"Can't we just spitroast her like we used to?"

A decent night at the Malarkey and off to a good start with one of the most prolific writers on the circuit, Greg Cook.

As usual Greg had a load of new material (in fact, I think it was all new material). Much of it centred around the time Greg was in primary school and the teacher got to know kids with unusual names (Jesus), but there was a bit of political comment on the war. All in all, very good material delivered with Greg's trademark laid back deadpan style. I still can't work out if the style works or not. It would be interesting to see Greg deliver it with more 'oomph!'. Good stuff regardless.

Second onto the stage was a Malarkey debut for David Mack.

David's set centred around the tale of him preparing for his wedding day. It was largely anecdotal with observations of gender differences where weddings are concerned. The material was pretty good on the whole, the only real minus point being that differences between men and women is a bit of a hack subject. Still, the delivery was very good and the audience seemed to enjoy it.

Next on in the open spot section was double act Mat and Faron.

After a brief intro they opened up with a song about the joys of nicotine in which Mat amused the crowd with a great dance routine and one of the best lines I've heard in a song, "Sexy cancer", whilst Faron accompanied on the acoustic guitar. There followed a near-the-knuckle routine about starting an alternative to self defence classes for women - How To Attack Women Properly. Not PC, but funny. They finished off with a sexist version of Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow. Excellent stuff. Likely to offend some people but all the funnier for it.

After the break came a return visit for Sarah Ledger.

Things got off to an amusingly unexpected start by Sarah discovering that her godson happened to be sat in the front row of the audience! With that out of the way she went into material about her home town of Cumbria, including Cumbria's most famous export, Mr & Mrs, and she even had a sneaky pop at Lee for the last review he gave! (Which is presumably why I'm doing this one...) Sarah's delivery has come on a long way since she was last here a year ago (she won Cumbrian Comedian of the Year, in fact), and the material is much improved as well.

Main support of the night came from all-singing, all-dancing Vietnam veteran, Peter Pitzburg.

Peter claims to be the number one Neil Diamond tribute act - Rough Diamond - and even claimed that Neil ripped his songs off ("You know that song, You Don't Bring Me Flowers? That was originally called You Don't Bring Me Nowt!") There was material about the war including an impression of Christopher Walken playing a weapons inspector in Iraq. The highlight was when he couldn't get his guitar to work and Lee had to go on stage and sort the sound out ("Oh, here he is... come on, David Coverdale out of Whitesnake, sort it out!") Top stuff.

Headliner of the night was Tony Hendricks.

Tony, originally from Jamaica, introduced himself with a few gags about him being a white man from Jamaica and kept the crowd amused enough with his amiable banter. Although he's not quite my cup of tea he did a good job and earned his warm reception from the crowd. Nice one Tony.

See you next week.

Spider.