Flower Power

Now in its 5th year, Happy Mondays Comedy succeeds in getting some really top names from the world of funny to appear at its shows - over the years, Russell Brand, Daniel Kitson, Russell Howard, Simon Amstell and Stewart Lee have all graced the stage.

Held in the cool Amersham Arms venue, the stage is set up like a living room complete with lamps and armchairs and it's equally comfortable for the audience with sofas and tables a-plenty. Hugely popular with Goldsmiths students, Happy Mondays is a boutique comedy club that manages to secure big names and a lively audience.

Tonight's show is a special 'Stand Up, Take Action' charity night featuring top female comic Lucy Porter and outstanding newcomers Holly Walsh and Nat Luurtsema. All proceeds will go to Stand Up - a global mobilisation to end poverty and inequality. 

Levi's Ones To Watch present youthful north Londoners Bombay Bicycle Club at the Barfly tonight, as they plug their latest release 'Evening Morning'.

Coming from the same north London talent pool as Cajun Dance Party, The Svengalis and Pull in Emergency, these guys are set to be big news, just as soon as they finish their exams.

Karen P's Broad Casting night presents Portugese collective Buraka Som Sistema (a tongue in cheek dig at the popularity of the 'Soundsystem' tag to many artists names). They are comprised of Lil' John, Riot and Conductor - a trio who dish up their trademark hot and fresh grimey ghettotech accompanied by a gang of Portuguese MC's and some incredible young African body poppers.

These guys literally explode onto the stage and their driving, breakbeat and pumping dirty beats will sweep you away to the ghetto.

Their sound combines many flavours; kuduro, zouk, afrobeat, techno, grime, electro. Many of the MC's are from Angola - joining the dots between African and Portugese music.

Bordering on musical schizophrenia, The Creeping Nobodies makes music that slips and slides from twee, Tori Amos style pop to bleak, Black Flag-esque punk sludge.

It shouldn't work, but thanks to an amazing sense of timing and melody, these guys manage to make some of the most urgent music since the Contortions packed it in almost 25 years ago.

First we had the Poodle Club in Stoke Newington, now we also have the Pink Poodle Club in Soho which claims to be London's Gayest Comedy Cabaret! Join glamour puss Miss O for an evening of musical comedy and gay laughter with top stand-up, live piano, and late bar. 

Tonight's show features top controversial comic Scott Capurro  and Mike O'Donovan, an excellent new observational comic from Oz and more.

After the show, guests get free entry into Trannyshack, London's premier drag show with a late disco till 3am.

Shunt is the perfect place for this festival celebrating the best of internet music. Blessed with hidden nooks, surreal spaces, and all manner of kooky furniture and performance artists, the venue also has a couple of big vaults for dancing like a maniac. It's therefore an ideal spot for a festival that takes in weird experimental noise, fantastic live acts who owe their success to sites like LastFM, and some massive DJs who've used Ableton and other online products to push the boundaries.

This will be a thrilling four nights in the vaults, and you can get a pass for the whole event for £20. An absolute must for music nerds.

Wed: Kahvi Label Night feat. Xurba and Mo Sauer

Thu: LastFM Presents feat A.R.E. Weapons and The Village Orchestra

Fri: Netaudio Berlin Night feat Oli Sorenson, Quarion, etc...

Netaudio London Night feat Disrupt, Appleblim, Triggerset etc.

While Burt Bacharach plays the main space at the Roundhouse, the BBC Electric Proms show off their avant garde side in the FREEDM Studio, with eclectic indie collective XX Teens headlining.

Their debut album 'Welcome to Goon Island' is an underrated classic from this year, while Leeds' Wild Beasts are another band well worth checking out.

In the Roundhouse FREEDM Studio

The Autumn edition of the Affordable Art Fair hits Battersea Park this week with the usual range of art across all media on sale for between £50 and £3,000.

There's a good combination of established names and emerging talent and this time there's also a sculpture garden in front of the main marquee - perfect for something a little more exciting than a gnome or stone mushroom.

As ever, this is a great place for collectors (from entry-level to experienced) and for any fan of art whatever your income.

Until 26.10.08.

