Saturday Live

Angela Barnes was brought up on comedy. She and her dad Derek would go to stand-up shows together and when they listened to comedians on the radio he would say “Why don’t you have a go at that?, Angela. Why don’t you give comedy a try?”. For a long time, she felt she couldn’t. But when Derek died suddenly at the age of 60 Angela remembered his words and today she appears on the very shows she used to listen to with her dad. The National Poet of Wales, Hanan Issa, has that wonderful advantage of being able to see the world via a bi-cultural lens; she’s Welsh-Iraqi. Hanan’s also a filmmaker and scriptwriter and her monologue 'With Her Back Straight' was performed as part of The Hijabi Monologues at the Bush Theatre in London and she worked on the much loved and lauded Channel 4 comedy series We Are Lady Parts. If you watch Britain’s Got Talent, the chances are you saw Richard Essien introduce himself as the street magician Magical Bones. His shows combine magic, illusions and street-dance culture and before