it a bit later. Then there’s the newer lot, doing their thing.

“Then you have Michael McIntyre, swanning around with a glass of champagne with the biggest smile on his face, asking if anybody else can work out quite how he got the job on Britain’s Got Talent.”

Last year’s event was a colossal success.

with 35 comedians and TV presenters taking to the stage or in short videos.

ALAN TITCHMARSH is back in the garden, but on ITV, not the BBC.

His new show, Love Your Garden, goes out half-an-hour before his old one Gardeners’ World, now presented by Monty Don, is on BBC2.

He’s called up on some of his fellow green-fingered friends and will be trawling the country in search of the most beautiful domestic gardens – and showing amateurs how easy it is to recreate the look.

In this first instalment, Titchmarsh will be taking a look at the classic suburban garden and showing how it needn’t simply be a bare lawn with a few beds.

Food expert Valentine Warner explains how such a garden is a great source of food, especially for bees as summer nears.

FANS of CSI: NY will be gutted by the season finale on Saturday, and now another cracking US import comes to a close as The Mentalist reaches the end of the third series.

Things are looking bleak for Hightower who’s the prime suspect in the Todd Johnson murder case. She claims she was set up and is going to hand herself in, saying she’ll be found innocent.

Jane (Simon Baker) fears this will scare Red John underground, so he asks La Roche for the list of suspects.

Following a white lie from the charismatic crime-buster, a deal is struck and a plan developed to inform all four suspects of Hightower's whereabouts.

Jane and company assume Red John will send an assassin to take care of her.

When the four suspects are given a different room number in the same hotel, our heroes wait to see who will take the bait. However, as the serial killer’s accomplice closes in on Hightower’s real location, Lisbon is caught in the line of fire – and she’s not the only casualty.