So Hello then Roger McGough famous poet from Liverpool You are reading at the Troubador on Monday And so is EJ Thribb

So Hello then, Roger McGough, famous poet from Liverpool You are reading at the Troubador on Monday And so is EJ Thribb If he’s not too shy. Get some Maltesers in, stick a cardboard cut-out of someone’s head in front of the screen and you’re away.La Fille Mal Gardee, tonight 7pm; The Stone Flower, Mon 9pm; Dancing for Mr B, Thurs 10.30pm. Lise is danced by the great Lesley Collier, whose sweetness and virtuosity made her one of the greatest interpreters of the role.
Later this week you can catch the Kirov Ballet in The Stone Flower and the documentary Dancing for Mr B in which six Balanchine ballerinas (including Maria Tallchief, Allegra Kent, and Darci Kistler) discuss the great man and his working methods. The really Ashton touches are found in the dancing chickens, the maypole, the clog dancing and the extraordinary character of Alain the idiot, created by Alexander Grant Performance screen the ballet tonight. The bewitching mime sequence in which the solitary Lise imagines her marriage to Colas and the children they have together was taught to Ashton by the great Tarmara Karsavina. Lise lives with her mother, the Widow Simone, who wants her to marry a rich idiot.

Lise would rather have the handsome young farmer Colas and the ballet’s action tells how the lusty young couple outwit the ambitious old lady. It was a subject ideally suited to Frederick Ashton’s wit and to his flair for creating believable characters His version, created in 1960, was an immediate success He stuck firmly to the original scenario. Jean Dauberval chose instead to create a comedy set in the farmyard. This true ballet d’action was born in 1789 and was considered revolutionary at a time when ballets were deliberately artificial entertainments, mostly concerned with classical subjects in tragic mode. This week you get three big chunks of classical ballet starting with tonight’s rerun of the Royal Ballet’s La Fille Mal Gardee.

Performance channel occasionally throws up a new bit of dance, but most of the time it’s happy to repeat existing material on a neverending loop. Chronic sufferers get round the problem by watching endless videos Either you own the films or you watch them on cable. Its chief symptoms are long evenings spent listlessly looking through old programmes, feverish anticipation of the slightest trace of balletic activity and an unusually swollen bank balance. Ballet starvation is a little recognised condition. Now, for the first time in four years, this accomplished stand-up returns to them.He plays Beck Theatre Hayes (0181-561 8371) tonight; Lewisham Theatre Catford (0181-690 0002) tomorrow; The Swan High Wycombe (01494 512000) Wed. So wrapped up has he been with presenting various programmes – Win, Lose or Draw, The Show and In Bed with MeDinner – that he has recently neglected his stand-up roots. They did a great show together; then they split up and did things individually which weren’t as good.

Anyway, the BBC don’t get that many hit shows, so they’ve got to make the most of them.”Simon Day is at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London W12 (0171-924 9999) tonightCOMEDY EXTRABob Mills often seems like the weatherman – there every time you turn the television on. Day thinks the crew have at least another Christmas special in them. “The producers, Paul [Whitehouse] and Charlie [Higson], will go away from it for a bit But we’re such a good team Look at The Day Today. Doing characters is about hiding and not having to show yourself on stage.”One last word of encouragement for Fast Show addicts currently going cold turkey This may not be the end of the show as we know it.

I’ve always used funny voices – like David Lynch directing Brookside. I never got up there and said `it’s terrible what Thatcher has done to this country’. Then Vic Reeves came along and smashed the idea that you had to say `isn’t it funny when you go to the supermarket?’, and straight stand-up started dying out People could see character comedy was the way forward. But he is not just surfing the trendy wave of character comedy; he was performing it way back when “At one time, only John Shuttleworth and I were doing it.