After drive-ins, now come Covid-secure outdoor shows as the comedy industry tries to find its way back to normality. Battersea Arts Centre is utilising its hitherto unused courtyard for a season of outdoor comedy, during which Al Murray and Russell Howard will perform.

The courtyard accommodates fewer than 50 people – about 30 seated, the rest standing – and the audience had to wear masks throughout. We were encouraged to laugh rather than smile by MC Luke Kempner as we sat like a “bunch of assassins”.

Drive-in comedy shows are now well into their groove (although sadly a couple of promoters have had to cut their losses because of poor sales at some venues), and distinct differences in approach to what's on offer have emerged. Clearly going for the upper end of the market is Dine and Drive Theatre, an old hand at curating outdoor events, whose USP is classy locations and food catered by top chef Tom Kerridge.

Hot on the heels of The Car Park Club and @TheDriveIn comes Car Park Party, a series of shows presented in partnership with The Comedy Store. Car Park Party presents an evening of four comics doing short sets, presented by an MC.

Drive-ins are now firmly establishing themselves as the only method by which culture fans can see live arts in person for the future. Hot on the heels of The Drive-In Club comes @TheDriveIn, sponsored by Suzuki and produced by Jericho Comedy.

The producers are staging two kinds of drive-in shows; those mainly about comedy, and others mainly about film, the latter with a broader entertainment vibe. On the evening I went, a couple of comics and a turntablist were the warm-up acts for the main event, a screening of Grease.

It was a weary and frustrated Dom Joly (★★) who left the stage after performing the first drive-in comedy show in the UK. Sadly it had been, as he said earlier, “the first car crash at a drive-in”.

You may have seen Desiree Burch, a Californian now living in London, on The Mash Report on BBC One.

Jerry Seinfeld said in a recent interview that this Netflix special – 23 Hours to Kill – may be his last stand-up show. That's a shame, as there's much to enjoy here, even if he is retreading some old ground.

Much of this material he performed during UK dates last year (and some of it he had also performed when he previously visited the UK, in 2011), but that's OK as far as it goes – he's still a very funny man, and his grouchy, world-weary shtick can bear some repetition.

“There are places in India where it's safer to be a cow than a woman” is a seemingly innocuous statement, but for Indian comic Aditi Mittal it was a dangerous one to make in a comedy show. It led to her arrest after a man complained that it was offensive to Hindus (and possibly cows, who knows).

Who knew in the early days of his career, when Simon Amstell was taking the mick out of celebrities on Popworld and then Never Mind the Buzzcocks, that he would turn into one of the cleverest comics of his generation, with a special talent for making existential angst funny?

Rachel Fairburn says she didn't know what to wear for the gig. She's dressed in an all-black ensemble; hotpants, animal-print boots and a feather bolero jacket. “I've come as a mistress at a funeral.” 

It's a doozy of an opener to Her Majesty and the kind of sharp gag that listeners to her All Killa No Filla podcast (performed with Kiri Pritchard-McLean) would recognise.