A TEN-DAY comedy festival is to be hosted in York next year, which aims to emulate the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

The Great Yorkshire Fringe will take place in the city between July 24 and August 2 next year. Organisers hope it will attract artists as they prepare for the Scottish festival, which takes place two weeks later.

The acts are due to be announced in November. It hopes to attract nationally-recognised comedians and will also feature a tent for local acts.

The line-up is expected to be announced in November.

It has been organised by Martin Witts, who reopened London’s Leicester Square Theatre in 2008 and who founded the Museum of Comedy in London earlier this year. He worked as a stage hand at the York Theatre Royal in the early 1980s and lives in the city.