Jake Godfrey

"We'd like to apologise to viewers in the North. It must be awful for them". So goes one of Victoria Wood's finest lines, delivered impeccably by Susie Blake as the bitchy continuity announcer in Victoria Wood As Seen On TV, the BBC Two sketch show which ran between 1985 and 1987.

As Tweedy The Clown, star of Giffords Circus, brings his solo show full of silliness and slapstick to the Fringe, we chat about the art of clowning and what makes a perfect panto. What inspired your love of clowning and who are your biggest influences? Growing up Laurel & Hardy were on tele every evening at 6pm. On Saturday afternoons, old films of Norman Wisdom, George Formby, Marx Bros etc would be on too.

For a while, writer Carla Lane - born Romana Barrack - had a monopoly on Scouse sitcoms. The Liver Birds was ground-breaking in so many ways, from Lane and co-writer Myra Taylor spearheading their own series in the late 1960s, to her pioneering writing of working class women on television. She then created Butterflies, which weaved an aching melancholy through the laughs as Wendy Craig's Ria debated whether or not to have an affair.