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A couple leave a sex shop on St. Mark's Place late night in New York City.

Sex shops on Boulevard de Clichy, Paris

A sex shop, erotic shop is a shop that sells products related to adult sexual or erotic entertainment, such as sex toys, lingerie, clothing, pornography, and other related products. The euphemisms "adult video store" and "adult book store" are commonly used to refer to sex shops that sell pornographic films, books, and magazines.

The world's first sex shop was opened in 1962 by Beate Uhse AG in Flensburg, West Germany, and sex shops can now be found in many countries. Many sex shops also trade over the internet. Sex shops are part of the sex industry. In most jurisdictions, sex shops are regulated by law, with access not permitted to minors, the age depending on local law. Some jurisdictions prohibit sex shops and the merchandise they sell, e.g. many Muslim countries as well as a few US states. In some jurisdictions that permit it, they may also show pornographic movies in private video booths, or have private striptease or peep shows. Also an adult movie theater may be attached.

Near borders of countries with different laws regarding sex shops, shops on the more liberal side tend to be popular with customers from the other side, especially if importing the purchased materials by customers to their own country, and possessing them, is legal or tolerated.^{[citation needed]}

A sex shop in UK, sells things that are used for sexual intercourse. It sells things for people to each other.

By law, UK sex shops must not show goods in the window.

Almost all licensed adult stores in the UK are forbidden from having their wares in open shop windows, which means often the shop fronts are boarded up or covered in posters. A warning sign must be clearly shown at the entrance to the store, and no sex articles (for example, pornography or sex toys) should be visible from the street. However, lingerie, non-offensive covers of adult material, etc. may be shown depending on the license conditions of the local authority. No customer can be under eighteen years old.

The Ann Summers chain of lingerie and sex toy shops recently won the right to advertise for shop assistants in Job Centres, which was originally banned under restrictions on what advertising could be carried out by the sex industry. The increasing acceptance of sex shops can also be seen as the north-west England chain Nice 'n' Naughty became the first adult company to win an investor in people award.

In 2007, a Northern Ireland sex shop was denied a license by the Belfast City Council. The shop appealed and won, but this was overturned by the House of Lords.^[1]

In London, there are few boroughs that have licensed sex shops. Soho has fifteen licensed shops and several remaining unlicensed ones. Islington has several sex businesses (at least three licensed shops- Private, Adultworld and Soho Original Books- as well as three pornographic cinemas and numerous massage parlors/strip clubs, concentrated on Caledonian Road). The Euston area has extant old-fashioned hardcore sex shops, with most on Eversholt Street. In the early 1990s, London's Hackney council sought to shut down Sh! Women's Erotic Emporium, because they did not have a license. Sh! took the council to court and consequently won the right to remain open as there were no sufficient reasons for the closure.

There are also many online sex shops, selling a variety of adult content such as toys, fetish wear etc. These types of shop are often favoured by the consumer as they have less overheads and can be perused within the comfort of the home. Their discreetness is also appealing to some.

Sex shops in Scotland are regulated under the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982.

United States[link]

In the United States, a series of Supreme Court decisions in the 1960s (based on the First Amendment to the United States Constitution) generally legalized sex shops, while still allowing states and local jurisdictions to limit them through zoning. Into the 1980s, nearly all American sex shops were oriented to an almost entirely male clientele. Many included booths for viewing pornographic film loops (later videos), and nearly all were designed so that their customers could not be seen from the street: they lacked windows, and the doors often involved an L-shaped turn so that people on the street could not see in. While that type of store continues to exist, since the end of the 1970s there has been an evolution in the industry. Two new types of stores arose in that period, both of them often (though not always, especially not in more socially conservative communities) more open to the street and more welcoming to women than the older stores.

On the one hand, there are stores resembling the UK's Ann Summers, tending toward "softer" product lines. On the other hand, there are stores that evolved specifically out of a sex-positive culture, such as San Francisco's Good Vibrations, Xandria, Seattle's Toys In Babeland, Jillians Fantasy or My Spicy Treasures of Denton, TX . The latter class of stores tend to be very consciously community-oriented businesses, sponsoring lecture series and being actively involved in sex-related health issues, etc. They also often carry toys that are manufactured on a craft basis rather than mass manufactured.

