Luminaries of Lockdown: part three

Our final collection of those who helped us laugh through the pandemic.

Interview: David Allison

Comedy Auction and This Is Your Trial were two of the funniest shows that I saw last year, both being very funny improv based formats that absolutely delighted, and they were created by the same man, David Allison, who's also responsible for the Sick Note show and the forthcoming CBBC series Monster Court. Here he talks about those shows, what inspired him to create them, the live comedy shows he's hosted in his garden during the pandemic, the various tv shows he's worked on, and how This Is Your Trial transformed in to Monster Court.

My Leicester comedy festival: David Allison

I spent three of the best years of my life in Leicester, as a law student in the 90s. Returning for Dave's Leicester Comedy Festival to put on my show ThisIsYourTrial at Peter Pizzeria is a real treat.

This is Your Trial interview

Looking for a way to place your friends in court and freely laugh at them? This is your place, this is your trial. We caught up with the mastermind behind the show, David Allison, to speak about the upcoming run at the Edinburgh Fringe 2015!

Can lawyers be funny? You be the judge

Court expert turned comedy producer David Allison's improvised show This Is Your Trial provides the case for the defence; a convincing antidote to the adage that lawyers don't find legal jokes funny and no one else realises that they are jokes.

Kate Copstick faces court fraud charges during Fringe

Producer David Allison is staging a series of five shows called This Is Your Trial, three of which are private and only two of which are open to the public.

The past four weeks have been a fun and charming ride, but as we reach the final episode, it's obvious that the plot has painted itself into a bit of a corner. The only possible outcome of this farce must be they will somehow return to their old bodies - which will of course depend on lightning striking twice in the same place.

Now that he's mastered walking in heels and applying eyeliner (the only skills any woman needs obviously) Danny is rather enjoying being Veronica and having Fiona in love with him. And he's in no hurry to return to his previous grotty existence. Interestingly, the scene where Veronica's friend Siobhan catches her in bed with Fiona and then phones to deliver a stern telling off about how this is hurting her boyfriend suggests that writer David Allison doesn't really know women as well as he thinks. A real best friend would of course turn up at Veronica's with a bottle of wine and make lots of supportive and sympathetic noises while all the time making sure that she's brought up to speed on every last scandalous detail.

It couldn't matter less if a drama kicks off with an improbability at the outset, while viewers are still settling down and re-arranging the cushions. What matters is that everything follows on logically from there. David Allison's strangely fascinating comedy-drama begins with just such an improbability, as two people (Martin Freeman and Rachael Stirling) exchange bodies and lives after a freak accident involving an electricity pylon. The man is trapped inside a woman's body and is forced to wear high heels all day, write articles for a newspaper on fashion and gossip about other men over lunch. The woman has to slob around in a track suit, never tidying up, smoking roll-ups, eating junk food and behaving like a semi-housetrained Neanderthal. Both end up looking at the world afresh and not entirely liking what they see. It is nothing if not unusual - and for that alone it is worth watching.