FOLLOWING sold out residencies in New York and London, Simon Amstell brings his fourth international stand up tour, To Be Free, to Poole next month.

With intense vulnerability and searing honesty, Amstell explores freedom, joy, love, death, adventure, art, peace, sex, regret, success, eating, suffering, dreaming, healing, forgiving and other areas.

“Telling the truth is setting me free,” he says. “There are jokes or stories I have not wanted to tell, which have been stuck in me for years because they are too embarrassing or shameful, then eventually they have been forced out at work in progress shows.

“It’s very freeing and you realise, ‘oh, that shameful thing is not so shameful, it’s the way we all feel or some of us feel’.”

The former Popworld and Never Mind The Buzzcocks presenter has won two British Comedy Awards, an RTS Award, a Broadcast Award, a Chortle Award and has been nominated for a BAFTA.

Tickets for his performance at Lighthouse, Poole’s Centre for the Arts, which starts at 8pm on Thursday, March 12, cost £22.75 (concessions available). For more, call 0844 406 8666 or visit lighthousepoole.co.uk