Disagreeing With Bastard Punter...

A slightly quiet night at the Malarkey on Tuesday, to which Toby responded brilliantly with his compering.

First up was Ann Wilson from Barrow-in-Furness.

Ann is very new to stand-up and this showed in her performance. She had the confidence and the delivery but the material was lacking and the bits she did have had no structure. When she ran out of things to say she wheeled out a few 'alternative' poems, which died quite spectacularly.

Toby’s chick-with-a-dick story after Ann was class, and brought things back up. True story too.

Next up was the second open spot of the evening, Daniel Isherwood. And this set was very much one of two halves.

The first ten minutes containing Dan’s ideas on Bullseye among other things was very good. Some nice observations and some twisted tall tales.

The second half of the set seemed to be Dan scrabbling for a way to get off stage, with rambling story after rambling story. He was booked to do a ten-minute slot, and did twenty. If he’d stuck with the booked ten, it would have been a solid debut, the rambling let him down.

One to watch for the future though as his timing and delivery was excellent.

James Campbell (who started his comedy career in kids' entertainment, which he still does) kicked off his set with some limericks of a sort and they proved to be a nice opening.

Toby introduced James as the act that got five stars at the Fringe. A hard introduction to live up to but James just about managed it. James’ delivery is flawless and an amenable character to boot. His material lacks some of the surprise that you would like, but every now and then a punch line sneaks up on you.

Bill Woolland was next to take to the new stage and here’s a man that writes a lot.

Bill’s chatty brand of comedy is always a hit at Bar XS. Great delivery backed up by a cornucopia of material. A rising star.

The headliner on Tuesday was the brilliant Jarred Christmas.

Originally from New Zealand, the energetic Kiwi, kicked off the set with his take on Eye of the Tiger, which set the tone nicely for his set. Jarred exasperated take on life went down very well with Tribe Malarkey.

His set was quite often a combination between repulsion and hilarity but it was a combination that worked brilliantly. His enthusiasm is infectious and his material bizarre. The spin the microphone thing was an effective tool to bring it back up if a gag failed.

Not the greatest night in the Malarkey's history, but a good one I thought. And then of course there was the comedy of Jill afterwards...

See you next week.

Lee.