Malarkey Madness

Well, what a top night! As part of the Manchester Comedy Festival we decided to put on an extra night on Sunday with comedians picking names out of a hat to decide who would do whose set - with hilarious consequences. First off, the acts who'd turned up so far (some were arriving later) were Jo Dakin, Jonathan Paylor, Seymour Mace, Mick Ferry and Dan Nightingale.

The lineup of comics...

The acts all had to describe themselves in five adjectives. Here's what they said...

Jo: Dark, insane, miserable, scared, woman.
Seymour: Seymour Mace, Seymour Mace, Seymour...
Jonathan: Yorkshire, Islington, BBC, Humberside, bubbly.
Mick: I bum cats... on Sundays.
Dan: Full of regret. Slightly aroused.

Mark Smart However, first up, to warm the crowd up while the acts prepared their sets was Mark Smart, aka Jason 'Entertainment' Cooke.

Mark/Jason had a bit of a muted response from the crowd with his unique brand of filth. It might have worked a bit better if he'd gone on as himself rather than Mark Smart - might have been a bit early in the evening for jokes about murdered whores. Personaly, I enjoyed it, but the crowd seemed to take a while to get into it.

Jonathan Paylor First set-swap of the evening was Jonathan Paylor as Jo Dakin.

Jon did a sterling job considering, and some of the funniest bits were when he'd perform Jo's material about having a smear test and being a woman. To keep things entertaining he put a few adlibs in there as well. Okay, it's all a bit in-joke for comics but fuck it, I found it funny. Particularly amusing was when he'd forget bits and try to improvise, and Jo would heckle him from the audience! Superb stuff.

Jo Dakin Next up was the exact opposite, Jo Dakin as Jonathan Paylor.

I thought Jonathan was funny but this was even better. Jo stumbled through Jonathan's set in a way only Jo can, pausing occasionally to say, "That's right, I'm gay!" or, "Don't boo me, I'm a Yorkshire gay man." It was haphazard, but in a brilliantly funny way. The audience loved it, but for me, having seen Jo and Jonathan's set dozens of times it was hilarious, especially the improvisations.

Next up was Dan Nightingale as Seymour Mace's character Mr Pineapple, the world's worst comedian.

Dan Nightingale as Mr Pineapple Dan Nightingale as Mr Pineapple

Dan played Mr Pineapple surprisingly well, but it was intermingled with Dan's unique sense of surrealist humour, particularly the bit about badgers. There was classic Mr Pineapple stuff in there including the dinosaur puppet and Hey You, Get Off My Clown, although slightly more aggressive and manic that Seymour normally does it. And, as is the norm with Dan, plenty of asides, to make up fifteen minutes of bizarre maybem.

Dan Nightingale as Mr Pineapple Dan Nightingale as Mr Pineapple

Mick Ferry After the break came one of the best adlibbers I've seen, Mick Ferry whose job it was to do a set made up of comedians shouted out by the audience.

Comics included Les Dawson, Jo Brand, Eddie Izzard, Lee Evans, Steve Harris, Joe Pasquale, Billy Connolly, Tommy Cooper, Stephen Hawking (!), Richard Pryor, Roger Monkhouse, Gavin Webster, Anvil Springstein and an uncanny impression of Toby. If you hadn't already guessed Mick took fucking about on stage to a new level, although he was a bit pissed. Sadly he didn't do my suggestion of Richard 'ERR!' Swan. At one point Mick managed to drag the mixing desk off the ledge onto the floor, followed by shouting "Jon Bon Jovi" at Lee when he got up to fix the situation. Quite surreal, but funny nonetheless.

Seymour Mace Next on was Seymour Mace as Dan Nightingale and Jim Jeffries.

Seymour's funny as it is but doing Dan's set it was hilarious! Highlight of the set was Seymour adopting Dan's occasionally camp stage manner and the bit about 192 buses ("192 doesn't go to the moon, it goes Manchester, Stockport, Stockport, Manchester!"). After doing that he did Jim's set with a quite convincing Australian accent. And it was apparent he knew the set quite well as there were no real bits where he forgot stuff. The best bit was the stuff about the A-Team - I don't think I've ever heard Seymour swear as much!

Jim Jeffries Final act of the night was Jim Jeffries as Seymour Mace.

Jim started off with a dodgy Geordie accent but soon descended back into his Aussie twang. It was a fairly shambolic set in parts but that added to the humour of it - after all, the night was all about arsing about on stage. I get the feeling that Jim was slightly pissed as per usual. A sterling job, nonetheless.

A definite contender for best night ever at Malarkey's. See you next week.

Spider.