The 1990s also saw the birth of the sex "superstores," some of them with over 10,000 square feet (930 m²) in area.

Canada[link]

The first sex shop on the continent of North America was "The Garden". which was opened in October 1971 by Ivor Sargent on tony Crescent Street in downtown Montreal, Quebec. The Garden combined the basic concept of Beate Uhse (Germany) and Ann Summers (U.K.) with a Canadian twist- to make the store comfortable and appealing to Mr. & Mrs. Joe Public and to remind them that a personal sex-life should always be fun.http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1946&dat=19711119&id=H0EjAAAAIBAJ&sjid=36EFAAAAIBAJ&pg=7107,3485504 The store's opening attracted long lines of curious shoppers -men, women & couples- and was noted in The New York Times; Women's Wear Daily (US);Playboy magazine;The Financial Post(Canada);and Weekend Magazine (Canada). The Palm Beach Post commented: "Like the chicken or the egg controversy,no one is really sure which came first-the sex boutique or the so-called Sexual Revolution" http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1964&dat=19720322&id=q4MyAAAAIBAJ&sjid=x7cFAAAAIBAJ&pg=967,1844124 The prevailing public taboos against sex, and over-zealous authorities, made progress difficult for The Garden,but hundreds of sex boutiques now flourish across the country and "sex toy parties" modeled after "Tupperware parties" have become the latest rage...illustrating the enormous shift in public attitudes since 1971. There are no specific laws against using or buying sex toys at basically any age, however there are laws about pornography.Although the age of consent is 16 in Canada you have to be 18+ to purchase or view pornography. Most sex shops of today, such as Stag Shop, http://stagshop.com/ carry adult videos, which means that most sex toys remain strictly in the hands of adults.

Italy[link]

Front window of a Tokyo sex shop advertising adult toys

The first sex shop in Italy was opened in 1972 in Milan by Masia Angela and her husband Ercole Sabbatini. This was the first "official" sex shop. Since then Italy has become overrun with sex shops, mostly in Rome. It is known as Sex Shop Citta' di Milano. This store faced opposition from conservative segments of the Italian population, and was closed several times by the police. Its establishment marked a turning point in Italian mores, however, and today many more sex shops have opened in the country.

Japan[link]

In Japan, the sex shops contain hentai magazines, adult videos and DVDs.

Singapore[link]

Sex shops are extremely rare in Singapore. These shops mainly sell lingerie and various sex toys.

Bulgaria[link]

The first sex shop in Bulgaria was opened in 1991. The stores sell a variety of sex products popular in Europe.

Australia[link]

Sex shops have operated in Australia since the 1960s, first in the urban areas of Sydney, notably Kings Cross. Sex shops in Australia are regulated by state laws and are subject to local planning controls.

In the state of New South Wales sex shops cannot trade at street level and are required to trade above or below ground.

See also[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Sex shop

• Sex industry
• Beate Uhse AG

References[link]

The male gamete (sperm) fertilizing the female gamete (egg cell)

In biology, sexual reproduction is a process of combining and mixing genetic traits, often resulting in the specialization of organisms into a male or female variety, each known as a sex. Sexual reproduction involves combining specialized cells (gametes) to form offspring that inherit traits from both parents. Gametes can be identical in form and function (known as isogametes), but in many cases an asymmetry has evolved such that two sex-specific types of gametes (heterogametes) exist: male gametes are small, motile, and optimized to transport their genetic information over a distance, while female gametes are large, non-motile and contain the nutrients necessary for the early development of the young organism.

An organism's sex is defined by the gametes it produces: males produce male gametes (spermatozoa, or sperm) while females produce female gametes (ova, or egg cells); individual organisms which produce both male and female gametes are termed hermaphroditic. Frequently, physical differences are associated with the different sexes of an organism; these sexual dimorphisms can reflect the different reproductive pressures the sexes experience.

