"Mong row."

First up tonight onto the XS Malarkey stage, making his third appearance here, was Phil Buckley

Phil started off with his usual material about all the names he's been known by. I'm not sure why he does this routine because whenever I've seen it it's only got ripples of laughter at best. A bit of a shame because the rest of the material is generally sound. A particularly nice bit was a visual gag of Stevie Wonder's autograph. His speed camera gag went down fairly well, and the Salford triathlon material was ok. The crowd weren't really that warmed up at that point so it's perhaps a little unfair to criticise too much, but generally speaking he got the night off to a reasonable start.

Next on was Scouse comic was Sam Avery.

Sam's material was quite varied, ranging from his course at university - Literature, Life and Thought (!), to annoying housemates and drunkards at chucking out time. There were some quite nice gags in there which got a pretty good response from the crowd, while some bits were a bit weaker (but still generally okay). He had quite a confident, sometimes aggresive stage presence, in contrast to Phil's more laid-back style which seemed to wake the audience up a bit. So all in all, not a bad Malarkey gig from Sam.

Next on before the break was Duncan Logan.

Duncan took the atmosphere up a notch with some good material, ranging from swimming lessons at school, how the usage of language has changed, fat people having sex and suffering from dyslexia. The undoubted highlight of the set was the clever use of a Valentine's card with a voice recording of George and Zippy from Rainbow inside, and also one with Gareth Gates. Some solid material there and decent delivery from Duncan.

Main support of the night was an act making his first return to XS Malarkey, Paul Kerensa.

Paul had a stormer of a gig last time and this time was no real exception. He started off with some familiar material about being ginger - okay, not exactly an original subject but the way it was executed was well done. There were plenty of good punchlines throughout the set and the audience had really started to warm up by this time. There was newer material about his upbringing in Cornwall, living in Brighton and doing comedy gigs in Germany, all of which was good. The highlight came at the end of the set with Paul successfully making mathematics funny - sounds weird but it worked. Excellent stuff all round from an accomplished comic.

The headliner of the night was an eagerly anticipated return of Australian comic Sarah Kendall.

It was eagerly anticipated as last time she stormed the night and went off to a deafening round of applause. And this time was no different. The set consisted of new material and old, all of it getting plenty of laughs from the crowd, the bit about the confusion between midges and midgets being particularly good. If you missed Sarah tonight she'll be back in a few weeks to perform her Edinburgh preview show, along with the mighty Natalie Haynes - that should be a night to remember.

Spider.