A huge 24 comedy events to check out this month

October, 'Com'tober more like. Jesus, there's enough comedy out there in the city this month to cause the spontaneous rupturing of everyone's tickled ribs. Anyway, here's some of the highlights. To paraphrase the 80s Starship hit, 'we built this city, we built this city on com-me-dyyyy' (I promise you that'll be in your head the rest of the day now – no need to thank me.)

No Such Thing As A Fish, The Lowry, Thu Oct 1, £18
BBC Two's fact busting series QI also produces a podcast after the programme's research 'elves' discovered there are far more commonly held misconceptions to debunk than you can fit into one TV episode. Mostly they produce it in a dark dank studio, but here they head out on the road and you get a chance to have a nosey at what said 'elves' actually look like.

Comedy at Chorlton Irish Club, Fri Oct 2, £10-£12
Chorlton's monthly club night sees a performance from a seasoned Canadian act who is anything but convention. Looking something like Columbo if he'd ever decided to take up clowning, Wes Zaharuk's shambling exterior is deceptive as he's actually a highly skilled prop comic who is well worth a look. Plus support from Paul Thorne and Brennan Reece and MC Andrew Ryan.

Group Therapy, Gorilla, Sat Oct 3, £10-£12
Joe Lycett is recently returned from the Fringe and currently out on tour with his full length stand up show but here he takes time out to drop by for a set at this great club. Sarah Franken, the artiste formerly known as Will, is recently out as a transgender woman and performs a fine line in innovative, quirky humour.

Laugh Them Out of Town, Manchester Academy, Sun Oct 4, £11 - £33
The only good thing about the Tory party conference being in town is the wealth of comedy talent that it attracts in its opposition. Frankie Boyle, Mark Steel, Francesca Martinez, Sara Pascoe, Jeremy Hardy and Robin Ince perform at this event which will no doubt take the piss out of the posh blue boys. Pig masks at the ready...

Fred's Comedy Club, Levenshulme, Wed Oct 7, £5
The comedy club at the hip pub/coffee shop/art gallery in the increasingly gentrified Levenshulme. Freddy Quinne guest MCs introducing a Manchester legend who happens to currently live just around the corner - Smug Roberts. Get him to do his Robert De Niro impersonation. Support in the form of Ross Brierley, Jenny Collier and Josh Pugh.

Richard Herring, The Frog and Bucket, Wed Oct 7, £10-£12
Herring is perhaps best known for his partnership with Stewart Lee but he's also renowned for his inventive, and of course very funny, solo shows. This date continues another long running partnership – that with the Frog – he's performed his new show there every year since 2005. This year in 'Happy Now?' He ponders life with a wife and a baby.

Barking Tales, Joshua Brooks, Wed Oct 7, £5
Having suffered her own mental health issues and spoken freely about them in her recent stand up work, Harriet Dyer has opened the floor to other funny people to take a wry look at their own brushes with 'madness'. Delving deep here this month are Ro Campbell and Rob Mulholland. All proceeds to Manchester Mind.

Best in Stand Up, The Comedy Store, Fri 9 & Sat 10 Oct, £10 - £24
Just a reminder that while all these other visiting gigs that The Comedy Store (and The Frog) are the only dedicated club venues in the city. This is their weekly weekend show, this time with and John Moloney (Fri only), John Thomson (Sat only), Charlie Baker, Mike Gunn, Otiz Cannelloni and Geoff Norcott.

Beat the Frog's World Series, Heat One, The Frog and Bucket, Mon Oct 12, £3 (Free for students)
Each autumn since 2004, all those who have 'beaten the frog' at the weekly Monday amateur night get to compete in the World Series in a series of four heats whittling the numbers down to the final on November 9. Previous winners include Vince Atta, Sam Gore and Carl Hutchinson.

Women in Comedy Festival, Various Venues, Thu 15 – Sun 25 Oct
Dulcet Sounds/Laughing Cows Hazel O'Keefe and her team launched their all women festival in 2013, and now in its 3rd year it's bigger than ever. Between the opening showcase at the Frog and Bucket to the Laughing Cows night there that closes it ten days later there's a plethora of solo shows, showcases, workshops and sketch. With performances from the likes of Susan Calman, Jo Enright, Tiffany Stevenson and Birthday Girls.

Sham Bodie, Soup Kitchen, Thu Oct 15, £5
This month Sham Bodie pops up in the lovely downstairs nook of Soup Kitchen. They should have a competition each month to guess where they're going to appear next. The usual charming oddball shenanigans will no doubt ensue with Danny Sutcliffe playing ‘Gerrin’ the Bin’, sketch from Gein’s Family Giftshop, Pop Up Puppet Cinema doing Back to the Future and music from Peace and Love Barbershop Muhammad Ali.

