Kevin James’ varied CV has thus far featured a wealth of memorable creations.

Bumbling fat-guy in King of Queens, bumbling fat-guy in Hitch and bumbling fat-guy in I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry – there hasn’t been such a startling auteur with this much range since John Candy.

And like Candy (which James clearly does), Kevin manages to make what is an otherwise down on his luck cardboard cutout into a likeable chubby action hero – Paul Blart. This is silly fun, the kind that makes children laugh until they’re rolling around dribbling, while leaving adults to exclaim ‘meh’.

Forgettable escapism is on the cards, something that doesn’t feel bogged down by issues – apparently it became trendy in the mid-noughties to try and give audience diabetes through sugary, issue and moral-laced comedies.

Fortunately, the only person suffering from such a  disease is the title character himself. Moustached, well-fed and full of beans, Blart is the type of character that isn’t trying to do anything new except being likeable and amusing.

Credit to James, who has filled a hole missing from cinema with ease. He brings the chubby, funny goon back to the screen, and does so without the sentimental streak that burdens the genre.

When the doughnuts are down and Blart becomes a 20-stone Bruce Willis, he works his way through a mall of criminals, taking them down one by one. The film kicks up a gear when the action starts – fortunately for Blart, the bad guys manage to make it easy to root for the good guy. Rather than menacing super-criminals, they’re simply a bunch of skater boys jumping around, riding BMX’s and looking more like the type of dribbling sociopaths you’d normally find normally loitering outside Tesco. They seem frightened to actually fire any guns, preferring to just shout and run away from a fight with a guy who couldn’t swing his arms without getting heart failure.

Still, there had to be a concession made for believability, and further adding to this is the deer-in-headlights love interest Amy. It isn’t Douglas/Zeta-Jones bad and there is enough easy charm that they get away with it.

Really, you could write this review without seeing the actual film; an enjoyable comedy filled with tubby pratfalls and larger than life characters. It isn’t exactly David Lynch but is actually just a slice of good ol’ fun!

The extras are fairly robust (I will stop with the fat puns eventually), commentary with the director and James, deleted scenes, behind the scenes and plenty of back-slapping action to boot. A nice package, unfortunately featuring the most annoying DVD menu of all time but overall making a breezy lightweight DVD.

3/5

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Dawn French, Lee Mack, Justin Lee Collins, Alan Carr… the list is endless.

Just thinking about them makes us want to round up every TV executive in a small room and hack the testicles off them that they haven’t even got in the first place.

And so the following is a list – in no particular order – of some of the most brilliant, unique, prime-time repellent and, therefore, largely anonymous comedians we’ve had the privilege to have never heard.

Read what we’ve got to say, watch and listen to what they have to say, fall in love and spread the word.

Doug Stanhope

For any of you who have ever thought ‘I wonder what Bill Hicks would say today if his pussy of a pancreas hadn’t of got all cancerous’ then what spews from Doug Stanhope’s gorgeously vitriolic mind is probably as close to an answer as you can get.

Not that he’s plagiarising the great man, not one bit. The topics are similar but the jokes and ideas have evolved and are all his own.

There are lots of people who will tell you that they don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks of them and they’re almost always talking bollocks, but with Doug you get the impression he means it and it’s this unparalleled lack of shame that separates him far, far away from the rest.

Any of you who have Mary Whitehouse posters blutacked all over your walls then this video is definitely the one for you:

Daniel Kitson

Basically, to be fair, at the end of the day, when all is said and done, etc, and so on, et al, blah blah; what we all want from our entertainers – be they comedians, musicians, novelists or people who do drawings with their own blood and poo – is for them to make us feel less lonely in this bloody horrible world; nothing beats a warm cockle in the heart, and no comedian can warm a heart-cockle like Daniel Kitson.

