Veronica Lee

Tim Key, besuited and wearing a baseball cap, stands on stage as the audience files in, smiling sweetly as people take their seats. He’s on stage but, in keeping with many of the acting roles that non-comedy fans may know him from – Alan Partridge’s Side Kick Simon and the lazy office manager Ken in The Paper, to mention just two – he’s unobtrusive. Many don’t clock his presence at all.

Write about what you know, they say. And just as her previous show was about imminent motherhood (she performed the show while heavily pregnant) now Janine Harouni brings us This Is What You Waited For, which is about – you’ve guessed it – being a parent.The American comic, however, doesn’t deliver a mushy paean to her toddler son, although he certainly provides a lot of comedy, not least about his big head and the bragging rights she gets for having birthed him.

Bryony Kimmings’ new show – her first in five years – was created to celebrate the opening of Soho Walthamstow, the previously neglected Art Deco beauty that’s now one of London’s shiniest venues. She uses every bit of its vast stage to great effect and even manages to get a chunk of the audience on it for its witty epilogue, of which more later.

It’s always good to welcome the opening of a new arts venue, and sadly it doesn’t happen too often in the current economic climate. But bucking the trend is The Free Association, an improv comedy troupe who have been plying their trade in various upstairs rooms in pubs for several years and have now found a permanent base in southeast London.

Comedy is strange old thing; it’s supposed to be funny ha-ha, but the laughs can often come from a dark place, as evidenced by Nick Helm’s latest show (which I saw at the Arts Depot in London). His mental health has been a backdrop to previous show, but No One Gets Out Alive is his most personal yet as he references the end of an important relationship some years ago, and charts how his television breakthrough proved to be a false dawn in his career.

Cat Cohen, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★★In Broad Strokes Cat Cohen paints a fascinating picture of events leading up to the stroke that could have killed her. Thankfully three years on she is now fully recovered – and from near tragedy comes this superb show.

Emmanuel Sonubi, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★This show – Life After Near Death – is not about dying, it is about living, Emmanuel Sonubi tells us. Well, actually it’s about both, as in his case he nearly died of heart failure but, thankfully here he is.

Desiree Burch, Monkey Barrel ★★★★Desiree Burch is a bundle of energy as she comes on stage and gives us a warning about the subterranean venue she’s in. It’ll get hot, the Taskmaster favourite tells us – but maybe that’s just her as she going through the perimenopause, and in The Golden Wrath she’s going to tell us all about it.

Lily Blumkin, Gilded Balloon @ Patter House ★★★ Lily Blumkin has always planned to be a big-time comic, she tells us. So when her parents downsized and asked her to clear out her childhood bedroom, she went through her stuff – photographs, toys and other oddities – to curate the future museum dedicated to her life and work.

Lily Phillips, Monkey Barrel ★★★★Lily Phillips is keen to tell us at the top of her show that she’s not that Lily Phillips. There’s no OnlyFans content in Crying but, dealing as it does with her experience of having a baby, it’s graphic in a different way. So strap in.