A SPECIAL Laughter Lounge comedy cabaret for the St Albans Festival season is being held at the Maltings Arts Theatre on Saturday evening. The line-up features Jonny Candon who often performs stand-up at Jongleurs and the Comedy Store where fans will reco

A SPECIAL Laughter Lounge comedy cabaret for the St Albans Festival season is being held at the Maltings Arts Theatre on Saturday evening.

The line-up features Jonny Candon who often performs stand-up at Jongleurs and the Comedy Store where fans will recognise him as a regular act in Robin Ince's ever-changing and highly-successful touring Book Club.

He is joined by Debra-Jane Appelby, former winner of the Funny Women Comedy Award and fast becoming one of the most popular comedians on the circuit.

Also appearing and providing MC duties is John Mann, a comedian who is constantly in demand. Whether discussing the senile antics of the elderly or giving handy hints on successful shoplifting, he is an observer of the mundane who is best described as rude and silly.

Tickets for Laughter Lounge, which gets underway at 8pm, are �10 with concessions �8, available from the arts theatre box office on 01727 844222.

Next weekend the arts theatre is showing the films which came first and second in survey about cinema which St Albans residents responded to.

In second place was Casablanca which is being shown at 7pm next Saturday, July 4, and the top film was 2001: a Space Odyssey, which will be screened at 7pm next Sunday, July 5.

Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains, was the 1942 wartime romance set in the Vichy-controlled Moroccan city of Casablanca during World War II which is filled with quotable lines. It focuses on a man who must choose between his love for a beautiful woman and doing the right thing by helping her and her resistance-leader husband escape from Casablanca to continue his fight against the Nazis

2001 was directed by Stanley Kubrick, who lived at Childwickbury between St Albans and Harpenden until his death. He wrote it in conjunction with Arthur C. Clarke and it details themes of human evolution from the Dawn of Man to the Space Age using pioneering special effects and sound.

Tickets for both films are �5 with concessions �4.50.