"I threw up in a taxi and had to give each of my customers twenty quid."

Another quality night at the Malarkey on Tuesday, with a couple of bonus acts who did some new stuff.

First on - one of the bonus acts - was perpetually-pissed friend of the club Jason Cooke who seemed to be having a bit of a 'mare, memory-wise. Lay off the pop before your gig next time, son! Needs to learn his material properly, the calamity element will wear thin eventually.

However, the bits he did remember were good - a couple of new gags and some of the old faithful.

Next onto the Malarkey shoebox was another open spot making his Malarkey debut, Greg Cook.

Greg started off with an absolutely fantastic gag about throwing up in a taxi which got him off to a good start.

He followed it up with some more good gags, most of which hit the mark. The only slight criticism is that the delivery could be a wee bit quicker so the punchlines really hit home. Also, move the mic stand you're not using it. Good projection. Lose the bad puns, though as they disrupt the flow of the already staggered set.

Chatting to Greg after the gig, he said it was his 9th gig - impressive enough - but actually asked if comedians reuse their material or come up with new material for each gig! Apparently he'd done new material for every gig he's played, with the exception of the closing line.

If he keeps it up he'll be making something of a name for himself on the stand-up circuit before long. Some truly brilliant material and a real flair for writing.

The third open spot on was Damian Hearse, a character act which was a professional hitman and freelance funeral director. Interesting idea, but would it work?

Hmm. It's got potential, but only as a short act, I think. An act like Nige (the Scouser scally who was on the other week) is based on real people you see every day and there's a lot of material there.

Damian's stage presence is a fairly confident one - he just seems to be lacking in the material department. But that's possibly due to the limitations of the character. Some of the gags that weren't specific to the character were okay, but the delivery needed to be better. Some of them, however, were somewhat Christmas cracker-esque. The character is unconvincing and I feel that he is trying to through too many elements into the same character which confufses things.

After the break came an impromptu ten minuter from Mike Landers, who kindly provided our new guestbook - cheers, Mike.

His set consisted of a combination of new material and old, and all of it was well delivered by a comedian growing in confidence all the time.

The new bits were good but the highlight for me was the 'drowning cockneys' gag - class. Needs to stop playing with his hair though, as it can be distracting.

After Mike came the first headliner, likeable Brummie Andy White. A few early gags at the expense of right-wing Tory toilet paper The Daily Mail instantly had the audience on his side.

One of the best bits I thought was the bit where he tries to explain to a French man who Morph is using schoolboy French. Okay, so Eddie Izzard does a French routine, but still - it's funny.

Andy did about half an hour and I don't think one gag fell flat. Superb stuff. Toby asked him after the gig to come back as a headliner 'proper'. Probably the bext act of the night.

Final act of the night, and second headliner, was the brilliantly deadpan Anthony J Brown.

As was the norm with Anthony, there were a couple of new gags, and the old faithful stuff, but even if you've heard it before it's still funny as. There was even a bit of unexpected banter/improv in a couple of points - the R2-D2 gag when a mobile phone went off got a big laugh.

The only thing that spoilt it slightly was people chatting at the back in the quiet bits between jokes - fucking stop it! It was quite late on so it could have been people who had just come in, so maybe it would have been better to put Anthony on first, followed by Andy. Oh well, next time perhaps. There were still plenty of laughs from the crowd.

See you next week!

Spider and Lee.