Interesting British Comedy Awards nominations announced today. Some are a lot easier to have predicted than others. It is no surprise that man of the moment Michael McIntyre is up for three nominations, or that the TV-friendly Alan Carr is also up for a hat trick of prizes. 

After a period in purdah for both the show and Jonathan Ross – after a voting scandal and Sachsgate – things are looking good for the British Comedy Awards again. The 20th anniversary show goes out after the X Factor semi-final on 12 December so hopefully a fair number of viewers will stick around and boost the ratings.

Of course, the whole thing is one big broadcasting back-slap. It doesn't matter who gets the vote, the TV industry wins. Despite having chaired the Edinburgh Comedy Awards panel twice, no-one has ever approached me even to serve biscuits to the BCA panel, which in 2008 was predominantly made up of channel heads and members of the Writers' Guild. There used to be a viewers' vote for a people's choice award, but that is not back this year.

There are, however, plenty of unexpected nominations to tickle the funny bone of even the most hardened non-judging cynic. The three children in the semi-improvised BBC family sitcom Outnumbered have all been nominated for Best Newcomer. The luminously funny Katherine Parkinson is up for Best Comedy Actress for The IT Crowd, even though it feels that there hasn't been a new episode for years (I just checked and the last series started last November, so it's actually about a year ago). 

Some of the nominees leave a little bit of egg on the TV industry's face, which is nice. The much lauded – by viewers and critics – Pulling was axed by the BBC, but two of its stars, Rebekah Staton and Tanya Franks, are still up for Best Female Newcomer and the valedictory one-off special is up for Best Comedy Drama. Surely the creators Sharon Horgan and Dennis Kelly could take the concept to another broadcaster if the BBC cannot see they've got a hit on their hands? It happened with Men Behaving Badly, which went from ITV to BBC1. 

In the absence of any new product for Ricky Gervais, Gavin & Stacey should do well (Rob Brydon should bag Best Actor for Uncle Bryn), as should Mitchell and Webb, who are up for awards via both Peep Show and their BBC sketch show. I'd like to see Psychoville win Best New British Television Comedy – comedy didn't come any darker or more disturbing in 2009. 

In a year when offence has been at the top of the agenda, there would be a nice frisson if Frankie Boyle won Best Live Stand-Up, but that award will probably go to Michael McIntyre. It would be brilliant if the other nominee, Stewart Lee, won first prize, but somehow I can't see TV's bigwigs on the judging panel giving the outspoken bequiffed critic of TV's incompetence, cowardice and complacency the nod. 

There doesn't seem to be an award for Best International Comedy this year, but maybe it would have been embarrassing giving it to Larry David for Curb Your Enthusiasm yet again. But maybe they could have given it to Jerry Seinfeld for his Seinfeld reunion storyline within Curb Your Enthusiasm, which has become compelling viewing on More4.

As for Best Comedy Film, In The Loop should beat Bruno. and personally I cackled more during Inglourious Basterds than during the third nominee, The Hangover. Still I guess it's apt that there is something called The Hangover on the list – there will be a lot of media folk nursing headaches on the morning of 13 December.

It's that time of the year when I start to get piles. Don't worry, fans (both of you), it's not a medical condition, I'm referring to piles of press releases publicising Christmas comedy tours and Christmas comedy DVDs. What I've noticed recently, though, is the increasing releases plugging Christmas comedy books. Not just the inevitable Mitchell & Webb/Harry Hill TV tie-ins, but big weighty library-style tomes that are mainly words with a few pictures thrown in for on-the-toilet browsing fun. 

Ever since Peter Kay's autobiography gave Dan Brown a run for his money publishers have been looking for comedians with a story to sell, sorry, tell. What is interesting now is that they are looking beyond the stadium filling acts to shift books. And also they are looking for other types of books rather than straightforward "I-was-born-in-a-stable-and-now-I'm-loaded" rags-to-riches stories.

Dara O'Briain and Alan Davies have both taken a sideways perspective on life in their first books. O'Briain's Tickling The English is an Irishman's on-the-road perspective on Albion, from drinking and animals to patron saints – the Irish have the best saints of course. Davies. meanwhile, looks at his childhood heroes in My Favourite People And Me, so we get essays on a wide range of cultural icons from John Belushi to Bertold Brecht via Harry Redknapp. 