Evolution[link]

It is considered that sexual reproduction first appeared about a billion years ago, evolved within ancestral single-celled eukaryotes.^[1] The reason for the initial evolution of sex, and the reason(s) it has survived to the present, are still matters of debate. Some of the many plausible theories include: that sex creates variation among offspring, sex helps in the spread of advantageous traits, and that sex helps in the removal of disadvantageous traits.

Sexual reproduction is a process specific to eukaryotes, organisms whose cells contain a nucleus and mitochondria. In addition to animals, plants, and fungi, other eukaryotes (e.g. the malaria parasite) also engage in sexual reproduction. Some bacteria use conjugation to transfer genetic material between cells; while not the same as sexual reproduction, this also results in the mixture of genetic traits.

What is considered defining of sexual reproduction is the difference between the gametes and the binary nature of fertilization. Multiplicity of gamete types within a species would still be considered a form of sexual reproduction. However, no third gamete is known in multicellular animals.^[2][3][4]

While the evolution of sex itself dates to the eukaryote stage, the origin of chromosomal sex determination is younger. The ZW sex-determination system is shared by birds, some fish and some crustaceans. Most mammals, but also some insects (Drosophila) and plants (Ginkgo) use XY sex-determination. X0 sex-determination is found in certain insects.

No genes are shared between the avian ZW and mammal XY chromosomes,^[5] and from a comparison between chicken and human, the Z chromosome appeared similar to the autosomal chromosome 9 in human, rather than X or Y, suggesting that the ZW and XY sex-determination systems do not share an origin, but that the sex chromosomes are derived from autosomal chromosomes of the common ancestor of birds and mammals. A paper from 2004 compared the chicken Z chromosome with platypus X chromosomes and suggested that the two systems are related.^[6]

Sexual reproduction[link]

The life cycle of sexually reproducing organisms cycles through haploid and diploid stages.

Sexual reproduction is a process where organisms form offspring that combine genetic traits from both parents. Chromosomes are passed on from one generation to the next in this process. Each cell in the offspring has half the chromosomes of the mother and half of the father.^[7] Genetic traits are contained within the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) of chromosomes – by combining one of each type of chromosomes from each parent, an organism is formed containing a doubled set of chromosomes. This double-chromosome stage is called "diploid", while the single-chromosome stage is "haploid". Diploid organisms can, in turn, form haploid cells (gametes) that randomly contain one of each of the chromosome pairs, via a process called meiosis.^[8] Meiosis also involves a stage of chromosomal crossover, in which regions of DNA are exchanged between matched types of chromosomes, to form a new pair of mixed chromosomes. Crossing over and fertilization (the recombining of single sets of chromosomes to make a new diploid) result in the new organism containing a different set of genetic traits from either parent.

In many organisms, the haploid stage has been reduced to just gametes specialized to recombine and form a new diploid organism; in others, the gametes are capable of undergoing cell division to produce multicellular haploid organisms. In either case, gametes may be externally similar, particularly in size (isogamy), or may have evolved an asymmetry such that the gametes are different in size and other aspects (anisogamy).^[9] By convention, the larger gamete (called an ovum, or egg cell) is considered female, while the smaller gamete (called a spermatozoon, or sperm cell) is considered male. An individual that produces exclusively large gametes is female, and one that produces exclusively small gametes is male. An individual that produces both types of gametes is a hermaphrodite; in some cases hermaphrodites are able to self-fertilize and produce offspring on their own, without a second organism.^[10]

Animals[link]

Hoverflies engaging in sexual intercourse

Most sexually reproducing animals spend their lives as diploid organisms, with the haploid stage reduced to single cell gametes.^[11] The gametes of animals have male and female forms—spermatozoa and egg cells. These gametes combine to form embryos which develop into a new organism.

The male gamete, a spermatozoon (produced within a testicle), is a small cell containing a single long flagellum which propels it.^[12] Spermatozoa are extremely reduced cells, lacking many cellular components that would be necessary for embryonic development. They are specialized for motility, seeking out an egg cell and fusing with it in a process called fertilization.

Female gametes are egg cells (produced within ovaries), large immobile cells that contain the nutrients and cellular components necessary for a developing embryo.^[13] Egg cells are often associated with other cells which support the development of the embryo, forming an egg. In mammals, the fertilized embryo instead develops within the female, receiving nutrition directly from its mother.

