The over-all winner and best newcomer from this year’s Edinburgh Comedy Award proceedings – Adam Riches and occasional Penny Dreadful Humphrey Kerr - will both take to the Soho Theatre stage this weekend.

Riches is optimistic that his current stand-up show, as seen in da Burgh last August, will translate well for the London crowd. Speaking to Time Out, he says: “In Edinburgh, everyone in the room, I hope, felt included and possibly threatened. But yes, it will work at the Soho. Theatre, it will just be a case of trial and error. But for the purposes of this interview, it’s going to be great, it’s going to be better!’.

You can catch up on Adam’s full Time Out interview here, or there’s always the chat he had with our sister site ThreeWeeks last August. The details and tickets for his Sunday Soho Theatre show, meanwhile, are stashed here. And finally, here Riches is portraying the one, the only, the VERY LOUD… Daniel Day Lewis.

Opening today at London’s Strand Gallery is ‘Funny Faces’, a new exhibition of 40 portraits of celebrity stand-ups and comic thespian types. Jimmy Carr, Al Murray, David Mitchell and Omid Djalili have all donated autographed mug-shots, as taken by Paul Heneker, to the collection, which will be auctioned off when the show closes on 17 Dec. With limited edition prints of each photograph also available for a mere £30, all proceeds will go to homeless charity Shelter.

Also lending her image to the cause is Edinburgh Fringe favourite Izzy Suttie, aka Dobby of ‘Peep Show’ fame, who has these words of encouragement: “Christmas should be a time for giving, receiving and arguing over the last Quality Street – not worrying about a roof over your head. I hope that through the ‘Funny Faces’ exhibition we can help raise money to support Shelter’s work this Christmas – so get bidding now!”

So, if you’re stuck for something to get your loved one for Christmas this year, a signed portrait of… say, Simon Pegg, might just be the one. More info on the exhibition here.

Taking their cue from the good old TED Talks (you know the ones… those big high profile lectures as delivered by Bill Clinton, Bill Gates and some people not called Bill, these days all streamed for free on the net), comedians Ben Target and Daniel Berg will this Thursday conduct the third in their own series of seminars aimed at discussing and dissecting the world at large.

Each PLEB Talk (as the duo have christened the project) thus far has proven to be a highly paletteable mixture of the academic, the ambitious and the absurd (that’s where the chucking Quorn comes in). And, with guest speakers including Mighty Boosh co-hort Rich Fulcher, Penny Dreadful Thom Tuck, and ‘Life’s Too Short’s Gareth Morninan taking to the makeshift lectern for this week’s PLEB happening, it seems comics are clamouring for a taste of sweet existential debate.

Below, you can view a cryptic trailer that reveals next to nothing about what goes on at the PLEB Talks. Meanwhile, this Spoonfed feature gives away slightly more. If all that has inspired you to buy tickets for the next event, which takes place on Thursday at a secret London location, those can be got here.

Noel Faulkner, owner of Shoreditch’s Comedy Cafe, has announced the imminent closure of the venue’s main room and an overhaul of its programming, apparently because he’s tired of “brainless” audiences. Plans are in place to open a new upstairs venue at the club, which, by also hosting ‘theatre nights’ and showcasing more new talent, he hopes will begin to attract a more discerning crowd.

Says Noel: “I have been hacked off with the level of brainless wankers in the otherwise lovely audiences we have been getting, and I have now decided to change the direction of the comedy and bring it back to what most serious theatre people would appreciate. Friday and Saturdays will still be stand-up, but more so for the thinking man than the Page Three man”.

He adds: “For 20 years I have suffered, pandering to brainless fools but now it’s my turn to create the kind of live comedy venue that I would go and see”. Well, at least he’s honest. For more on the Comedy Cafe and its owner, here’s an interview Time Out did with Noel for the club’s 20th anniversary.

So, Ricky Gervais stepped in to discuss his new comedy series ‘Life’s Too Short’ with ‘Front Row’ presenter Mark Lawson last week.

I think it’d be fair to say that the show, a mockumentary-style sitcom centring on the not-so showbiz life of its 3 ft 6 protagonist, Warwick Davis, has taken a good deal of flack from critics, and some would say deservedly so. Audiences have also seemingly voted with their feet, with viewing figures falling steadily from 2.5 million for episode one, to less than half that tuning into last week’s installment.

Spirited in his defence of the programme, Gervais told Lawson that he has passed through various phases in his feelings towards critics; from craving their approval, to deliberately setting out to “annoy” them. Now, it seems, he’s indifferent. He says: “I haven’t got a problem with critics. But I think that many people mistake the subject of a joke with the target of a joke. And I’ve had that my whole career”.

You can hear the interview, which aired on last Tuesday’s ‘Front Row’, by downloading the podcast version of the programme, which – as we write – is still available here.

The owners of the Jongleurs comedy club network have launched a dating site. The idea is to match singles with similar interests – and most essential of all, presumably, a GSOH – who can then rendezvous at a Jongleurs event, where they’ll receive discounted entry.

Steve Pammenter of WhiteLabelDating.com, software providers for the new venture, told reporters: “Having a core group of members who all share a love for comedy will only increase the user’s dating experience… We look forward to outstanding results with Jongleurs Dating”.

So, if you’ve got £25 to spend on an annual membership fee, and a desire to find both love and laughter, check out the site here. Jongleurs’ main London base these days is in Covent Garden, just in case your wondered. It can be hard to keep up.

Radio 4′s ‘Today’ – far too serious a programme for gimmicks of course – has confirmed it will again place its editions between Christmas and New Year in the hands of bunch of celebrity editors. That’s a good idea right?

Actually, I quite like this now annual festive tradition, though never enough to actually get up in time to listen to a guest edited edition of the news show. But perhaps I’ll make an effort this year, given ThisWeek favourite Stewart Lee is set to edit ‘Today’ on 31 Dec.

Sebastian Coe, Tracy Emin and former House Of Commons speaker Betty Boothroyd are also amongst those slated to oversee their own versions of the current affairs programme this Christmas. Notable celebrity occupants of the editor’s seat in past years have included Blur’s Damon Albarn, Professor Stephen Hawking and Colin Firth.

Good times. Though the real reason for reporting on all this here is because it provides a great opportunity to remind ourselves of the last time Stewart Lee dedicated some brain time to the wonders of Radio 4. Let’s hope the R4 comedy office is shut when Lee is in the building working on his ‘Today’ show.

Having regaled audiences with ‘The Story So Far’ last year, Scots stand-up Kevin Bridges is set to return next Autumn with a brand new show, called ‘The Story Continues’, obviously.

Of the dates already announced, at least half are in Scotland (most of them at Glasgow’s SECC in fact, they certainly seem to love their latest local boy joker down Glasgow way), though there are two London dates at the Hammersmith Apollo on 28 and 29 Sep. You can find the full tour itinerary so far here.

But if next Autumn seems a long way off, you can get a dose of Bridges much sooner than that because he is also set to helm of forthcoming BBC TV series called ‘Whats The Story?’. Filmed in Scotland, its six half-hour episodes are due to air on BBC 1 next February.

Says Kevin of the show: “I’m delighted at the news that someone at the BBC has deemed me worthy enough to be let loose with a camera crew in an attempt to make something funny. It’ll be great to see something on national TV made from Scotland that doesn’t have an appeal for witnesses before the closing credits”.