Melbourne Comedy Festival Unveils Epic Full Line-Up

The annual Melbourne International Comedy Festival is just more than a month away, and the event is putting the final touches on preparation with the huge announcement of its full 2015 line-up, featuring a slew of A-class Aussie stand-up talent among its eye-popping array of shows.

Local comedians such as Hannah Gadsby, Celia Pacquola, Tom Ballard, Meshel Laurie, Em Rusciano, Joel Creasy, and Tripod (performing with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra) all join an existing line-up that features Aussie drawcards such as Judith Lucy, Wil Anderson, Ronny Chieng, Fiona O'Loughlin, Dave Hughes, Adam Hills, the Doug Anthony Allstars and several others — including the new addition of veteran lady of laughter Effie.

On the international side of things, where we're already catered to by a list of renowned comedians such as Rich Hall, Ruby Wax, Miranda Sings and Josie Long, we see further reason to get out of bed any day between 25 March and 19 April for a giggle or two, including the likes of Jen Kirkman and Noel Fielding.

All up, there will be more than 559 shows on offer for festival punters across 145 venues for a total or more than 6921 performances by more than 3000 comedians over the course of the festival. If you're looking at those numbers and thinking, 'Gee, that seems like a bigger festival than ever before,' you're not imagining it — 2015 is set to be the year to beat in the event's record books.

It's a truly mammoth undertaking to get across all the laughs on offer next month, but luckily the festival has just launched their new website, which should make a dream of it for you — head that way to start planning where you're going to get your chuckles in a few weeks' time.

For more information about the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, see theGuide or hit The Music App.