Animals are usually mobile and seek out a partner of the opposite sex for mating. Animals which live in the water can mate using external fertilization, where the eggs and sperm are released into and combine within the surrounding water.^[14] Most animals that live outside of water, however, must transfer sperm from male to female to achieve internal fertilization.

In most birds, both excretion and reproduction is done through a single posterior opening, called the cloaca—male and female birds touch cloaca to transfer sperm, a process called "cloacal kissing".^[15] In many other terrestrial animals, males use specialized sex organs to assist the transport of sperm—these male sex organs are called intromittent organs. In humans and other mammals this male organ is the penis, which enters the female reproductive tract (called the vagina) to achieve insemination—a process called sexual intercourse. The penis contains a tube through which semen (a fluid containing sperm) travels. In female mammals the vagina connects with the uterus, an organ which directly supports the development of a fertilized embryo within (a process called gestation).

Because of their motility, animal sexual behavior can involve coercive sex. Traumatic insemination, for example, is used by some insect species to inseminate females through a wound in the abdominal cavity – a process detrimental to the female's health.

Plants[link]

Flowers are the sexual organs of flowering plants, usually containing both male and female parts.

Like animals, plants have developed specialized male and female gametes.^[16] Within most familiar plants, male gametes are contained within hard coats, forming pollen. The female gametes of plants are contained within ovules; once fertilized by pollen these form seeds which, like eggs, contain the nutrients necessary for the development of the embryonic plant.

Female (left) and male (right) cones are the sex organs of pines and other conifers.

Many plants have flowers and these are the sexual organs of those plants. Flowers are usually hermaphroditic, producing both male and female gametes. The female parts, in the center of a flower, are the carpels—one or more of these may be merged to form a single pistil. Within carpels are ovules which develop into seeds after fertilization. The male parts of the flower are the stamens: these long filamentous organs are arranged between the pistil and the petals and produce pollen at their tips. When a pollen grain lands upon the top of a carpel, the tissues of the plant react to transport the grain down into the carpel to merge with an ovule, eventually forming seeds.

In pines and other conifers the sex organs are conifer cones and have male and female forms. The more familiar female cones are typically more durable, containing ovules within them. Male cones are smaller and produce pollen which is transported by wind to land in female cones. As with flowers, seeds form within the female cone after pollination.

Because plants are immobile, they depend upon passive methods for transporting pollen grains to other plants. Many plants, including conifers and grasses, produce lightweight pollen which is carried by wind to neighboring plants. Other plants have heavier, sticky pollen that is specialized for transportation by insects. The plants attract these insects with nectar-containing flowers. Insects transport the pollen as they move to other flowers, which also contain female reproductive organs, resulting in pollination.

Fungi[link]

Mushrooms are produced as part of fungal sexual reproduction

Most fungi reproduce sexually, having both a haploid and diploid stage in their life cycles. These fungi are typically isogamous, lacking male and female specialization: haploid fungi grow into contact with each other and then fuse their cells. In some of these cases the fusion is asymmetric, and the cell which donates only a nucleus (and not accompanying cellular material) could arguably be considered "male".^[17]

Some fungi, including baker's yeast, have mating types that create a duality similar to male and female roles. Yeast with the same mating type will not fuse with each other to form diploid cells, only with yeast carrying the other mating type.^[18]

Fungi produce mushrooms as part of their sexual reproduction. Within the mushroom diploid cells are formed, later dividing into haploid spores—the height of the mushroom aids the dispersal of these sexually produced offspring.

Sex helps the spread of advantageous traits through recombination. The diagrams compare evolution of allele frequency in a sexual population (top) and an asexual population (bottom). The vertical axis shows frequency and the horizontal axis shows time. The alleles a/A and b/B occur at random. The advantageous alleles A and B, arising independently, can be rapidly combined by sexual reproduction into the most advantageous combination AB. Asexual reproduction takes longer to achieve this combination, because it can only produce AB if A arises in an individual which already has B, or vice versa.

