"Kill him in the face!"

Malarkey's 6th birthday and a double headliner night. First up was beardy comic Jim Allen.

Jim's set and stage presence has improved since the last time he played Malarkey's back in June, with a few better gags here and there although he still did the slightly pointless routine about escaped budgies in Fallowfield. It didn't really work and he should drop it I reckon. The rest of the set was okay, but the funniest but was where he whipped his clothes off to reveal the superhero outfit underneath. That wasn't the funny bit, it was when his knackers accidentally popped out that generated a startled laugh from the crowd.

Second on was a comic who was on a couple of weeks ago, Danny Deegan.

Danny had more tales of his thick mate Rudgie and his McDonald's experience up in Edinburgh. Great storytelling that got a good response from the crowd.

Third onto the Malarkey stage was Jonathan Paylor.

Jonathan's material - whilst good - was largely stuff I'd heard before, with one or two new lines here and there and some new stuff towards the end. However, there was a touch more audience banter than usual, which was nice. The material ranged from shopping at Aldi to coming out to his gay mates as a footy fan. The audience enjoyed it and all in all in was a solid 15 or so minutes.

First headliner of the night was the excellent Jason Freeman.

Jason started off with tales of his life in London, and several other observations, in his laid-back, slightly surreal way. Some of his lines were absolutely superb: "Hey, has anyone ever panicked and killed a gypsy?", "Anne, calm your face down you spasming whore!" and "You're a millionaire, you could have teeth made of angels and voodoo!" Brilliant.

Second headliner of the night was Canadian comic Glenn Wool.

Glenn last played some years ago at Murphy's Malarkey and we've been trying to get him back for quite a while so it was a pleasure to see him at long last. And he didn't disappoint; there was material ranging from drugs in heaven, to monkeys cheating at chess and make-up on dead people. There were some killer lines in there, and some of the humour was quite philosophical. Line of the night: "Should retarded porn be legal?" A top-notch quality act.

See you next week.

Spider.