Katy Brand: can you teach a degree in 'funny'?

As Peter Kay launches the University of Salford's first ever BA in comedy practices, Katy Brand asks if the whole thing is a joke.

So, can a woman be beautiful and funny?

In her first post for The Telegraph's Wonder Women, the comedian, writer and actress Katy Brand ponders whether a beautiful woman can ever be taken seriously as a comic in the UK.

The performances in Psychobitches are funnier than the one-track script in the latest addition to the Playhouse strand. Directed by Jeremy Dyson (The League of Gentlemen), the comedy sees a succession of famous women apparently revealing their true selves in front of a questioning psychiatrist (Rebecca Front, above). Cue an aggressive Mother Teresa (Sheila Reid), a lovestruck Eva Braun (Catherine Tate), a sex-obsessed Jane Austen (Sharon Horgan) and a deluded Joan of Arc (Katy Brand).

Katy Brand: the perils of crowd-funded publishing

Have I made a huge mistake? I have walked away from talks with two well-known traditional publishers, and decided instead to go with a new crowd-funded publishing company called Unbound, and now, as I watch the subscriptions come in, I begin to panic - will I reach my funding target?

Has Radio 2 missed the style train with its line-up today? Here's a celebrity-based panel show in which comedians and commentators vie to come up with gossipy quips about showbiz personalities.

Somehow all of those ingredients sound a bit past their sell-by date these days. After a decade of chitterchat by so-called entertainers about nonentities, not to mention public enquiries into the dodgy provenance of some of the gossip in the past, it all feels a bit stale. But, who knows?

Maybe Claudia Winkleman, hosting, can raise a little glitter from Andrew Maxwell, Katy Brand and Russell Watson.

Katy Brand: I owe it all to gran who taught me to read

Comedian Katy Brand said today she owes her "entire career" to her grandmother, a literacy pioneer who has spent decades helping children to read.

ITV2's sketch-mistress Katy Brand introduces highlights of the 2011 Laughs in the Park open-air comedy event held in St Albans, which include the event's founding father, Eddie Izzard, fresh from becoming the first solo comedian to perform a gig at the Hollywood Bowl. He and fellow headliner Ross Noble share a gift for meandering absurdity, whether directed at God, the Romans or Bono, but by all accounts the brilliant Irish comic Tommy Tiernan upstaged them both: look out for his bit about mosques and their lack of chairs.

Thanks to Radio 4 Extra, listeners had an opportunity to hear the pilot episode of Miranda Hart's Joke Shop, first broadcast in May 2007, and also featuring Alison Steadman and Katy Brand.

This was amusing to hear but it was even obvious back then that Hart's wonderful visual humour - including her asides to the audience - meant she belonged on the small screen.