Review coming soon!

The night got off to a slightly different start - but not necessarily different in a bad way - with a Malarkey debut from David Giles.

David did a quite short set with a couple of songs on the acoustic guitar - the first one about his job in a hotel turning him into a psycho, the second one about a giant mutant bug eating him, except for his head - weird! The songs weren't exactly laugh out loud funny but they were entertaining to listen to and the tunes, especially the second, were rather catchy (the second one could be a proper song in its own right). He did have quite a cool stage presence, and with slightly more gag-based lyrics could do very well for himself. But I think now and again it's nice to have a slightly 'different' act at Malarkey's.

Second act after David, and trying out some new material, was Matt Asbury.

Matt opened up with a few gags ranging from Argos vouchers to gynaecology, then launched into a good bit involving reading a recipe out from Gordon Ramsay's horrendous TV 'reality' show (which I felt should have got more laughs). Some of the gags were met with decent enough laughs from the crowd, some a bit more muted, but the highlight of the set was the bit at the end involving a poem about premature ejaculation which was very well written. It was a good ending to a decent new set from Matt.

Next up was the first of the paid acts, someone who's becoming something of an XS regular, Liz Stephens.

Liz started off with her familiar material about being brought up a Catholic and being in a gospel choir, before launching into newer material about running a gig in the shithole of Edmonton and being a female comic for the groupies. Her confidence has obiously grown since her first couple of gigs at Malarkey's as she put in a very good performance, getting some good laughs from the audience. The gags were pretty good and the stage presence came across as friendly and enthusiastic, and the audience warmed to her pretty much straight away.

Main support of the night was excellent bantermeister Dan Nightingale.

Dan was fucking brilliant as always, particularly tonight as he just did over twenty minutes of quality audience banter and no material whatsoever. Not surprisingly he does a lot of compering work. He had a couple of great moments with audience 'volunteers' on stage and played the role of Trisha, getting a girl in the audience to talk about her black eye. The bit where audience regular Ludovic Tolhurst-Cleaver got on stage and told Dan his name was a beauty. All in all a fantastic gig from Dan. The bastard.

Headliner of the night was anything-can-happen big-bearded Northern Irish comic Martin Bigpig.

Martin is certainly no stranger to XS Malarkey and he began in familiar style, bantering with the crowd and relieving them of their posessions, in this case someone's camera. He can certainly think on his feet and could probably banter all day, but tonight he settled into a more material-based set, and was relatively easy-going and laid back by his standards. It was good, and I'd like to go and see him in Edinburgh, but there was less audience interaction than usual. Perhaps he's gearing himself up for his Edinburgh show. A good end to a good night at Malarkey's.

Spider.