TIM Vine made his first real attempts at stand-up comedy in 1991 at London's Comedy Cafe. He began to attend the New Act competition nights regularly. While continuing to attend the café, he started to do numerous open spots in other clubs throughout 1992. In 1993 he came second in the Hackney Empire New Act competition and by 1994 he was a regular on the London comedy circuit. That year he made his first TV appearances on BBC Pebble Mill.

These days he's a well known face on the small screen appearing in five series of Lee Mack's award-winning sitcom Not Going Out, playing Beach the Butler in series two of Blandings, plus numerous television appearances on the likes of Live at the Apollo, QI, winning Celebrity Mastermind, hosting ITV game show Don’t Blow The Inheritance, a regular on Celebrity Squares and Countdown’s Dictionary Corner.

He also has a chat show on BBC Radio Four where he hears the life stories of the British public while showcasing his trademark gleeful wordplay and silly songs.

Now pretty much a household name, the comedy virtuoso is back on tour bringing Sunset Milk Idiot to The Forum at Barrow on Thursday, February 28 (8pm), telling scores of silly new jokes, showing off new homemade props, singing some new daft ditties, and all with the appearance of confidence. The following subjects will be apparently touched upon albeit briefly: pixie football, ice cream and nibble feeders. The quantity won't let up and Tim's routine is billed as comedy without a message and described by The Times as "A symphony of silly".

He landed the Perrier Best Newcomer award at the Edinburgh Festival in 1995 for his show The Tim Vine Fiasco.

The year after, he returned to the Edinburgh with a sell-out show called The Tim Vine Shambles and in 1997 he became the first man to appear on Channel Five, co-hosting the very first This is Five with Julia Bradbury.

He also hosted the game show Whittle on Channel Five and his own comedy games show Fluke which ran on Channel Four.

In 2000 Tim performed in the Royal Variety Show in front of Prince Charles and soon after appeared in two series of ITV's The Sketch Show, which won a BAFTA. In 2004 he broke the Guinness world record for the most jokes told in an hour: 499.

Tim Also has released two books ‘The Tim Vine Joke Book’ (2010) and ‘The Tim Vine Bumper Book of Silliness’ (2013).

And for Comic Relief he appeared on Fame Academy, dancing on ‘Let’s Dance’ as Justin Timberlake and playing darts on ‘ Let’s Play Darts’ as well as popping up in a Downton Abbey spoof. And on Celebrity Total Wipeout he fell off everything!

In 2010 and 2014 Tim won the Dave Television award for ‘Best Joke at the Edinburgh Fringe’, the only person to have won it twice. He has successfully toured all of his stand-up shows and has four DVD’s of these shows: Tim Vine Live (2004), So I Said To This Bloke (2006), Punslinger (2008), The Jokeamotive (2009). His latest show ‘Tim Timinee Tim Timinee, Tim, Tim, to you’ is due to be released on DVD in Autumn 2016.

TIM Vine is the latest big name heading to The Forum at Barrow.

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