A funny thing is about to happen to York... CHARLES HUTCHINSON introduces the city's first comedy festival.

THE line-up for the first York Comedy Festival is complete.

From Jimmy Carr to Jimmy Cricket, Tommy Tiernan to Hattie Hayridge, Riding Lights Theatre Company to the Natural Theatre Company eggheads and a National Talent Hunt to the York Comedy Tour, more than 40 events will run from June 23 to June 29.

After months of preparation, the festival brochure has been released by organisers Tom Sharp and Andy Milson, from the Stone Soup arts promotion and publishing house, and Dan Atkinson, the whirlwind driving force behind The Other Side Comedy Club at City Screen, York.

Irishman Tommy Tiernan will headline the week-long festival with his new touring show Tell Me A Story... From Inside Your Head at York Barbican Centre on June 28 (8pm), while the launch event, at the Grand Opera House on June 23 (8pm), puts together a triple bill of Omid Djalili, Boothby Graffoe and Lee Mack. Djalili appeared in the films Gladiator and The Mummy; Mack has won the Time Out Award for Best Live Comedy Act; Graffoe has acquired a cult status from his BBC Radio 4 work.

In a second triple bill at the Grand Opera House, Jimmy Cricket lines up alongside fellow stalwarts of the comic craft, Don Maclean OBE and Bernie Clifton with his miscreant ostrich, in The Funny Guys show on June 26 (7.30pm).

Hattie Hayridge, alias Holly from the BBC2 sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf, will be supported by shaggy dog story-telling surrealist Rhog Gilbert at The Other Side promotion in the City Screen Basement Bar on June 24 (7.30pm).

Further Other Side shows at City Screen will feature Dominic Frisby and Ian Cognito, June 25; the scruffy yet grass-cut sharp Daniel Kitson, June 26; and Tim Vine, on The Joke Machine Gun Tour 2003, on June 27. All start at 7.30pm.

In a June 26 preview of his Edinburgh Fringe show, Paul Foot: Most Wanted, Paul Foot will undertake a shambolic, improvised rant with a precise running time of 54 minutes, 33 seconds at the Ha! Ha! bar. He will explain how to upset someone by rejecting a gift or, alternatively, simply smashing one of their vases.

Ha! Ha! will host two more shows, both on June 24. At 7pm, Sweethearts & Bodyparts will present The Flirt Lab, their Edinburgh Fringe-bound, extensively researched guide to the art of flirtation with individual tuition on request.

At 9pm, Gary Le Strange, the Byronic Lord of Synth Pop, will sing his greatest hits and talks about cowboys, pirates, robots, office furniture, industrial architecture and Regency dandies, in Polaroid Suitcase.

Improvised comedy will take its turn in a three-night run for The Jack And Paul Show at Casa, from June 24 to 26. York comedian and comedy tutor Jack Weatherall and Paul Graham, resident host of Whose Lunch Is It Anyway? at Edinburgh's Stand Comedy Club, will be joined by guest comics each night from 7pm to 9pm.

Valentine Flyguy, a past hit at The Other Side, will form part of An Evening With Mirth Control triple bill at The Independent pub, in Lowther Street, on June 27 (8pm). Host Geoff Whiting will be introducing Electric Forecast and Hils Barker too.

Another pub taking part in the festival is the Golden Lion, in Church Street. On June 25 it will welcome two shows: at 7pm, Bad Play, a "tasteless, offensive, poorly conceived and dreadfully performed satire on topical, issue-based fringe theatre"; then at 9pm, The Trap, Jeremy Limb, Paul Litchfield and Dan Mersh's latest exercise in physical sketch comedy and aural trickery. The first show was the surprise hit of last summer's Edinburgh Fringe; the second is bound for the Scottish capital in August.

The organisers' keenness to promote new performers has led to the groundbreaking National Talent Hunt with a grand prize of £750. Running from June 23 to 28 at 7.30pm at Harkers, in St Helen's Square, it will involve 30 of the best comedians to emerge over the past three years performing sets of 15 minutes of original material.

The Saturday grand final will be compered by deadpan Red Dwarf star Norman Lovett, and heat comperes will be Pat Monahan, Anthony J Brown, Andy White, Geoff Whiting and Dan Atkinson.

The festival will take to the city-centre streets on June 26 and 27 when the Natural Theatre Company could emerge from anywhere, at any time, to behave in strange ways in their fantastical costumes and weird headgear.

The festival also includes many fringe events such as plays, art exhibitions, films, walks and talks. York theatre company Riding Lights will perform the world premiere of Augustus Carp Esq at Friargate Theatre, Lower Friargate, from June 23 to 28 (7.30pm); City Screen will display a Comedy Art Gallery all week in the upstairs and downstairs galleries and present a season of comedy films: This Is Spinal Tap (June 21), Some Like it Hot and Bringing Up Baby (June 22), South Park The Movie (June 27) and Bill Murray in Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day (June 28).

Roam'in Tours and York Executive Guides will undertake York Comedy Tours at 10.30am and 2pm on June 23, 25, and 27, each starting outside the Roman Bath, in St Sampson's Square, and lasting 90 minutes.

Budding comedy writers can join Jimmy Richards to learn tricks of the trade on June 25, from 6pm to 7.30pm in a Read Write York event in the Marriott Room, Central Library.

An all-day comedy mini-festival for kids at the Eye of York will involve crazy clowns, funny-face painting, stilt walkers, balloon modelling, the Amazing Suitcase Circus and, for David Beckham fans, funky hair braiding.

The festival's central box office is at City Screen, Coney Street, open 11am to 9pm for personal bookings. Alternatively, ring 01904 541144 (City Screen); 01904 671818 or 0870 606 3595 (Grand Opera House); 08700 600100 (24hr TicketWeb); or book on-line at www.ticketweb.co.uk. Please note, most venues also will sell tickets for their own events. For general information on the York Comedy Festival, ring 01904 652101 in office hours.

Updated: 10:26 Friday, May 30, 2003