This bit was at the end, but it might as well have been at the beginning. Or, really, just bannered across the bottom of the screen all the way through: "I am a performer. That is my life. That is what I am. That's it."

Only part-way through a mammoth stadium tour that began last April and continues until next autumn (and which he insists will end on 15 October at the MEN Arena in Manchester, where he once worked as an usher), Peter Kay is still having to add dates as they sell out almost the instant they're announced. He’s a phenomenon that even Michael McIntyre and Jimmy Carr - no slouches in stadium-show sales themselves - must be envious of.

It feels a little like AA: "My name is Judith Flanders, and I am a Doonesbury addict." This month marks the 40th anniversary of Garry Trudeau’s strip – part political satire, part Baby-Boomer comfort zone, all comic, all fine graphic design. And I have been reading it for 38 of those 40 years, to my surprise. I came across the first book when I was 12, and although the main satire – Vietnam – entirely passed me by, I was enchanted with this world of grown-up mockery.

The last time I saw bouncers standing at the foot of the stage at a comedy venue was at a Roy "Chubby" Brown gig. Back then, I remarked how nicely behaved his fans were, as indeed were Frankie Boyle’s last night; however, another quality the two comics share is that they both score pretty highly on the offensiveness scale.

Stephen K Amos, who was born in London to immigrant Nigerian parents, always used to joke that he would get a television series only when Lenny Henry died, because commissioning editors were working on a “one out, one in” basis where black comics were concerned. He was joking, of course, and after several years as a successful stand-up and panel-show guest, he debuted on BBC Two with his own show last night.

Stewart Lee is pretending to be mildly crap. He keeps discussing how he is none too funny, but the point is that his commentary on his own shortcomings thereby turns into a droll running gag. He achieves this with deadpan relish. His delivery is, of course, characteristically sardonic, albeit with an amused glint in the eye. He also frequently stops to spell out how the mechanics of his routine are supposed to be working: po-faced mini-lectures on the art of being hilarious.

Greg Davies is a comedian who laughs along to his own material. A conspiratorial look glints in his eye, a hint of fruity mischief plays on his lips. The adage that you should never be amused by your own punchlines is, of course, a tall tower of rubbish – different jokes for different blokes – but Davies’s enjoyment of his own routine begs a couple of questions. Is it as funny as he thinks it is? Or is it funny because he thinks it is? And then there is the greatest existential quandary of all, which has knitted the brows of philosophers since time immemorial.

There’s just the one joke with Lee Nelson. When I caught a short slice of him earlier this year the joke more than filled the available slot. Nelson has since been granted his own show on BBC Three. Now that he’s out on tour, the question arises of how much celebration of chavs, benefit cheats, petty tea-leaves and other totally amoral representatives of Broken Britain you can stomach before the grin starts to get a little fixed.

The annual Dance Umbrella festival is mostly for the dance industry to talk to itself, I’ve come to feel, with a timetable so closely packed that only Londoners, and specifically those in the tight roaring circle of the know, will get to sample much of it. Then you get two such stand-out evenings as Akram Khan’s and Jonathan Burrows’ in town within a week of each other, two of the major talents in the world, who come running at the idea of theatre from opposite ends - the one spectacular and melodramatic, the other offbeat, mischievous stand-up dance-comedy.

Ten years ago Ben Elton (b 1959) would have needed no introduction. When still very young he became the mouth of a bolshy new generation of alternative comedians, as they were then known. Saturday Live - later Friday Night Live - was consciously modelled on the American template, and seemed very cutting edge. In fact all its alumni soon migrated to the mainstream: Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, freshly down from Cambridge, played Jeeves and Wooster. Harry Enfield became the face of BBC One sketch comedy. And what of Elton? His career went centrifugal.