"Kilroy - he's a tanned horseshoe of a man."

Great night tonight, with all acts doing well. First of those acts was a Malarkey debut for Matt Abury.

Matt immediately started with some topical material, including a Shipman gag, then went into material about soap operas. Luckily he'd cut that down because if you don't watch soaps you don't get the jokes. From there he reeled off gags about Christmas shopping and Arndale gift vouchers. Most of the material worked pretty well and he had a good stage presence. Considering it was his eighth ever gig he did a great job.

Next on, making a return to Malarkey in the form of a paid support gig, was Stoke-based whippersnapper Martin Plant.

Martin's material ranged from a sarcastic look at Claims Direct adverts to the SARS virus, doctors' waiting rooms and call centres. However, there was clean underpants gag which was done by Billy Connolly a few years ago, although I'm sure he didn't realise. On the whole the set went down well with the audience, with Martin's viewpoint of the most ridiculous things in life proving a hit.

After the break came a firm favourite at XS Malarkey, Des Sharples.

Des opened with new new material, including a superb Harry Potter gag and a Greg Rusedski (it that how you spell it?) gag, then followed it up with his more established material about having a haircut, Big Barry in the chippy and cheese dealers in Didsbury. Plus the occasional adlib. This gig was probably Des' best ever performance at XS. There's something very watchable about Des - even though I've heard a lot of the material before it still makes me laugh a lot. Probable Man Of The Match tonight.

Headliner of the night was London comic Markus Birdman.

Markus is one of my favourite comedians to have played Malarkey's. His quickfire style is occasionally bizarre and some of the material can be quite sick and close to the bone (no bad thing, certainly). One of the highlights is the argument between the French man and the German man about what's funny: "Hitting a fat child viz a peppered sausage! Zis is funny!" And the Grim Realities song has a great callback in it as well. Shame there was no encore but that was purely due to lack of time. A fantastic set, full of innuendo and neat turns of phrase.

See you next week.

Spider.