Imaginary Friends Reunited

First up tonight at XS Malarkey was Brummie comic Andy Hobo.

Andy had a fairly relaxed stage presence but his material was weak to say the least. It took about three minutes to get to the first half decent laugh, and a further three or four minutes to the next titter (a story about having a piss whilst wearing an all-in-one leather motorbike outfit, leading up to a fairly poor nob gag). He ended on a poem, which was possibly the best bit. The whole set sounded somewhat weary and needed a bit of life injecting into it.

Next on was a comic who'd not played Malarkey's in a while Martin Cassidy.

Martin started with some material I'd not heard before about mad taxi drivers, which took the crowd a couple of minutes to warm to but they got there in the end, followed by a routine about scally single mums and their fuckwit kids (there was an excellent gag in there as well), and on the subject of fuckwits, Big Brother was mentioned (another top gag). He reminded of Mike Wilkinson a little bit, typically Northern observational humour, which should be taken as a compliment.

Third on in the first section was Scouse comic Steph Davies.

No stranger to gigs at XS Malarkey, Steph has gone from stength to strength since the early days of her comedy career, in terms of material, stage presence and confidence. She started off with some 'Capital of Culture' material, then followed it up with stuff about teaching scallies and political correctness. There were some quality punchlines throughout the set and she got the audience laughing nicely. The highlight of the set was the bit about sex education from the 60's. Definitely un-PC, but hilarious all the same. The best of the three comics in the first section.

Next on after the break was a comic with a fine line in cleverly sick comedy, David Bloom.

David opened up with a gag about mixing up eggs in an IVF clinic and came out with one of the best phrases I've heard in a while ("The lubricant on the fist of industry."). He also had some amusing alternative names for diseases such as schizophrenia (Party In The Head disease) and V.D. (Happy Rash). Much of the set was either observations or slightly surreal, in a slightly twisted way, and it's always nice to see comedians push the boundaries of taste now and again.

The main event of the evening was a world premier of Seymour Mace's show Imaginary Friends Reunited.

The show started with a pre-recorded introduction introducing Seymour's character Mr Pineapple, who started off with a rap song in a traditionally weird style, drawing cheers from the crowd (including the large number of people who'd turned up specifically to watch Seymour).

The first half of the set consisted of a set by Mr Pineapple, the self-styled worst comedian in the world. He started off with trying to get the audience to respond to a catchphrase (which was more a conversation) followed by one of my favourite bits where he amusingly changes the words to Get Off My Cloud by The Rolling Stones, in typically manic fashion. After that came his dinosaur glove puppet with which he had an hilarious failed conversation. Even though I've seen this before it still makes me emit wee every time.

Following Mr Pineapple there was an interval in the form of a film shown on the big screen to allow Seymour to go off and change into his regular attire. The film was a bit strange to say the least, and it was the weak part of the show, but it was necessary for the costume change.

And then he was back as the Seymour Mace we all know and love. He came on to the Tom Jones hit It's Not Unusual but the intro before the lyrics normally come in kept looping around and around, and every time the lyrics were due to come in Seymour looked as if he was going to start singing and then backed out at the last minute. After a while he declared, "We've got twenty minutes of this!" I don't know why but it was incredibly funny. A lot of people agreed it went on too long but the longer it went on the funnier it became, especially when he started handing out hats from a bag. He was just about to start when someone got up to go to the toilet so he waited until she got back. By now the song had been going on for over five minutes and ended with Seymour simply saying, "That was a bit unusual." Fantastic! The rest of the set was Seymour doing what Seymour does best: cracking gags, top notch material and surreal humour. It's safe to say that it was probably the best ever received show at XS Malarkey. Awesome.

Oh yeah, and Johnny Vegas turned up to watch him...

Spider.