This week's new live comedy

Loretta Maine, London Pippa Evans picked up a Best Newcomer nomination for her 2008 Edinburgh show, and followed it last summer with another collection of well-written grotesques. For 2010, she's focusing on her impressive alter ego, the impossibly tormented and occasionally frightening country singer Loretta Maine. Like Dolly Parton seen through the lens of Mike Leigh, Maine embodies all the bitterness, rancour and misery that lie beneath the deceptively gentle surface of the country genre. Slurring her words and breaking off to fix men in the audience with a baleful glare, she performs brilliantly observed songs about love, loss and violent revenge. Sir Richard Steele, Sat; Downstairs At The King's Head, Sat; Camden Head, NW1, Mon; Night And Day, Manchester, Wed; Battersea Arts Centre, SW11, Thu; Crumblin' Cookie, Leicester, Fri Gary Delaney, On tour At a time when many standup comics are doing their level best to bend the art-form into ever more innovative and challenging shapes, Midlands comic Gary Delaney is launching a not-so-covert back to basics campaign. He's about to make his full Edinburgh debut with a show called Purist (at the Pleasance Cellar, 4-29 Aug), which he promises won't contain either "narrative, themes or a voyage of self-discovery." All this isn't to suggest that he's some kind of comedy luddite, harking back to the pre-alternative days of the working men's club circuit and violently un-PC humour – it's just that for him, the jokes are all that matter. If you're a fan of Tim Vine or Milton Jones, you'll find much to enjoy here. Like them, Delaney is a proper gag-writing craftsman, and his performances pack in a remarkable number of well-honed puns, unexpected reversals and beautiful one-liners. But where Vine and Jones make the most of their larger-than-life personalities to help wow the crowds, Delaney cuts a peculiarly anti-showbiz figure onstage, deliberately low-key and assuming. He knows that with gags this good, he can afford to let them sell themselves. Komedia, Bath, Sat; Jesters, Bristol, Sat; Bar One, Derby (Edinburgh preview), Sun Boothby Graffoe, Ealing Someone's who's dropped out of the public eye completely in recent years is Boothby Graffoe. Having announced his retirement from stand-up back in 2007, he's just recently started popping up again for the odd one-off gig. If you get the chance to witness his majesty before he disappears from view again, make sure you take it – because he's a truly hilarious and comprehensively satisfying entertainer. The stage name is borrowed from that of a small village in Lincolnshire, but Graffoe isn't a character act. In fact, there's very little "act" to speak of at all – just an extremely nice bloke telling a succession of very dry jokes, before strapping on a guitar and performing some inspired comic songs. Graffoe doesn't serve up pastiches or rely on cheesy rhyme to get laughs – instead, his songs set him bizarre scenarios and pursue them to quietly logical yet brilliantly funny conclusions. Ealing Comedy Festival, Fri