Matt Lucas bookshop competition launches

Canongate has launched a singing competition to give bookshops the chance for author Matt Lucas to visit their shop.

Matt Lucas used sex to cope with ex-husband's death

Matt Lucas had "lots of sex" to cope with the death of his ex-husband Kevin McGee in 2009.

Bruce Dessau on 30 years attending the Fringe

The Edinburgh Fringe is 70 years old this year. Veteran comedy critic Bruce Dessau remembers 3/7ths of it. At least, he remembers the really odd stuff.

Even at the peak of its popularity, Matt Lucas and David Walliams's Little Britain was a PC-baiting nightmare. Especially uncomfortable in its portrayals of disability, it featured characters such as Andy, who pretends to need a wheelchair due to laziness, and Anne, a truly outrageous creation that exists purely to mock those with severe learning difficulties. Yet it is West Country teen Vicky Pollard that makes Little Britain a textbook example of problematic TV. Pollard was a perfect storm of conservative anxieties: she was working class, she was overweight, she was a single mother (of 12 children), she was a criminal. At one point she swapped her child for a Westlife CD.

"People always say 'oh I know a Vicky Pollard' and I think that's when you have a kind of real cultural moment", said Walliams on The South Bank Show in 2005. The "cultural moment" she actually heralded was presumably not the one Walliams was thinking of. Soon, Pollard had become the poster girl for the demonisation of the working classes. She was a character on to which people could project their hatred of poor women, such as journalist James Delingpole, who said Pollard represented "gym-slip mums who choose to get pregnant as a career option; pasty-faced, lard-gutted slappers who'll drop their knickers in the blink of an eye."

Yet Pollard and her real life peers weren't just a punchbag for the press. By the turn of the decade, hostility towards low-income people was so overwhelming that the Tories ran a poster saying "Let's cut benefits for those who refuse work" to help them win votes. Austerity then ended up disproportionately punishing single parents, 86% of whom are women. There's no yeah-but-no about it, Pollard helped fuel the mood that got the UK to that point. Little Britain remains a thoroughly questionable chapter in British comedy because of it.

The stars who made it big at the Edinburgh Fringe

'I saw them long before they became famous' is a common Fringe-goer's boast. But, as Fiona Shepherd discovers, there's a good reason for that.

David Walliams says he'd like to work with Matt Lucas

When asked whether he'd work with Matt Lucas again on the show, David Walliams said: "Of course we'd love to work together again. I wouldn't be where I am today without him. He moved to America and it made it more complicated but I'm sure we will one day."

The Nightly Show with Jason Manford review

With the lights dimmed comedian Jason Manford could pass for a less expensively-dressed James Corden. Which is presumably why ITV picked the motor-mouthed Mancunian as week seven presenter - yes it's been that long - of its flailing stab at an American-style chat show.

Matt Lucas awarded honorary degree by Bristol Uni

TV comedy star Matt Lucas has been awarded an honorary degree by his former university.

The 1996 Edinburgh Fringe

Clearing out this week, I unearthed the 1996 Edinburgh Fringe programme and some flyers So for no other reason than nostalgia, here's how the festival has changed in 20 years.