No, dear reader, I don’t mean me.

It turns out that the two most high profile comedians taking part in the comedy festival, who both play two shows each at rather large venues over the weekend, are, we have been told, not allowing the press in to review their shows.

Their publicist has told the Post and the Echo it’s because of fear of at least one of them being “overexposed”. Considering who this sorry tale entails, it’s hard to see the method in the madness here. They cannot pick and choose what the press has to say about them and now, at this high point in their careers, seems an odd point to start trying.

If, dear reader, you knew of who I speak, you may well be forgiven for in the words of Dylan Moran in Black Books, being sick into your own scorn.

Some critics get precious about their station in life and the importance of the service they provide. This gripe is nothing to do with that. Me, I know, I’m lucky and in the right place at the right time to be able to be doing this and hopefully doing an alright job.

Also, this could be easily remedied by just attending the shows as a punter and reviewing it anyway just to annoy their promoter. I'm tempted. But if this is how they want to play it, stuff the pair of them. There’s so many different things going on in this city that would better deserve the column inches I would have conceded to give over to these two just because of who they are.

Theirs is just the kind of publicist that would come running to beg us to do an interview with these people if they hadn’t sold enough tickets and that is what absolutely stinks. Not only that, but it eats into the credibility of all the hard work put in by the fantastic lot staging and promoting this comedy festival.

I understand some stand ups are shy, or misanthropic, or don’t like the press or whatever, and that’s all fair enough - but I don’t understand this because these two have “overexposed” themselves regardless of their actual merits as comics, so much as to be pretty much household names. And now, filling 1000+ seater venues, they're not prepared for their acts to speak for themselves? Odd.

I interviewed one of them when I worked on a weekly paper a few years ago when he was just getting known, and hosting the kind of late night Channel 4 game show that made people drink their own wee just to be on the telly.

I wanted to name these two people just because this whole thing has made me so bloody angry. I hope you can guess who they are. But bollocks to the both of them, and as far as I have a say, they won’t be mentioned on here or in the paper again, if they really don’t want to be “overexposed”.

There’s loads of great stuff in Liverpool over the weekend. Steve Gribbin, Silky, Drink Up Stand Up, Robin Ince, Simon Munnery, Richard Herring, Rhona Cameron, Sarah Millican, and all less than half the price of a ticket you would have paid to see either of the two I’m griping about. Do it. www.liverpoolcomedyfestival.com.

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