Sex determination[link]

The most basic sexual system is one in which all organisms are hermaphrodites, producing both male and female gametes—this is true of some animals (e.g. snails) and the majority of flowering plants.^[19] In many cases, however, specialization of sex has evolved such that some organisms produce only male or only female gametes. The biological cause for an organism developing into one sex or the other is called sex determination.

In the majority of species with sex specialization, organisms are either male (producing only male gametes) or female (producing only female gametes). Exceptions are common—for example, in the roundworm C. elegans the two sexes are hermaphrodite and male (a system called androdioecy).

Sometimes an organism's development is intermediate between male and female, a condition called intersex. Sometimes intersex individuals are called "hermaphrodite"; but, unlike biological hermaphrodites, intersex individuals are unusual cases and are not typically fertile in both male and female aspects.

Genetic[link]

Like humans and other mammals, the common fruit fly has an XY sex-determination system.

In genetic sex-determination systems, an organism's sex is determined by the genome it inherits. Genetic sex-determination usually depends on asymmetrically inherited sex chromosomes which carry genetic features that influence development; sex may be determined either by the presence of a sex chromosome or by how many the organism has. Genetic sex-determination, because it is determined by chromosome assortment, usually results in a 1:1 ratio of male and female offspring.

Humans and other mammals have an XY sex-determination system: the Y chromosome carries factors responsible for triggering male development. The default sex, in the absence of a Y chromosome, is female. Thus, XX mammals are female and XY are male. XY sex determination is found in other organisms, including the common fruit fly and some plants.^[19] In some cases, including in the fruit fly, it is the number of X chromosomes that determines sex rather than the presence of a Y chromosome (see below).

In birds, which have a ZW sex-determination system, the opposite is true: the W chromosome carries factors responsible for female development, and default development is male.^[20] In this case ZZ individuals are male and ZW are female. The majority of butterflies and moths also have a ZW sex-determination system. In both XY and ZW sex determination systems, the sex chromosome carrying the critical factors is often significantly smaller, carrying little more than the genes necessary for triggering the development of a given sex.^[21]

Many insects use a sex determination system based on the number of sex chromosomes. This is called X0 sex-determination—the 0 indicates the absence of the sex chromosome. All other chromosomes in these organisms are diploid, but organisms may inherit one or two X chromosomes. In field crickets, for example, insects with a single X chromosome develop as male, while those with two develop as female.^[22] In the nematode C. elegans most worms are self-fertilizing XX hermaphrodites, but occasionally abnormalities in chromosome inheritance regularly give rise to individuals with only one X chromosome—these X0 individuals are fertile males (and half their offspring are male).^[23]

Other insects, including honey bees and ants, use a haplodiploid sex-determination system.^[24] In this case diploid individuals are generally female, and haploid individuals (which develop from unfertilized eggs) are male. This sex-determination system results in highly biased sex ratios, as the sex of offspring is determined by fertilization rather than the assortment of chromosomes during meiosis.

Clownfish are initially male; the largest fish in a group becomes female.

Nongenetic[link]

For many species sex is not determined by inherited traits, but instead by environmental factors experienced during development or later in life. Many reptiles have temperature-dependent sex determination: the temperature embryos experience during their development determines the sex of the organism. In some turtles, for example, males are produced at lower incubation temperatures than females; this difference in critical temperatures can be as little as 1–2°C.

Many fish change sex over the course of their lifespan, a phenomenon called sequential hermaphroditism. In clownfish, smaller fish are male, and the dominant and largest fish in a group becomes female. In many wrasses the opposite is true—most fish are initially female and become male when they reach a certain size. Sequential hermaphrodites may produce both types of gametes over the course of their lifetime, but at any given point they are either female or male.

In some ferns the default sex is hermaphrodite, but ferns which grow in soil that has previously supported hermaphrodites are influenced by residual hormones to instead develop as male.^[25]

Sexual dimorphism[link]

Common Pheasants are sexually dimorphic in both size and appearance.

Many animals have differences between the male and female sexes in size and appearance, a phenomenon called sexual dimorphism. Sexual dimorphisms are often associated with sexual selection – the competition between individuals of one sex to mate with the opposite sex.^[26] Antlers in male deer, for example, are used in combat between males to win reproductive access to female deer. In many cases the male of a species is larger in size; in mammals species with high sexual size dimorphism tend to have highly polygynous mating systems—presumably due to selection for success in competition with other males.

