There's always room for weird gigs in comedy and there are some partiuclarly werid ones this week. Tonight Karl Schultz and Joz Norris present their Over The Top Xmas Love-In at the Bloomsbury Theatre. While some of the alternative acts billed are simply great – Bridget Christie, Josie Long, Sara Pascoe, Tim Key, Liam Williams – this is also a line-up that boasts some of the oddest acts around.

Tickets are now available for the studio filming of the new BBC3 TV show, Nick Helm's Heavy Entertainment. The pilot of the variety-based series, in which the star of the hit sitcom Uncle opened the show by emerging from the boot of a car, was shown last year as part of the BBC's Comedy Feeds series. Helm has also been commissioned to write his own sitcom and is making a second series of Uncle.

“It’s all gone downhill. It’s not what it was.” The first comedian I bump into in Machynlleth’s high street is Stewart Lee who, typically, (ironically) mocks the rampant commercialism of the Machnylleth Comedy Festival, now in its fifth year. An estimated 4000 comedy fans visited the small Welsh town this weekend, compared to around 500 in the first year, but the increase in size, or the bulging programme of events, does not mean the festival has betrayed its boutique roots. Perfect weather, perfect fans, perfect comedy.

Nick Helm doesn't exactly like to make things easy for himself. Following the success of Uncle on BBC3 he is returning to the live arena with a vengeance. He has just announced that he is going to do eight "masterworks-in-progress" at the Machynlleth Comedy Festival in May.