These are clearly canny moves, leaving the authors space for candid autobiographies at a later date if they fall on hard times. Not that publishing your autobiography need hold you back anyway, just don't blow the whole story in one go – Saturday Night Peter is Mr Kay's second volume in what could turn out to be an entire shelf-filler.

What puzzles me though is that publishers seem to be a little too optimistic about sales prospects of books by other  less household-name comedians than those previously mentioned. One can only assume that the theory is that if they dish out a lot of small advances some of them will result in books that really take off. Shappi Khorsandi's A Beginner's Guide To Acting English must have sounded like a good idea at the time – the comedian's life has featured death threats and eating disorders, which both make a good read.

But let's be honest, Khorsandi is no Kay, Paul O'Grady or Frank Skinner if popularity is the key to sales success. Or Frankie Boyle, who has also just published his autobiography. Though I'm intrigued to see how that does. Jo Brand also has a book out. And Jack Dee's story is eagerly awaited. Khorsandi is a great stand-up, but surely does not have the kind of profile to shift huge numbers. Which may explain why it is currently number 1884 in the Amazon sales ranks. 

To cap it all, just as I was about to sit down and write about this every-comic-has-a-book-in-them phenomenon I heard that Simon Day has just signed a deal to write his autobiography. Now Simon Day is a lovely bloke with a smart, offbeat sense of humour and great taste in wine, but to paraphrase an old gag about Ringo Starr, he's not the funniest man in comedy. Or even the funniest man in The Fast Show.

Yet the publishers are bigging Day up, promising a vivid tale of truancy and fruit machine addiction. It's hardly drugs and debauchery, but what do I know? Maybe Day's book will make JK Rowling quake in her boots. And if it is a hit, where will publishers go next in their quest for hidden hits? Look out for My Story by the bloke who played Alan Partridge's Geordie mate. Or the biog of the man who played Private Godfrey in Dad's Army. Oh sorry, that one has just come out.

Just had an interesting couple of Ricky Gervais-themed days. Saw his directorial debut The Invention of Lying and then, just to be a completist, caught up with his previous movie, Ghost Town. Although Gervais clearly had a bigger hand in Lying, it is intriguing to note various themes emerging in his cinematic oeuvre. 

Curiously both films feature the Gervais character being followed by large crowds. In Lying it is people who hang on scriptwriter Mark Bellison's every word (very Life of Brian), while in Ghost Town  it is the umpteen dead with unfinished earthly business who want Gervais's grumpy dentist Bertram Pincus to contact the living on their behalf.

Inevitably he plays an average-height, pudgy-ish man in both movies, and gets plenty of gags out of the fact. He is, however, the leading man in both films and, this being America, he ends up with the leading lady both times, despite Jennifer Garner and Tea Leoni clearly being out of his characters' leagues at the outset. 

It is this second point that marks a shift for Gervais. When he made The Office for the BBC he famously insisted on getting his way throughout the production process. While The Office concluded with possible romance for David Brent  it was with a realistic woman, not a Hollywood hottie, albeit one on the wrong side of twenty.  The Invention of Lying, like Ghost Town which he didn't write but clearly had creative input in, feels too often like a generic Hollywood romcom. Admittedly with a few existential asides about why religion exists, but Hollywood romcom nonetheless.

Of the two films The Invention of Lying is definitely superior. It clearly has more depth,  more of Gervais's distinctive voice (both as a writer and as a squeaky giggler, which always makes me chuckle) and plenty of laugh-out-loud sight gags. There are moments when it is reminiscent of Jim Carrey's Liar, Liar – another movie about someone who can't stop blurting out the truth – and it also has echoes of C4's Peep Show, in which interior monologues become exterior. But these comparisons are no bad thing.

