SO popular is this year’s Comedy Festival that organisers had to put on a simultaneous (same acts, different order) gala in The Playhouse.

Which makes artistic director Benjamin Stevenson’s claim that, with more than 60 shows slotted in, the event will be “bigger and better than ever” no exaggeration.

Pink is the festival theme, Stevenson says, and no expense will be spared to hang “a giant banner the size of Europe” in the Canberra Centre.

With parochialism long gone, there is a healthy multicultural presence in top Australian comics such as Ronny Chieng, Akmal Saleh and Nazeem Hussain and an equally healthy disrespect for taboo subjects as with American comic Wil Sylvince who tackles the triple perils of “Syllables, Fat and Celibacy”.

Top in the “incorrect” stakes are The Umbilical Brothers, back with their new show “KiDSHoW (Not Suitable for Children)”, and you can confidently expect more iconoclasm from John Safran in the performance and Q&A based around his book, “Murder in Mississippi”.

Fittingly, local comedians Harris Stuckey, Chris Endrey, Sophie Rutzou, Toby Halligan, Andrew and Danny Bensley, and Sparrow Folk will take the stage.

Stevenson is particularly proud of the Festival Club, predicting that we’ll see “comics letting their hair down… wild and loose, you never know what will happen”. That’ll be in the Canberra Theatre’s Courtyard Studio and free to anyone buying a ticket.

The 2015 Canberra Comedy Festival, March 17-22, bookings to canberracomedyfestival.com.au