"Heartbeat has been going for fifteen years - why the fuck is it still set in the 60's?"

A top night on Tuesday with a great line-up, and first out of that line-up and onto the Malarkey stage was Rob Riley.

Local boy Rob hit the crowd with some great gags, a large portion of which were fairly sick but all the funnier for it. Rob went down well with the crowd which was interesting to see as he'd done pretty much the same set (albeit reduced) at the Raw Night at the Frog & Bucket the previous evening and the crowd were strangely muted (as they were for much of the night). Although Rob's delivery was a bit better at XS it's still surprising the difference the Malarkey crowd can make.

Second on was a relative newcomer to the comedy scene, Mike Newall.

Mike started off with a great visual gag about the war - an aerial photo of Baghdad which looked uncannily like the opening sequence to Eastenders. Mike had a confident, laid-back delivery, and entertained the crowd with tales of younger brother, swimming lessons and "how's yer father".

Okay, some of it has been done before by other comics (rescuing rubber bricks in swimming lessons for example) but there was some great material in there, and a delivery that kept the audience paying attention. Impressive stuff.

Next onto the stage was an old favourite of the club, local comic Des Sharples.

Des had some pretty up to date material, with stuff on the SARS outbreak, including the first prop I've ever seen Des use (see picture). He's been writing quite a bit of material recently and it was all bang-on. The delivery was as good as ever and he stormed it as usual. I think Des deserves to headline sooner rather than later. Compering at Mirth on Monday has obviously built up his improvisation skills. Nice one.

Penultimate act of the night was a comic who's really starting to take off on the comedy circuit, Bill Woolland.

Quite a bit of Bill's set was banter with the crowd, mixed in with the material. There was also some topical war material (it was quite amusing to hear later on the minidisc recording a hearty laugh from Vic McGlynn in response to the age-old gag about where Saddam keeps his CD's). One of the highlights of the set was a rant at the Americans - excellent stuff.

Headliner of the night was Kiwi comic Jarred Christmas.

Jarred bounded onto the stage and immediately charged headlong into the introductory banter at 100mph. Then came a highly-charged rant about National Express coaches which literally left him breathless - and won a round of applause from the audience. With material ranging from football to the New Zealand Air Force, Jarred had the crowd cheering for a well-derserved encore.

See you next week.

Spider.