It's an unusual line-up for our Fat Friday summary, for more reasons than one. It appears to be a week of raised snails and crunchy riffs - that'll be the rock and metal then - with some sizeable bands plundering their thunder from the dirty 30th.

For ticket availability, click on the images, below, or scroll down for the full event listing.

Biffy Clyro always shift tickets quickly so I wouldn't hang about for the latest batch. Their November tour goes on sale on this very day starting with Aberdeen on the 25th and dates in Glasgow (26th), Hull (29th), Nottingham (30th), Plymouth (1st Dec), Manchester (3rd) and Wembley Arena (4th) all up for grabs at various prices (no more than £22.50 though). The chaps are already giving it the power-rock clenched-fist around the UK as you read this, before heading off to Ibiza Rocks and a small matter of playing T In The Park, Reading and Leeds when they get back.

Skunk Anansie return to touring after many years away (see our article from this week) so demand for these new tour-dates will be extremely high. The London brit-rockers will perform at several European festivals including LongRock (Switzerland), Mars (Slovenia / Croatia) Werchter Rock (Belgium), BBK Bilbao (Spain) and of course Sonisphere and V - this tour gives you a chance to catch them intimately and runs from 13th to 26th November. Get in quick.

Bad Religion

Other key rock tickets up for grabs include stalwarts Bad Religion, a legendary outfit who started Epitaph Records and helped shape the sound of hardcore, from punk to melodic with a string of cracking albums to boot. August sees four dates played out in Birmingham (6th), Bristol (7th), London (23rd) and Manchester (24th) - really, try and get to see them, most tickets are around £17.50.

You Me At Six and Asking Alexandria are two home-grown metal bands that are at different stages of the 'pecking-order', so to speak. YMAS have recently racked up a Top 5 Album with "Hold Me Down" and "Liquid Confidence" (surely partly autobiographical) got a recent single-release. The band fittingly has six dates for sale on Friday for Edinburgh, Wolverhampton, Bournemouth, Doncaster, Manchester and Hammersmith - £18.50 is the top price for tickets.

Asking Alexandria have had more success in the States and considering they hail from York, that's a notch on the bed-post. Recent album "Stand Up and Scream" is, however, starting to make some noise back home and a tour beckons - starting clicking below for December dates ranging from the 8th (Portsmouth) to 16th (Newcastle).

Ed Harcourt

Brit-poppers Shed Seven, Irish folk-rockers The Saw Doctors, and the Glasgow slot of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's UK tour are also ready for purchase (and sure to be hot tickets) but a real treat is seeing the sensitive Sussex singer-songwriter Ed Harcourt back on the road again (even if it is only for one concert) - he plays at Wilton's Music Hall in East London on 18th June around the time of the release of his new album "Lustre". See you there.

Big Time American Wrestling

Apart from music (oh yeah, and Lady Gaga's Belfast gig in November), we have a couple of slightly unusual attractions in the form of large, muscle-bound sweaty men grabbing each other and getting slapped and kicked around the ring - no I'm not taking about JLS' new tour, I'm talking about Big Time American Wrestling, grapple-fans. In October you can see a series of matches in a full-on evening's entertainment in Folkestone (22nd) and Grimsby (29th) as well as other similar wrestling attractions including WWE - just click on the links for more details.

Ripley's Believe It Or Not!

Our other curio is indeed about curios, curiously enough. Ripley's Believe It Or Not is a worldwide franchise that presents numerous events and attractions dedicated to the unusual, the bizarre and the plain daft. The UK branch of this successful idea (originally conceived in the 40s) is based in Piccadilly, London and the new season's tickets go on sale for 1st May until 30th September - priced at £17.90 for child (4 - 15) tickets, £21.90 for adults and £19.90 for senior/ student tickets. It's a museum with a mirror maze, an exhibition of inexplicable artefacts collected from around the world and a great time for all the family (great for the British weather), plus it's open til late!