What troubles me is that fact that I cannot help wondering if Gervais set out to make something more subversive but could not quite squeeze it into the restrictive 100-minute format. Maybe his ambitions are more suited to the longer sitcom genre where ideas have more room to grow and breath. It is noticeable that Lying starts with a typical sarcastic Gervais voiceover during the opening credits, in which he suggests that no-one is interested in reading the names except for the backstage crew's families, but ends with the usual saccharine music as the closing credits roll. I stayed till the curtain closed expecting another sneery gag but none came. As with the film, but unlike his previous TV work, Gervais could not quite resist an airbrushed conventional ending.

It's the pairing they said would never happen. Blackadder and Dr Who. Well maybe that's not quite what will happen, but it is intriguing to hear the news that Richard Curtis is going to write an episode of Dr Who. Curtis hardly needs the work or the money, but says that he wanted to write something that would impress his children. Presumably they haven't stopped squirming with embarrassment after seeing The Boat That Rocked – and neither have I.

The word on the blogosphere is that the Curtis episode will feature time travel in some way and a historical figure will be involved. Hence the rumour mill grinding into action and prompting the annual gossip of a Blackadder revival. I suppose Blackadder and Dr Who do have some things in common. Both are iconic characters who inspire loyal followings and keep going through different incarnations. The only real difference is that Blackadder has always been played by the same actor. Oh, and no-one who has played Dr Who has gone on to play Mr Bean.

Of course, Rowan Atkinson is no stranger to Timelords. History has a habit of conveniently forgetting certain facts, but Atkinson has actually played Dr Who himself in the not too distant past. He took on the role in 1999 in The Curse of Fatal Death, part of a Comic Relief Night special which also featured Jonathan Pryce and Joanna Lumley fondling the sonic screwdriver.

There was even talk of Atkinson assuming the role of Dr Who more regularly after his cameo, but at the time the appetite for television revivals was not quite as ferocious as it was a few years later and the suggestion was forgotten about. And now that there is a new Dr Who on the block played by floppy-fringed juvenile lead Matt Smith the chances of fiftysomething Atkinson getting the role in the future are probably slimmer than Fatty McFat Who Can't Stop Eating Fried Fish winning the Slimmer of the Year Award.

Still, we should applaud Curtis for dipping his toes into the world of telly sci-fi. I’m not sure if it’ll be a success on the scale of the Blackadder cycle, but it has got to be less cheesy than Love, Actually.

Critic and commentators are quick and eager to spot themes at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, but what i’ve noticed in my time up here over the last two weeks is the absence of themes. If you see three offensive shows you can say the theme is offensive comedy, if you see three whimsical shows you can say the theme is whimsical comedy. But I’ve seen around fifty shows in the last two weeks and the theme that strikes me is the sheer diversity of themes. Take these three shows for instance...

Mackenzie Taylor’s No Straightjacket Required (Pleasance Dome) might sound like a Phil Collins tribute act, but the theme here is suicide, which is not something you come across a lot on the Fringe – even though some sets might drive you to the edge. The thoroughly decent, middle class Taylor spends an hour telling his audience how a combination of personal trauma and his bipolar disorder led him to take a potentially lethal cocktail of alcohol and pills. It is an eloquent, touching show finding comedy in the darkest of places. Not always hilarious, but Taylor has an engaging self-deprecating streak. At one point he recalls how when he drove to Brighton to commit suicide he got frustrated because he could not find a parking space. Despite his death wish he didn’t want to get clamped. Taylor has not had many reviews - maybe critics are worried that a bad write-up might push him to the brink again. I’m sure if they saw the show it would get only positive plaudits.

Taylor attempted his suicide at a poetry gig. It was presumably not one featuring Luke Wright (Underbelly), whose verses are positively life enhancing as well as hilarious. A few years ago Wright made a bit of a splash as part of Aisle 16, the world’s first poetry boyband. Like all boybands they split and now the moon-faced rhymer is pursuing a solo career. His latest show allows him to address the things that bug him, which is mostly his own immature, self-obsessed behaviour. In one poem, about wearing Russell Brand-style tight black trousers he reflects on looking like “an apple balancing on a pair of compasses.” Elsewhere the self-confessed Essex-born, Norwich-based young dad reveals that the Guardian has called him a “foppish bufffoon”. There is some pretty, witty, occasionally even profound stuff here, although I’m not sure if it was such a good idea to read out some Phillip Larkin. You don’t get Michael McIntyre doing old Billy Connolly routines mid-set. Anyway, Wright’s career looks like taking off now, but if it doesn’t maybe in a few years he can reunite Aisle 16. Getting back together certainly hasn’t done Take That’s bank balances any harm.