Other animals, including most insects and many fish, have larger females. This may be associated with the cost of producing egg cells, which requires more nutrition than producing sperm—larger females are able to produce more eggs.^[27] Occasionally this dimorphism is extreme, with males reduced to living as parasites dependent on the female.

In birds, males often have a more colourful appearance and may have features (like the long tail of male peacocks) that would seem to put the organism at a disadvantage (e.g. bright colors would seem to make a bird more visible to predators). One proposed explanation for this is the handicap principle.^[28] This hypothesis says that, by demonstrating he can survive with such handicaps, the male is advertising his genetic fitness to females—traits that will benefit daughters as well, who will not be encumbered with such handicaps.

Sex differences in humans include, generally, a larger size and more body hair in men; women have breasts, wider hips, and a higher body fat percentage.

References[link]

Further reading[link]

External links[link]

Find more about Sex on Wikipedia's sister projects:
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	Learning resources from Wikiversity
	News stories from Wikinews
	Quotations from Wikiquote
	Source texts from Wikisource
	Textbooks from Wikibooks

	Book: Sex
Wikipedia books are collections of articles that can be downloaded or ordered in print.

• Human Sexual Differentiation by P. C. Sizonenko
• New Scientist article on Sex chromosomes in the platypus

Look up shop or shoppe in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Shop may refer to:

• A retail shop or store
• An online shop
• A workshop
• A machine shop
• Adobe Photoshop
• Corel Paint Shop Pro
• Shopping
• "Shop class", an industrial arts educational program
• The Shopi, a subgroup of the Bulgarians, Serbs and Macedonians
• "Shops", an essay by the Hong Kong author Xi Xi
• An abbreviation for the image editing software Adobe Photoshop or a verb describing fake imagery made with Photoshop
• An abbreviation for The Shopping Channel, a Canadian home shopping channel that uses the word "Shop" in its logo
• Shell higher olefin process (SHOP - Shell higher olefin process) a chemical process for the production of α-olefins
• The Shoppe, an American country music group
• SHoP Architects, a New York-based architectural firm
• .shop, a proposed top-level domain

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Russell Joseph Howard^{[citation needed]} (born 23 March 1980)^[2] is an English comedian and presenter best known for his TV show Russell Howard's Good News and his appearances on the topical panel TV show Mock The Week. He won "Best Compère" at the 2006 Chortle Awards and was nominated for an if.comedy award for his 2006 Edinburgh Festival Fringe show.

Personal life[link]

Howard has two younger siblings, twins, Kerry, an actress, and Daniel,^[3] a systems analyst who suffers from epilepsy,^[4] a fact which Howard often references during his act. Indeed, in April 2010, Howard ran the Virgin London Marathon for the first time with both his brother and sister, to raise money for the National Society for Epilepsy. He completed the 26 mile course in 4 hours and 15 minutes, beating his target time of 5 hours. Sponsorship has raised over £7,000 to date.^[5]

Howard supports Liverpool Football Club and says that he is "deadly serious" about football.^[6] "I still go down the pub and play football with my mates", he commented in 2010.^[6]

In terms of political views, Howard appeared at Friends of the Earth's LIVEstock comedy and music event at the Hammersmith Apollo in support of the green campaign group's Food Chain Campaign for planet-friendly farming, on 12 November 2009.

For Sport Relief 2010 he took part in the BT Sport Relief Million Pound Bike Ride, with David Walliams, Jimmy Carr, Fearne Cotton, Miranda Hart, Patrick Kielty, and Davina McCall. They cycled from John O'Groats in Scotland to Land's End in 4 days trying to raise 1 million pounds.^[7]

Career[link]

TV and radio work[link]

In 2004 he was commissioned by BBC Radio 1 to write, sing and perform on the comedy series The Milk Run. Howard has also appeared on the shows Banter (hosted by Andrew Collins) and Political Animal for BBC Radio 4.^[8]

