Review by Mike 'Team Fiskcake' Thorpe.

First act of the night was Dave Bishop.

Dave seemed to be doing okay, the audience seemed a bit quiet, but I think it wasn't too bad, especially for the first act on. Don't know his reasons for such a sudden departure from the stage though, he was doing quite well I thought. Did he just forget the rest of his stuff? Dunno. [He was asked to keep it to a tight five minutes - Spider]

Second on was Malarkey door person and website chap, Neil Smith.

I liked his new lines. I was thinking of the line, "How the nail varnished FUCK?" all night (or was it "Why the nail varnished fuck?" I've forgotten now). The innuendos were a bit cheesy though. :-P

Third onto the Malarkey stage and making his Malarkey debut was Edinburgh comic Teddy.

I thought he was really good. Quite professional, definitely got the confidence to be a headliner in a few years' time I reckon. I'll definitely be quoting his line about, "There's no black in the Union Jack? How many blue and red people do you know?"

Next up after the break was Steven Law.

Eeeh. Sorry, but I just thought his set appeared to be him rambling on. Got a few laughs from the audience, but I can't say I was particularly impressed. I've not seen him before, but I'm guessing he's had better nights. One of those acts that made the audience chat to each other a bit. Sorry Steven :-S

Main support of the night was the Dark Lord of Cuddliness, Lou Saffire.

I've seen most of the routine before, but I'm not going to let that cloud my judgement. Got some good material in there, about heavy metal ("Iron Maiden? Imagine a really pissed off Bon Jovi.") which I was impressed by, because I've not seen many people do routines about metal, other than to slag it off. Thought the stuff about porn went on too long though. Yes, funky porn style music is funny, but I just thought Lou kept re-iterating his point that porn has people having sex in it, and that's funny, when it's a subject that a lot of people already cover. Maybe I'm being a comedy snob, I don't know. I liked his set as a whole though.

Headliner of the night was Kiwi comic Rhys Darby.

Apart from losing him on a few of his technically brilliant but fucking weird voyages through his vocal soundscape (ooh, big words) I thought he was really good. I'm quite astounded that one person can make so many sound effects. I thought at first he was just going to be some guy with a gimmick, but I realised quickly that he was incredibly funny and witty as well. Nice and surreal.

Mike.