"I'm going out with a pint glass."

A great night to end the year on tonight, and first up was Malarkey veteran and John Peel soundalike Roland Gent.

The first two and a half minutes of Roland's set was a high-powered rant at a student who was sat on the floor in front of the stage, followed by a Craig David lookalike and a pop at white trainers with no laces, all adlibbed. He then went into his regular material about Burnage scum and the dad who has sex with a horse (a real headline). An angry, high-energy set from Roland, and certainly one of his better ones.

Next on, making a return to comedy and a return to XS Malarkey, was Toby's mate Simon Carter.

Simon last played in October and did a pretty decent job considering he'd been out of the comedy scene for a few years. Since then he's obviously been polishing up his material as there was a marked improvement (although there were still a few groaners in the gag department). Amongst his material was a routine about having one shiny bollock and warning signs on buses, and for the most part went down pretty well with the crowd. Good stuff.

Next up was a comic fairly new to the scene but doing very well for himself, Will Kaufman.

Will started off with a swipe at reality TV show ("Celebrity Wife Academy Dog-Swap Idol"), then went onto market researchers and terrorism, with a pretty decent impression of Tony Blair. Some bits of the set were quite surreal but not so surreal as to be weird. Will has some fantastic use of language and a great sense of sarcasm (two of my favourite traits). He will do well, I'll wager.

After the break came a truly surreal set from the truly surreal Seymour Mace.

The set consisted mainly of poo, poo and more poo. I'm having trouble actually trying to describe it! It was all about the Christmas Rat coming to poo on everyone's Christmas, but it all made sense in the last thirty seconds with the line, "Er... sorry, I've been on these pills for stress. I'm quite embarrassed." Weird, but funny, especially in that outfit.

After Seymour's short set came a Malarkey regular, the energetic Dominic Woodward.

Dom started with some gags - "Them's the gags!" - and then did some new material about Dr Kelly, having a pop at idiots who phone into Daily Mirror phone polls to say, "Don't Know" to a question. There was also his fairly new routine about car insurance snobs who always manage to get insurance cheaper than you. But the highlight of the set was Dom's uncharacteristically angry swipe at Peter Kay and the fact he's a gag thief. That certainly got a cheer from the comics in the room! A fantastic set from Dom tonight.

Headliner of the last Malarkey of the year was Canadian comic Jason John Whitehead.

Jason wowed the Malarkey crowd with a fantastic set of high-energy material ranging from how shit British TV is (hence our ability to drink) to photo phones and misinterpreted text messages. There was a fair old bit of audience banter (which worked) and he was called back for a well-deserved encore. Brilliant stuff. A great end to the comedy year.

See you next week.

Spider.