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Bruce Dessau has the lowdown on the latest gigs, gags and gaffes from the world of comedy

If you go down to the woods

The Latitude Festival has competition. The Curious Arts Festival in the New Forest’s Pylewell Park (curiousartsfestival.com) takes place over the same weekend, July 17-19, and has just announced its impressive comedy line-up. Highlights include David Baddiel, Mark Watson, Richard Herring and Lucy Porter, pictured, alongside literary and music events. The quirky weekend also offers tea-leaf readers and fortune tellers. Presumably they have already predicted that the festival will be a hit.

Oh-so-serious Omid

Effervescent Anglo-Iranian comedian Omid Djalili is going (briefly) straight. He is executive producer of We Are Many, a documentary about modern protest movements from opposition to the Iraq War to the Arab Spring, in cinemas next month. It’s an impressive career shift for Djalili, whose most notable film contribution to date saw him being killed by a scarab beetle burrowing under his skin in The Mummy.

Last orders

Whatever the outcome of the general election, Al Murray’s Pub Landlord standing against Nigel Farage in South Thanet has at least provided some laughs. On election night, Dave screens a 90-minute documentary following Murray’s attempts to woo voters with policies written on the back of a fag packet. His latest wheeze is to cut NHS queues by only treating people “who can sing the words to the Dad’s Army theme tune”. The documentary airs as soon as the polls close at 10pm. Watch it, or alternatively stay in the pub — that’s what the Landlord would have wanted.