"That Rock of Gibraltar stuff was shit!"

A strange night tonight, it seemed to get better as it went on. The stand-in compere tonight was none other than Manchester's very own Des Sharples.

Des started out with a good ten or fifteen minutes of material including a new bit about running from muggers. This bit worked particularly well. There were other little bits and bobs in there, more familiar material, before he got the first act on. By this time the audience seemed quite warmed up. Until the first act...

...which was Brummie comic Ian McDairmid.

Ian last played Malarkey's about a year ago and there's no easy way to say this but he hadn't improved at all. In fact he'd probably got worse. I don't quite know how an act can die on his arse an Malarkey's but he somehow managed it. Well, not a total death (he did get two slight titters and a polite applause at the end). A particularly confusing bit was the stuff about the Rock of Gibraltar and interviewing monkeys. Several of the comics at the back were wetting themselves but it was purely from a shardenfreude point of view. When he said, "I could go on for an hour with this," [Gibraltar] the audience cheered somewhat sarcastically. Hmm.

Next onto the stage was a comic making his Malarkey debut, Rob Jagger.

Rob was definitely an improvement on Ian (how could he not be?) and opened up with a bit of audience participation (basically getting them to shout "bum monkey" and "ginger minge hair"). There was a bit of topical material about David Beckham and dressing up as Frank Butcher in the bedroom (stemming from the line "being more frank in the bedroom"). A nice idea but it went on a little too long. It wasn't easy following Ian's car crash but he did a reasonable job of bringing the crowd back up. A fairly solid debut from Rob.

Third on in the first section was an act making his return to Malarkey's, and a particular favourite of mine, Andy Richardson.

Andy was just what the room needed at that point. Great gags, expertly delivered. Some of them were a bit sick (great!) and produced that perfect combination of a "Oooh!"/laugh response from the audience. He also made nice use of props as well, in particular, his dad's ashes in a sugar caddy (which was sprinkled on the stage - "He's just streching his legs."). Again, a great gig from Andy which the crowd loved.

Straight after the break came camp-as-Christmas comic Danny Hurst.

Danny's material included his Orthodox Jewish upbringing (with a great line: "It's great, you can listen to Barbara Streisand and no one gets suspicious."), drug use in Egypt, beating up a mugger, Louis XIV's piles and, of course, being gay. He was met with a pretty decent response from the crowd (although he had a better gig at the Comedy Balloon the next night).

After Danny was an act making his return to Malarkey after storming it last year, Teddy.

Some of Teddy's material was the same as last time, and some of it was new. Pretty much all of it was political or proved a point in some way or other. Nothing wrong with that, but the most important thing was that it was funny. Some of it quite sick but it got the laughs from the crowd, in particular the Michael Jackson gags.

Headline act of the night was fiesty Australian comic Jim Jeffries.

Jim went on stage and it soon became apparent he'd had one or two (or seven) pints before the gig. Luckily he got away with it (just). In fact I think he started to sober up once he'd got into his stride. One of the first things he did was to have a sly pop at the Rock of Gibraltar bit of Ian McDairmid's set (and though it was a bit out of order, it was funny). The set was a mixture of material (which was great) and slightly drunken banter (which still worked pretty well). The Jesus material in particular was brilliant.

Spider.