Why outsiders like John Oliver are taking over US TV

South African Trevor Noah, the newly-announced host of The Daily Show, joins Brits John Oliver and James Corden in the US's coveted late-night slots. Are people from Britain and elsewhere in the world making it big in America?

Latitude review: Trevor Noah

A particular highlight is Noah’s routine about how safe it is living in the UK, using danger sports as an example.

Review: Trevor Noah at Latitude

There are sometimes quieter moments in his routines â€" lulls you could even call them â€" but so compelling a presence is he that the audience nonetheless hold on his every word.

Trevor Noah - review

With his laid-back, charming delivery, Noah's unique take on apartheid makes for 24-carat comedy.

Interview: Trevor Noah on his new show, The Racist

"I'm not confrontational... I think we can explore more things if we're not fighting."

This week's new live comedy

Previews of Greg Davies, Trevor Noah and the Chortle Book Festival.

Eddie Izzard is your host tonight as the mainstream comedy slot returns. After his stints in Hollywood dramas, it's genuinely strange to see Izzard doing his uniquely bewildering surrealism again, even if you suspect that it might be a bit much for the Michael McIntyre crowd. More easily assimilated stuff is at hand with the reliably baleful Josh Widdicombe and show-closer Trevor Noah. Noah's bits on growing up in apartheid-era South Africa and on learning German from Hitler speeches are, as Izzard suggests, "annoyingly good".

Eddie Izzard saddles up as host for the first of a new season at the Apollo - and kicks off with a comedy canter around the Greek gods and the furtive nature of dressage. Tonight's bright new star is Trevor Noah - born in apartheid South Africa, the son of a black mother and a white father, his witty take on cultural identity stems from being 'born a crime'. He's going to be huge.

When the evening's host is as quick and brilliant as Eddie Izzard, it's easy to think of the guest acts as the lowlier partners. But while they lack Izzard's nimble physicality - put to use tonight in a routine about dressage horses burgling houses - Josh Widdicombe and Trevor Noah both have plenty of character.

Widdicombe has worked up a head of steaming dislike for cereal variety packs, Super Noodle serving suggestions and people who make their own jam, while Noah condenses his experience of growing up mixed-race in South Africa in what feels like a taster for his proper act. Apparently both parents had to disown him in public on occasion. Processing that has left him vulnerable to the seductive allure of American culture, and the challenges of ordering a sandwich in German.

Dashing young stand-up Trevor Noah, new to BBC Radio 4 listeners, who was a big hit at last year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe and wowed audiences at the Soho Theatre earlier this year. Half black South African, half Swiss, and raised in Soweto, Noah is uniquely well placed to poke fun at racist attitudes and hypocrisy, which he does mercilessly.

Visiting the US, he said he was hoping to be "upgraded to black", only to be taken for Mexican or Puerto Rican because of his coffee-coloured skin. "I was subjected to racism that wasn't even mine," he bemoaned. Here is a truly original and assured new comedy talent.