"Poek pie? We turn you into Jihad pie!"

Christ Almighty, a bit of a bumper night tonight in terms on number of comics, and first on was Qasim Jilani.

Qasim (formerly Comedy Q) has become a bit of a cult figure on the local circuit. It's always amusing watching him when he's completely pissed on stage, like the time he did Beat The Frog at the Frog & Bucket, collapsed on stage and was croaked off after about 20 seconds. Luckily he was sober tonight and subsequently delivered a good set which had quite a bit of new material in it, which was fairly warmly received by the crowd (although is was less than four minutes long!) Some top lines in there.

Second onto the stage, just back from promoting a show of Manchester comics at the Edinburgh Fringe was Ian Fox.

Ian had some new material since the last time he played Malarkey's which got some great laughs from the crowd. One of my favourite lines (about prostitutes from Sellafield): "I'll have one of your finest flipper-jobs, please." The highlight was when some ignorant twat's mobile phone went off and Ian got everyone in the room to shout, "CUNT!". Great stuff and a nice way to end the set.

Next on was a local Malarkey stalwart, the cheeky chipmunk Geoff Taylor.

Geoff delivered his set in an even more enthusiastic, and sometimes by the sound of his voice when he's in full flight I'm sure he's been at the helium! There was some good material in there about current affairs (wanking is good for you - it's official) and a story about his vasectomy that had the blokes in the audience wincing. The audience enjoyed it and the baby shaking gag passed the audience litmus test. Nice one, Geoff.

After the break came a very special treat in the form of Jim Jeffries and Jason John Whitehead.

The two comics were only in for a pint (or several, judging by their worse for wear appearance), and first on was Jim Jeffries. Well - he was announced as "Jim Jeffries" - but it was actually Jason John Whitehead doing Jim Jeffries' material, followed by Jim doing Jason's material!

The two did brilliantly (they're housemates so they've probably heard each other's set a million times). I think Jim was the slightly more pissed of the two and it was difficult to decide which of the two performed better. Possibly Jason might just about win it. There was a great bit where Jim (the real Jim) temporarily forgot Jason's material and asked for a prompt from the back! Great fun all round I thought, and an unexpected bonus.

Next on after the two pissheads, main support of the night was Geordie surrealist Seymour Mace.

Since Seymour was on a couple of weeks ago he didn't want to do the same material but there was always going to be a certain amount of overlapping of stuff. It didn't matter because it's as funny as fuck. The man could read from the phone directory and make people laugh. There were some great lines in there, including the 'bits between the bits', and an absolute belter: "Imagine you were so rich that you did laugh all the way to the bank."

Headliner of an all-round brilliant night was top Aussie comic Steve Hughes.

Steve's set started off with a piss-take of the typical Aussie way of life and moved into political stuff about the war (hack subject by now but it was well done). It was humour that raised some interesting points that made you think. Fantastic material, especially when he went into a rant (which was quite often).

See you next week.

Spider.