Another show that pushes the boundaries of what goes on at the Fringe is Caroline Mabey’s Go Go Go Coffee Show (Beehive Inn), which is part of the Free Fringe (though there is an optional whip-round at the end). It is a lunchtime show, you get free thimbles of coffee and Mabey is thoroughly enjoyable company. Imagine the slightly deranged offspring of a menage a trois between between Vic Reeves, Harry Hill and Floella Benjamin and you are getting there. There are childlike drawings, singalongs and animations as well as a few flirty, rude and surreal gags, and the whole thing is punctuated by painfully cheesy puns. Mabey has an art school background and I couldn’t work out if the show is some kind of post-Tracey Emin perverse exercise in pyjama-based performance art. But does that really matter when you get complimentary coffee and giggle pretty constantly for an hour? I think not.

If you went on a day trip to Edinburgh and only saw these three shows you’d have a real taste of the Fringe experience away from the hype. You’d also have plenty of change left over from £30, which cannot be bad.

What do you do when you love stand-up comedy but don't have enough time to head to the Edinburgh Fringe? The answer is fiendishly simple. Go to Suffolk this weekend and enjoy the Latitude Festival. It lasts for three-and-a-bit days and as well as seeing more bands than you can shake the proverbial stick at – including Nick Cave, Grace Jones, Pet Shop Boys and an acoustic Thom Yorke – you can get enough of a comedy fix to last you the entire summer.

If 2008 was the year that comedy invaded rock festivals (remember Booshfest?) 2009 is the year that it settles into a nice groove. Latitude is easily the best of the bunch (though the Big Chill is also pretty good), programming three solid days of stand-up from Noon until early evening. The sets are often pleasingly short - from 20 - 40 minutes. Perfect comedy tasters. If you don't like one another will be along soon. And if you do like the acts you'll pay to see them gig in their own right in future.

If anything one could argue that there is too much comedy at Latitude, with the acts spilling over more than ever into the cabaret, poetry and theatre tents. This may be a good thing though. Last year's comedy tent was so rammed that it was frequently impossible to get into. Ross Noble famously overcame this problem by leaving the tent and performing a 2000-strong conga in the direction of a vegetarian sausage stall.

So who are this years highlights to set the dawn alarm for and bag a good patch of grass? And what if you miss these? Don't worry, there is some much good stuff on just have a wander, you are bound to find something you like.

Friday
Shappi Khorsandi, who just gets better and better every time she is on telly,  unstoppable joke machine Tim Vine, rabble rouser Mark Thomas plus nutty sketch combo Pappy's fun Club in the Literary Tent. Obscure tips? Weird dance act New Art Club in the Cabaret Arena and prankster Richard DeDomenici in the Film Tent. Poetry lovers should catch versifying boyband Aisle 16 throughout the weekend in the Poetry Tent. 

Saturday
Intellectual geezer Russell Kane, Googlewhacker Dave Gorman, Larry Sanders Show US cult Janeane Garofalo and indie legend Sean Hughes . Try to catch Pippa Evans in the Cabaret Arena and maybe heckle cabinet minister Ed Miliband who will be talking after a screening of Age of Stupid in the Film Tent. Plus Lily's dad Keith Allen in the Literary Arena. 

Sunday
Exquisite misanthrope Jon Richardson, sublime Sean Lock and sick, twisted Andrew Lawrence, who you'll either love or loathe. And don't miss Frank Skinner chatting in the Literary Tent or Danielle Ward and Martin White's brilliantly star-studded singalong Karaoke Circus in the Cabaret Arena. 

Monday
Recover.

Typical. you wait ages for a comedy gig in an unusual setting and then a whole rash of them arrives like a platoon of red London buses. Last Thursday Laughter In Odd Places, the organisation which has bravely pioneered the idea of gigs in bookshops, launderettes and my lounge, staged their final ever gig in the Museum of London. Among the highlights Ben Moor did his show outside on the grassy knoll (no snipers in sight, luckily), Sarah Pascoe did hers in the middle of an exhibition on old Londinium, while Richard Herring apparently did his set in a bit of a drunk state due to the free wine.