Take a man like Russell Brand; as undeniably talented as he is, it’s hard to fully empathise with a man whose sole motivation behind every gag is ‘how can I continue to successfully seduce/manipulate this myriad of celebrity-worshipping girls into having sex with me?’

He’ll say anything, so long as it doesn’t disrupt this masterplan, and we’re sure he couldn’t care less (it’s hard to care too much about anything when you’ve got four bent over bottoms baying for your boy – so Stuart Heritage informs us) but it does go some way to stifling your comic potential.

Luckily for us though, Daniel Kitson is unfettered by such distractions, perhaps due to being a bifocalled-ginger with a stutter, and we love him all the more for it – no doubt you will too.

You may know him as Spencer off Phoenix Nights, but what you should know him for is being one of the best stand-up comedians in the world:

Tony Law

Tony Law is a man from Canada. As if that wasn’t funny enough, he also tells jokes. Never before has an accent and an occupation been so perfectly matched, apart from maybe Adolf Hitler.

Until now, absolutely nobody has heard of Tony Law apart from his mum and it’s about time that changed, because the man is a fucking colossus.

A safe word to describe his act would be surreal, although we’re sure there is a better one out there, we’re just buggered if we know what it is, the illiterate frauds that we are.

We’ll just let him speak for himself. Enjoy:

John Hegley

Poetry, as we all know, is for limp wristed, mum-bumming toffs who actually enjoyed reading Shakespeare at secondary school.

But we are all wrong! A few centuries after Shakespeare butchered the art-form, along came a man from Luton called John Hegley, who taught anybody who was bothered enough to listen that poetry can actually be brilliant.

Unfortunately there isn’t much in the way of John Hegley videos around this here internet place, so this grainy, out of sync offering’ll have to do. Otherwise you can click here for an old-fashioned read.

Stewart Lee

How dare we group Stewart Lee amongst a list of unknowns? To be honest, we feel quite ashamed of ourselves too, but it’s been over a decade since he and Richard Herring (who is still touring and at the top of his game – click here for the ultimate lesson in how to handle a heckler) lit up our TV screens with the likes of Fist of Fun and This Morning With Richard Not Judy and, aside from some hardcore fans and an equally hardcore group of right-wing Christian lobbies, nobody seems to know who the man is, and so any exposure is worth it – mankind can only benefit from having Stewart Lee’s wisdom up inside it.

A couple of years back he was ranked 41st in a Channel 4 poll of the best stand-up comedians of all time, which is about 40 positions too low as far as we’re concerned.

We’re not saying he’s Jesus, that’s for you to decide. Watch this and judge for yourselves:

But Tim Allen has worked out that only starring in films about Santa Claus won't win him an Oscar. Indie comedies are what'll win him an Oscar, which is why Tim Allen has signed up to make his directorial debut with the comedy Crazy On The Outside.

Don't worry, though, this isn't some guffy ego-puffing vanity project, because Tim Allen isn't even going to star in Crazy On The Outsi… what's that? He is going to star in Crazy On The Outside? OK, well in that case it is a guffy ego-puffing vanity project. Sorry about the mix up.

Tim Allen has given the world so much in his 54 years. He's highlighted the tragic plight of mulleted children with idiot fathers on Home Improvement. He's raised awareness of men who keep turning into Father Christmas with the Santa Clause movies. And he would have given the world 1.4 pounds of cocaine if he hadn't been arrested with it at Kalamazoo airport in 1978.

That alone should be enough for Tim Allen to take a step back, realise he's given the world enough and go on to do something else that's less public. But Tim Allen's not having a sniff of it – after a decade spent pretty much exclusively starring in children's films where he turns into stuff like Santa Claus, a shaggy dog or, in the case of Zoom!, a warmly nostalgic rocket-shaped ice lolly – Tim Allen has decided to strike out on his own.