Multi-media party Digital City returns to the T Bar. The headliner is ultra-experienced electro and techno DJ Billy Nasty, who apart from remaining an underground stalwart for donkey's years is the founder of the Electrix and Tortured labels.

A screening of independent short film kicks off the evening, after which the Big Chill's resident VJs Mach V and Parallax provide the visuals.

The CDR sessions provides a platform where music producers can air their creations to a welcoming, like-minded crowd.

It's organised by Burnt Progress - and this October they've got a busy month. To celebrate the forthcoming 'V/A 2.1' album, every Friday there'll be a selection of live and DJ performances from album artists and connected friends.

Each night will focus on a different production ethos, mood or style. Tonight is the last one and it's all about the beats, with Soundspecies playing live tracks from their debut, self-titled album on Burnt Progress, Mr Beatnik is joined by live PA 'I Know All The Bitches' Ahu and Tranqil and 'V/A 2.1' contributors Bullion, Paul White and Floating Points are finishing up on the decks.

A hard rocking twosome that combine looking incredibly hot with making paint stripping garage rock, Blood Red Shoes are probably the coolest band in the land.

Still riding high from the release of their début 'Box of Secrets', we're still amazed that such a massive noise can come out of such a small package.

La Cage Aux Folles is dynamite stuff. This production was a big hit at the Menier Chocolate Factory and now transfers to the West End for a substantial run.

Originally a French play by Jean Poiret, it was remade as a hilarious French film and subsequently got a Hollywood makeover, which was also pretty good, even though Robin Williams was in it. This musical version promises to be the funniest English language effort, and makes for an unusual treat.

The premise is simple: Albin and Georges run a successful transvestite nightclub in St Tropez. One day Georges' son announces he is getting married and the future in laws are coming to visit. Great news! Unfortunately, though, the new family are puritanical moral crusaders and must on no account suspect that Georges is gay. Hah!

Completely silly, very funny, and just a tad emotional, La Cage Aux Folles is a great show and sales should get a major boost if, as rumoured, Graham Norton takes the title role over Christmas.

Don't expect Jim Jeffries to have turned over any leaves in his new show Hammered.  Rape, disabled people, Christians, fatties and burns victims all get good coverage, not to mention that famous run-in with Kelly Osbourne at the NME Awards (if you haven't already heard the story it's worth coming just to hear that alone).

As always there are particularly brutal parts that might leave you cringing or holding your head in your hands but his aim is to say it like it is no matter how many people it offends and if you're at one of his shows you probably already know that.  It's not all devil-may-care rants though, he occasionally opens up about his personal life and his bleak outlook on love which hints of a much deeper Jeffries than the one we usually see.

Quite literally cannot decide whether this is going to be brilliant or awful. But we're definitely going to see it.

On the one hand, Ontroerend Goed are one of the most exciting, interactive theatre companies around. They stage shows that grip the audience and manhandles it: quite literally in the case of their one-on-one wheelchair odyssey The Smile Off Your Face. Everything they do is interesting, visceral and redefines dramatic staging. On the other hand, this show is all about teenagers.

Once And For All... features 13 teenage actors playing out a number of typical teenage situations. So, they fight, commit vandalism, insult the audience, go to a party, and snog. The play has been praised to the skies for its uneasy but stimulating blend of voyeurism, compassion and truth. It does sound a bit like a feature length Skins, though, doesn't it?

The Guardian gives this show five stars and defines the teens as 'this passionate, invincible chapter in all our lives'. At Spoonfed, we define the teens as those years when you are rather boring, self-centred and rude and you sit in your room and masturbate a LOT. No offense, kids.

Anyway this is one of the theatre events of the autumn and we're looking forward to it immensely, even if it does turn out to be like talking to a real teenager.

Kik Bak is the brand new monthly aiming to deliver boundary-pushing tunes to the heads of South London.

Collaborators Ficklegruber (Mayo Clinic), Pogo DJs and Badlands (Chew The Fat) welcome monthly guests who they consider to be at the forefront of the house, electro and techno scenes.

Last month saw Moda's Scott Cooper lay it down, this month Snap, Crackle and Pop creator Med Damon headlines.

Funktion one, Plan B basement and a 24 hour license? Yes please.