Then on Friday Mark Thomas did his own guerilla gig in the squatted Brentford home of Labour MPs Alan and Ann Keen, who have been claiming for a second home in central London.

And now tonight (Thursday) Ruby Wax is in the Priory. Not for rehab-style treatment but to do stand-up. Wax has been learning about mental illness recently and has just become Patron of the charity Depression Alliance, which the gig is in aid of. Understandably journalists are not being admitted, given that her audience might include a few famous faces who wouldn't want their presence publicised. Which is a shame. The links between comedy and mental illness go back a long way (Spike Milligan quickly springs to mind) and it would have been intriguing to see how Wax's material went down in this site-specific venue. She is planning a proper tour too, so we will get a little flavour of this unique gig then.

The brilliant thing about comedy is it can be done on the hoof. No big set-up or soundcheck is needed. All one needs is an audience prepared to listen and some jokes and one can perform anywhere. In fact I was wondering while writing this article why we don't see comedians busking on the underground or on the streets. And then a news story popped into my inbox about Jerry Seinfeld doing just that. Not for real – the superstar hasn't fallen on hard times – but for an ad for an Australian Building Society that you can see here. As I said comedy happens in a lot of odd places these days.

It didn't take long for the Michael Jackson jokes to start circulating. In fact they may well be the reason Google virtually ground to a halt last Thursday night as rumours spread about the star's tragic demise. I won't repeat any of the gags of varying sickness here – you can find plenty yourself by googling the phrase "Michael Jackson joke". Or alternatively just think of the the words "children", "cosmetic surgery" and "thriller", add or alter various song lyrics and you'll probably be able to come up with your own.

There is a phrase that comedians use when they deliver a bad taste gag about a topical story – "too early?". I don't think some of the gags about Michael Jackson's death could have come any earlier if they'd come when he was still alive and moonwalking. My problem however, is more to do with the quality of the quips than their morality.

It has been said that at the forthcoming Edinburgh Fringe Michael Jackson gags are now going to be vying with expense claim gags for topic of the month. But at the moment the wisecracks are causing a bit of a kerfuffle. Partly thanks to the continued fallout of Sachsgate no-one seems to want to take any risks. An episode of C4 comedy TNT was cut because of references to Jackson, while Frankie Boyle has reportedly stopped writing his Daily Record column because the paper refused to print his pithy one-liners. And in America the new movie Bruno has reportedly been swiftly edited to cut out an irreverent interview with LaToya Jackson.

But is it too soon for Michael Jackson gags? Even immature and silly ones as well as malicious heartless ones? Well, if you were a close friend or a member of his mourning family you might not want to hear them. but then they've had to live with Wacko Jacko gags for the last two decades. And while Jackson's death is very sad and shocking, it does not feel quite as numbingly shocking as the death of Princess Diana, which came absolutely out of the blue. Yet humour may just be a way of coping with Jackson's death. My first reaction on hearing about Jackson's death was that it was a publicity stunt, but then I'm a journalist, I'm paid to be cynical. And on reflection I don't really think that most of the gags are intentionally nasty or mean-spirited. They are just the way we cope with traumatic events.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see how the comedy world deals with Michael Jackson now. Will old comedy routines such as Bo Selecta's cruel rubber-faced spoof or Lenny Henry's OTT pop video send-ups be discreetly forgotten? The new jokes will no doubt continue. I don't have a problem with them as long as they exercise a decent amount of wit, but then again, as far as I know I'm not related to Michael Jackson. Let's just hope that some of them are more funny than the ones that are clogging up cyberspace at the moment.

Interesting  comedy experiment last night. Comedian Tiernan Douieb organised the world's first Twitter Comedy gig. He got a pretty good line-up too, with Mark "face of Magners cider" Watson and Pappy's Fun Club among the acts. The idea was for everyone to do a ten-minute online set while the audience sat at home, laughing and twittering their heckles and generally enjoying this virtual comedy gig.

