Comedy of the week ft Rachel Fairburn, Beat the Frog World Series final and more

Start your week with some big laughs courtesy of the latest crop of hopefuls looking to etch their name into Manchester comedy folklore at the Frog and Bucket’s new act competition, ‘Beat the Frog’, and their World Series Final. The amateur comics on the list include an accountant from Birmingham and a former San Francisco resident who now works in a chippy. Takes all sorts.

This week’s instalment of what is fast becoming the city’s favourite free comedy night, Laughięnda welcome Chris Cantrill as their headline act. Chris is probably best known as the non-hotdog festooned of sketch duo The Delightful Sausage, and would recently be spotted as the uptight manager of a sandwich shop in BBC’s Alma’s Not Normal. When solo on stage Cantrill’s unique voice, both literally and figuratively, imbues the common place with mucky dread and big laughs.

As we type there are only a handful of tickets left for this, and hopefully by the time you read it you can still grab some! Rachel Fairburn is a Mancunian treasure and this ‘work in progress’ show is an extra performance due to demand of her recent outing at the Women in Comedy Festival. It’s new stuff but will no doubt contain all of Faiburn’s brilliant caustic wit and her long list of grievances just keeps getting funnier. We’re very sorry if you’ve missed out.