AUDIENCES will be laughing out loud when a new season of top comedy opens at Lighthouse, Poole’s Centre for the Arts this autumn.

A regular on BBC One’s Have I Got News For You? and Radio 4’s Newsquiz, Mark Steel brings his newest stand-up show Who Do You Think I Am? To Lighthouse on October 23. This surprising and enthralling story about being adopted reveals the remarkable things Mark discovered when searching for his own biological parents.

In his brand new show Right Man, Wrong Age on October 29, Russell Kane unleashes another blisteringly funny award-winning stand-up performance about growing up and growing down. Are you 16-years-old, yet feel 21? Are you 40, but tragically faking 25? Or maybe you’re full-on 80 years, with the heart of three oxen and the sex drive of a bonobo chimp. Don’t worry: this is normal.

No one is ever the ‘right age’ – it’s the beauty and the curse of being a real person.

Combining questing polemic with hella sweet gags, Ahir Shah’s Machines on November 19 is a stand-up show about the uses and dangers of utopianism in a complex, fractured world. It also contains an absolutely cracking joke about lizards. This show provides the first opportunity to see comedy in the brand new Sherling Studio, which is being created during Lighthouse’s ongoing summer closure.

Jimmy Carr is gathering a selection of his very best jokes, along with brand new material for the ultimate comedy show at Lighthouse on December 18.

A man who has devoted his life to crafting perfect jokes and has left a trail of laughter in his wake, Jimmy’s new tour will distil everything we love to laugh at and be shocked by, into one incredible, unparalleled night of entertainment.

More comedy is planned for spring at Lighthouse, with dates for Stewart Lee and Ruby Wax already confirmed and more still to come.