I attempted to take on the role of Twittering critic – Twitcrit? – which was a bit of a challenge. Partly because for the first half of the show I was on a train with a very slow dongle (ooh matron) and for the second half I was at a real-life Jimeoin gig at the Udderbelly and to tweet from the audience would have just been rude. So in the end I was forced to play catch up after the gig.

Still, the gig seems to have survived without me. Judging by online figures there were apparently over 6000 followers online, which must be the biggest gig Douieb and even Watson has ever played. 

Things got a bit chaotic at times, with fans using a twitfeed that was supposed to be exclusively for the acts, but let's just put this down to comedic exuberance. Takeaways and off-licenses might have been the real beneficiaries though as fans stocked up on supplies at home. And of course things overran, while one act, which shall rename nameless (well, the very good, very inventive Carl Donnelly) sort of cheated and used his twittering to link to a youtube performance, which was playful but maybe not in the spirit of the Twitter Comedy Club.

Somehow I can't see this replacing the real live gig any more than Spotify is going to replace rock gigs. Despite some valiant attempts at cyberheckling there was no scope for the lunatic physicality of Pappy's, no scope for the nuances of Terry Saunders' brand of stand-up storytelling. But it was an interesting experiment. Just one little thing bothers me though. How do we know that the gags were coming from, for example, the real Mark Watson? 

If you want a flavour of what you missed go to twitter.tiernandouieb.co.uk, where you should either be able to read the gig again or at least read highlights. But don't bother heckling now. All the comedians have gone home.  Which is, I suppose, where they were in the first place.

Just back from a flying visit to the Kilkenny's Carlsberg Cat Laughs Comedy Festival at the weekend. For me this wonderful little laugh-in kicks off the comedy festival season in the same way that Glastonbury kicks off the music festival season. But that is where the similarity ends. Kilkenny is a thoroughly non-muddy civilised affair, in which comedians from around the world are invited to perform in the pubs of this small, but beautifully put together Irish city.

This year's performers included Ardal O'Hanlon, Lee Mack, Dave Gorman and Tommy Tiernan, but for me the undisputed highlight was Ross Noble. On Thursday night he was the second act on at the Rivercourt Hotel and at 9.56pm, when he picked up the festival's yellow wooden plank of a logo and pretended it was Prince's guitar the Festival really began.

Noble is currently in the middle of a UK tour, so one might have expected him to simply lift an excerpt from his full show to fill his allotted 20 minutes. Instead, however, this master of improvisation simply played around with the scenery, tugging the curtain, peeling off a Moon-shaped banner from behind him. Of course he also did his favourite impersonation – Stephen Hawking – but this was a small drop in Noble's freestyling surrealist ocean.

On the following night Noble cropped up on another bill at the Ormonde Hotel. I wanted to catch as many new acts as possible while I was there so I said to myself that as soon as he repeats himself I will leave and catch a gig elsewhere. Noble came on, grabbed the logo and I thought here we go again. Except his mind was in a different place now and we got Noble doing a Klingon morphing into Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Paul Simon doing an impromptu gig in a Chinese restaurant before somehow becoming Bob Dylan with his brain flapping in the wind. If ever there was a definition of the phrase "you had to be there" this was it.

Another highlight of the weekend was Dave Gorman, returning to stand-up after years of doing strange quest-type shows. And one to watch is Hannah Gadsby, a quirky Tasmanian who is coming to the Edinburgh Festival in the summer and will surely end up in London too. Imagine a large lesbian who resembles a very young Eric Morecambe and you've got a hint of Gadsby. Her material is expertly crafted and often based on her upbringing. As she points out, her first name is a palindrome*, just like other members of her family: "Mum, dad, nan and my brother Kayak".

I had to leave earlier than planned so I missed various tantalising shows, not to mention the annual Ireland v Rest Of The World football match. I haven't heard the result yet, but the Irish usually win. I may not know who won the football, but Kilkenny is definitely a winner where comedy is concerned.

Ross Noble is at the Apollo Theatre, W1 for six weeks from 14 September. Information: 0844 412 4658; www.nimaxtheatres.com

*thanks to JonB for correcting me.