The only major date in the two city centre theatres this month is that of Andy Parsons at the Playhouse on the 13th.

If you can get past the wilfully inflexible voice, he’s very funny. But I can’t. But two more names familiar from television also appear in the county.

Like Parsons, Sean Lock and Lee Hurst are very much in the London school of stand-up. But they can be just as funny outside the capital. Welcome back Lee!

He’s been lower profile for a while and may have made some unwise choices. But let’s hope his Chipping Norton gig tomorrow reflects a return to top form.

The fluent Lock is part of an unofficial comedy season at Didcot’s Cornerstone early in the month. He’s there on March 4. Tomorrow, Henning Wehn’s German take on the British obsession with his native country and the Second World War should be wickedly funny.

But a comic can only go so far with one major theme and his range is extending.

Comparisons are never really fair and Barbara Nice is not a one-trick-pony but expect touches of both Dame Edna Everage and Sarah Millican with her ‘northern housewife’ persona when she’s at the venue on the ninth.

Josh Widdicombe takes the Didcot stage on March 20. Such an old-fashioned name for a very modern comedian. He’s a great technician and his quiet rants are what observational humour is all about.

In Banbury on March 14, Fast Show and Radio 4 regular Simon Day tells anecdotes from his book, in turn taken from his very eventful life. The book is not just the usual showbiz autobiography, so in both senses, this is serious comedy.

Back in Oxford, fast rising local Matt Richardson is at the North Wall on the 14th and there’s a gig (Tony Law on the fourth) for the second successive month at the Cellar.

I’ve had some quiet fun in the past with the Glee’s recent unpredictable scheduling policy.

But for the third month running, it’s keeping to gigs on Friday and Saturday with the Thursday Andrew Lawrence ‘Tour Special’ date on the seventh as a very real bonus.

On the first weekend, Radio 4 Extra’s sci-fi loving muso, Andrew O’Neill, puts in appearances while Kiwi Jarred Christmas is there on the second – March 8-9.

Despite telly stand-up and acting, Christmas’s UK career hasn’t been quite as glittering as I thought it might be after first seeing him about five years ago. But it will be.

I hear American stand-up Sarah Silverman, after finishing her act in about 40 minutes at her last UK date, managed 70 this time round — but with the aid of notes and old material.

Don’t believe all the hype about US comics!