Until 2010, Howard was a regular panelist on Mock the Week. He has also appeared on 8 Out Of 10 Cats, Would I Lie To You?, Live At The Apollo, The Secret Policeman's Ball 2008, Law of the Playground and Never Mind the Buzzcocks (Series 18, Episode 2 and Series 20, Episode 4).^[9]

He was one of several comedians picked as the best comedy talent from the 2005 Edinburgh Festival Fringe that recorded 10–15-minute spots for the 'Edinburgh and Beyond show' which was aired on Paramount Comedy 1 in the autumn of 2006.^[10] The show was filmed at The Bloomsbury Theatre. From 2009, he took over as compère of this show from Al Murray.^[11]

From November 2006 to July 2008, Russell co-hosted The Russell Howard Show^[12] on BBC 6 Music with fellow comedian Jon Richardson in a Sunday morning slot previously hosted by Russell Brand. The show continued to air, without Howard, until March 2010. He has since explained that his main reason for leaving the show was that he finds radio "really restrictive" and "I gorge off the audience as a performer, but you can't gauge a reaction on the radio."^[13][14]

Russell was commissioned to make a comedy show called Russell Howard's Good News, aimed at under-25s, for BBC Three. The first episode aired on 22 October 2009 and the show ran for seven episodes as well as a "Best Of" show and a Christmas Special. It went on to become BBC Three's highest ever rating entertainment series.^[15][16] In the show, he gave his take on the week's major news stories, as well as giving attention to some of the more light-hearted stories of the week. Two more series of the show were commissioned, with the second series starting on March 25, 2010.^[17] A fourth series began on 24 March 2011 on BBC Three.

While recording an episode of Good News which aired on 17th November 2011, he broke his wrist when a stunt went wrong, being that Russell tried to do push ups on a collapsible stool which inevitably collapsed. He then revealed on the following show some of the texts sent by his friends and family following the accident.

He made his United States television début on the August 3, 2011 episode of Conan.

Live comedy[link]

A show from his 2007 Adventures tour was released on DVD on 17 November 2008,^[18] under the title "Russell Howard Live". The show on the DVD was recorded at The Bloomsbury Theatre.^[19]

Howard started touring his show Dingledodies in September 2008 and played various dates through to December. Due to overwhelming demand he further extended the tour twice into 2009. It sold in excess of 125,000 tickets,^[20] including three sell-out shows at the Hammersmith Apollo as well as several large arenas such as Wembley Arena and Manchester's MEN Arena. The DVD of this tour was released on 9 November 2009^[21] and features a recording of the show from the Brighton Dome.^[20]

He was named "Best Theatre Show" at the 2009 Chortle Comedy Awards.^[22]

Howard performed 10 UK dates between 11 and 20 December 2009 for his "Big Rooms and Belly Laughs" tour.^[23]

In 2011 the far right English Defence League threatened to picket outside one of his live gigs in retaliation at material poking fun at them in one of his TV performances.^[24]

He performed his latest arena tour in 2011, titled Right Here Right Now. The tour sold out in days and was extended twice, with new dates in December 2011 announced on 3 May 2011.

It was reported in The Independent that Howard earned £4 million in 2009 alone,^[25] which he denies.^[26]

Credits[link]

Television[link]

• Never Mind the Buzzcocks BBC 2 (2006)
• Mock The Week BBC 2 (2006–2010)
• Never Mind the Buzzcocks BBC 2 (2007)
• Rob Brydon's Annually Retentive BBC Three (2007)
• Would I Lie To You? BBC 1 (2007)
• Live at the Apollo BBC 1 (2007)
• Law of the Playground Channel 4 (2008)
• The Secret Policeman's Ball 2008 Channel 4 (2008)
• 8 out of 10 Cats Channel 4 (2008)
• Live at the Apollo BBC 1 (2009)
• Russell Howard's Good News BBC Three (2009–)
• Conan (2011)
• Children in Need 2011 (2011)

Radio[link]

• The Milk Run BBC Radio 1 (2004)
• Political Animal BBC Radio 4 (2004)
• Banter BBC Radio 4 (2005)
• The Russell Howard Show BBC 6 Music (2006–2008)

Writing[link]

• The Milk Run BBC Radio 1 (2004)

Stand-Up DVDs[link]

References[link]