Nick Helm, Dancehouse Theatre, Fri Oct 16, £12.50
Helm is on a rare jaunt across the north with a 'dipping his toe in' tour. C'mon The North, don't let him down, he's a great act, one of the truly exciting talents to emerge in recent years. With the physique and flying-by-the-seat-of-his-pants quality of Johnny Vegas and sporting Bill Oddie's beard, Helm is set to join comedy's luminaries. And he's been on the telly already.

Doug Stanhope, The Lowry, Fri 16 & Sat 17 Oct, £32
Crikey, this is a turn up, Stanhope in the big room at the Lowry! Twice! The American stand up is one of those guys you expect to find in a dark, slightly damp room that still allows smoking despite the ban (in fact where it's compulsory for all to smoke throughout the entirety of his set). Uncompromising, controversial, far too frank and very funny.

James Acaster, The Lowry, Sun Oct 18, £17
With his off kilter shtick, Acaster has been nominated for a Foster's Edinburgh Comedy Award for four consecutive years. No surprise that these days his is a guaranteed inventive work. Last year he pretended (or did he?) to be an undercover copper for the duration, this year he turns to his experience on jury service (or does he?). You get the idea.

Shits n Giggles, Antwerp Mansion, Sun Oct 18, Free
The monthly comedy club in Rusholme's most boho venue. A headline set from Malawian comedian Daliso Chaponda with support from Jay Islaam and Paul Imrie and MC is Roland Gent. And it's completely free!

XSMalarkey, Pub/Zoo, Tue Oct 20, £3/£5
As ever XS always has a great show to put on (remember it's there every Tuesday people) and this week is no exception. John Kearns won the Foster's Edinburgh Newcomer Award at the Fringe in 2013 with his début show in which his oddball stage persona sported a crap wig and bad teeth for no apparent reason. The rest of the show was just as absurdly funny.

Stories For The Starlit Sky, The Dancehouse, Tue 20 & Wed 21 Oct, £12
Given Daniel Kitson's godlike status, this is probably going to sell out very very soon. But still… back in 2009 Kitson and his good musical friend Gavin Osborn created a trilogy of tales which they performed across three nights (and months) at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre. Here, on this small tour they are to be performed altogether. It will be magical no doubt.

MACE, Kosmonaut, Thu Oct 22, £5
Manchester's Alternative Comedy Experience plays host to Canadian stand up Mae Martin. Martin looks deceptively sweet with her pixie cut and girlish features but she's guaranteed to make you chortle with her insightful comments on sexuality amongst other topics. She also appears alongside Bethany Black at the Dancehouse tomorrow.

Kevin Bridges, Manchester Apollo, Thu 22 – Sun 25 Oct, £25
Scotland's answer to Jason Manford, it's his every man charm that shot Bridges to fame and acclaim so young. The now 28 year old Glaswegian is a bankable name these days as these four dates at the Apollo testify. Here he tours his latest show, 'A Whole Different Story'.

Scottish Falsetto Socks, Kings Arms, Fri Oct 23, £7-£9
Socks. With ping pong balls for eyes. What's not to like? Here the Caledonian socks channel Dennis Potter (as well as plundering most other fictional detectives) with their latest show 'Minging Detective'.

Festival of the Spoken Nerd, The Lowry, Sun Oct 25, £18
Dara O'Briain may be Mr Comedy Science on the telly but in reality out on the live scene there are plenty of others doing great stuff that mixes science with laughs. One such act is Spoken Nerd, the collaboration of mathematician Matt Parker, comedian and physics graduate Helen Arney and the master of the dodgy experiment - Steve Mould.

New Art Club, Contact Theatre, Thu Oct 29, £5-£13
Pete Shenton and Tom Roden like nothing better than prancing about in an idiotic manner. Though there is a bit more to it than that. Hilarious physical comedy that is beautifully choreographed on account of the pair being proper trained dancers. Here they take on the story of Hercules. A lot of family fun.

Bill Bailey, Manchester Apollo, Fri 30 & 31 Oct, £28.95
Everyone's favourite beardy weirdy has already toured this show around Australia and New Zealand, so having sensibly tested it out on the Antipodes he's now touring it over here. In 'Limboland,' the gap between how we imagine our lives and how they actually are is on his mind, but it's hard to imagine exactly how different to being a beardy musical comedy god Bailey could have imagined it better?

Rob Newman, The Lowry, Sat Oct 31, £18
Probably still better known to those of us of a certain age as one have of Newman and Baddiel and one quarter of The Mary Whitehouse Experience, but in his comedy middle age Rob Newman is one of the most exciting comedians around. With previous shows about the history of oil and the politics of war, he's unafraid to tackle a weighty topic. This time he examines the brain, performing complete with an MRI hat which monitors his thought patterns throughout the gig.

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