CHARACTER comedian Count Arthur Strong has been nominated for a national award ahead of his performance at LBT.

The Chortle Awards, now in their eighth year, will be given out on February 24 and the Count will be revealing The Man Behind the Smile in this new show on Wednesday, March 4, at the theatre.

Count Arthur has been nominated in the Best Sketch, Variety, or Character Act category.

Fresh from a continued success of his BBC Radio 4 comedy series and recent run at the 2008 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Count Arthur reminds us just what we’ve been missing since his last television series, The Robin Hood Club, was axed in 1960 something.

As Arthur himself says: “Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could just turn the telly on after a hard day at the abattoir ... or whatever it is you do... and there I was, smiling back at you, in my own programme again.”

Count Arthur is the comedy character brainchild of comedian Steve Delaney.

An elderly, bumbling, pompous, retired variety entertainer, Count Arthur is challenged by attention deficit disorder and memory loss. It is not unusual to hear numerous malapropisms when in his company as he attempts to sound educated.

Delaney created the Count in the 1980s when he was a drama student at Central School of Speech and Drama in London. His inspiration came from people he knew throughout his childhood, but he graduated into acting, appearing in numerous television programmes and left the Count behind.

Resurrected in the 1990s, Count Arthur gained a cult following from 1997 and enjoyed success at the Edinburgh Festival for several years before Radio 4 gave him his own series in 2005. A fourth series of Count Arthur Strong’s Radio Show! was broadcast in January this year.

The show is on Wednesday, March 4 at 7.30pm.

Tickets: £12 plus £10 concessions.