That's right – Tim Allen is going to direct his very first movie, an indie comedy called Crazy On The Outside. EW reports:

Allen will also star in the movie, and Ray Liotta, Carrie-Anne Moss, Kelsey Grammer, and Julie Bowen are all in talks for roles. Allen plays a parolee who finds life outside a prison to be much crazier once he enters his quirky sister's world.

Hilarity ensues. Or, since this is an indie comedy, mild amusement that never actually makes you laugh out loud followed by a sad, soul-searching bit and then a song by Iron & Wine over the credits ensues. Or, since this in an indie comedy directed by Tim Allen, none of the above.

But perhaps we've got this all wrong. We literally don't know a thing about Crazy On The Outside. It could be a bawdy knockabout affair, or it might take the lead from Tim Allen's forthcoming turn in a David Mamet movie and show a more serious, considered side to him. Given the subject matter, Tim Allen might even make Crazy On The Outside slightly autobiographical.

In which case one thing's for certain – everyone is going have really crap facial hair.

Read more: 

Tim Allen Directing 'Crazy' – EW 

You know the score – sometimes you're blown away by a selection of genuinely witty, intelligent and funny gag-merchants, while on other occasions you end up so bored with legions of "hey, aren't men and women kinda different" jokes that you end up gnawing on your pint glass in sheer frustration. And then receiving a cleaners bill for all that pesky blood-mopping afterwards.

New Kilburn comedy club The Porthole – and it is new, for this Monday was indeed its opening night – comes as a pleasant surprise on two accounts. Number one: it neatly snuggles into the former category listed above, what with it having a first-rate assortment of microphone-wielders treading the boards. Number two: it shows that you don't have to travel slap-bang into the centre of London to see great comedy. Kilburn locals – all hovering around a spot on the Jubilee line – now have a nearby weekly comedy night that comes at a remarkably reasonable price.

How reasonable? Try £3 for members or £4 for the rest. For just over the price of a pint, for example, hecklerspray revelled in roundabout two-and-a-half hours of comic talent. Even if Kilburn is only somewhere you're familiar with by staring at the edges of the Tube map every morning, a club like this is well worth the travel, whether you're local to the area or not.

Anyone needing further persuasion should check out the roster for the first night. Kicking off with skilled audience wranglers Benny Boot and Steve Weiner (whose dissection of chavspeak in supermarkets was spot-on), we were then treated to the off-kilter and slightly dark musings of Michael Fabbri (who incidentally owes us a drink should he use that prop idea hecklerspray was babbling about. Either that or a cut of any future DVD sales, if possible. Either would work, to be honest).

Rounding everything off, however, was the remarkable Milton Jones . You may have seen Jones on many a televised stand-up compilation, or more likely his recent Radio 4 series, but it's in a club-based live environment that he really shines. Coming across as a peculiar hybrid of Stephen Wright and Harry Hill - yet with better one-liners than both – he's a veritable joke machine with a winning deadpan delivery and an ease with an audience that's pretty much masterful. You know you're dealing with a great comedian when you can sense an act being tailored perfectly to the surroundings.

All of this is hosted by the effervescent and enthusiastic James Everett, whose immediate control of the crowd marks him out as the ideal host. After a few years of gathering attention on the circuit, he now seems to have established a permanent base in a weekly night that looks set to grow and grow in popularity. Hecklerspray has been privy to some of the upcoming names who are going to be swinging by to do a set, and there are some big ones on there. Like, BAFTA-winning big.

Look – in essence, here's what we're trying to say. Mondays are generally rubbish. Why not make yours better by heading out to this Kilburn laughfest, having a couple of beers and watching some top acts reel out their comic charms. It certainly beats watching EastEnders with a Pot Noodle on your lap, anyway.

And if you're especially lucky? You might even bump into a hecklerspray writer.

Now if that isn't worth the journey alone…

The Porthole takes place every Monday night at The Good Ship, 289 Kilburn High Road, NW6 7JR. Show begins 8.30 sharpish. Next week's headliner is the wonderful Shazia Mirza. More details here.