A major exhibition of Byzantine art hits the Royal Academy this October. With a whole host of incredible artefacts - many of which have never before been exhibited in public - this is set to be one of the most visually impressive exhibitions of the year.

Following a chronological development of the Byzantine Empire and the rise and fall of Constantinople, the exhibition includes an array of wall paintings, icons, ivories enamels and gold and silver metalwork. Some 300 objects are on display borrowed from collections across Europe, America, Russia,Ukraine and Egypt: a globally supported examination of a globally-influential era.

Until 22.03.09.

Celebrating a resounding 12 years at ExCel, fans of comics, cosplay and Manga have flocked to the centre dressed as Klingons, Piccachu or even Jabba the Hut to socialise with like-minded Londoners.

The London Movie Comic and Media Expo is THE two day event for anyone wanting to see and test the latest advancements in comics and to also meet their favourite heroes or villains.

Filled with specialist zones dedicated to Anime, Manga, Cosplay and games, there's a hallowed space for whatever your interest.

Book a ticket and then spend the rest of the month working out what to wear. 

Prodigious Arctic Monkey man Alex Turner and Rascals leader Miles Kane headline at the Hammersmith Apollo tonight, performing tracks from their outstanding debut album 'The Age of the Understatement'.

Turner confounded many when he popped up with this Scott Walker-influenced side project, but his third straight Mercury Prize nomination in as many years confirms his status as one of the country's finest songwriters. And he's still only 22.

Halloween is easily the best party of the year. Dressing up like a ghoul and skanking around to house and techno dished up by Geddes, or Horse flavoured disco served plentifully by Jim Stanton and Severino is without a doubt one of the finer things in life.

And, unlike on a normal night out, your look only improves with age, peeking as you come reeling out into the dawn looking crazed and highly confused.

Work by five Canadian new media artists at SPACE this month.

Germain Koh and Peter Flemming look at the Canadian environment using various mechanisms and electronic technology, whilst Norman White, Nicholas Stedman and Joe MacKay combine traditional techniques with complex modern technology.

The relationships between art and science and tradition and modernity are always interesting, and this looks like a fascinating contribution to the ongoing dialogue.

Following a sell-out arena tour of the UK in 2007, and a sell-out tour of New Zealand and Australia in 2008, comedian Bill Bailey brings his show, Tinselworm, to London for a strictly limited six week engagement at the Gielgud Theatre.

As in any Bill Bailey show, the subject matter is broad ranging; tattoos, marketing, doorbells, Emo, creationism, post-war banking secrecy, travellers' tales and the alternate reality that is Bill's world - spun together with the sparkling thread of a seasonal invertebrate.

It has all the trademark Bailey elements; lyrical dexterity, tangential silliness and musical brilliance plus animation by award-winning film maker, Joe Magee, all of which combine to make this a verbal and visual treat. Be an early bird so as not to miss your chance to catch 'The Tinselworm'.

This will be the last time you'll be able to see this show before Bill puts it to bed.

The prolific singer/songwriter who lays the greatest claim to the old 'new Bob Dylan' tag brings his band The Cardinals to Brixton tonight.

They've got their fourth collaborative album out later this year, and have been touring with Oasis lately. The 'Wonderwall' cover is a rare treat.

Jude Law plays the Dane in a stellar conclusion to the Donmar's 'West End' project, which has sought to draw West End audiences to 'serious' theatre over the past 12 months. Certainly Britain's top eye candy will catch the attention of the tabloids but this piece has more than just star power. Directed by Donmar Artistic Director Michael Grandage (after Kenneth Branagh pulled out in order to direct Thor) this should be a memorable production.

Hamlet is a riveting piece with plenty of opportunity for subtlety, grand drama, and poetic tragedy. The prince is an admirable and a tragic figure, but his rage and destructive motivation are out of all proportion. Some have viewed this as a dramatic flaw that makes him less believable, but perhaps it's better to see the Dane as an extreme personality type. Which makes Hamlet the first dramatic dissection of manic depression.

A landmark production that will see huge crowds watching Shakespeare in the West End. What better way to celebrate and conclude the Donmar's well thought-out project?