"You don't have to be beautiful... but it would help."

Well, what an improvement over last week!

First on was the open spot Lou Saffire, who actually turned out to be the best comic on the night! But that's not to say the others were bobbins, but Lou was very good.

Lou's set started with some anti-boyband rants which was okay, if a bit of an easy target, but then did a better routine about Star Wars with a nice Samuel L Jackson Star Wars/Pulp Fiction gag, and managed to squeeze in impressions of Sean Connery as Obi Wan and Billy Connolly as Darth Vader - and quite convincing they were too.

Toby was mightily impressed with young Lou, as were the crowd, so I think he'll be returning before too long.

Next onto the Malarkey beer crate was drag act Jonathan Mayor.

Normally I don't really find drag acts all that funny, they usually tend to spout an endless stream of "back passage" double entendres, but luckily Jonathan managed to steer clear.

While the act was undoubtedly camp - how could it not be, dressed like that! - it wasn't totally over-the-top camp and worked quite nicely. Probably on the level of, say, Graham Norton.

All in all, there were some good jokes, and it was something a bit different to the usual comics on the circuit.

Third on was Danny James, who played quite recently, back in May.

Danny was a bit worried before the gig about this and wondered if the audience would remember all the gags. I think some of them may have remembered him but there were plenty of people new to the club who hadn't seen him.

He perhaps didn't do quite as well as last time but the audience still laughed for most of the gags - perhaps a bit slow to get a few of them, though. The glasses routine went down well, as it did do last time, and most of the other stuff went reasonably well, but there were a few that fell flat.

A bit of an inconsistent one from Danny but still got a decent number of laughs.

The headliner, R David, almost didn't make it - he turned up quite literally minutes before taking to the stage!

Liverpudlian 'R' opened with some tried and tested Scouse jokes, and followed that up with a series of fairly well-crafted gags which generally hit the mark.

All in all a fairly decent headliner, and overall a good night.

See you next week!

Lee and Spider.