"She was badly disfigured in a hammer attack."
A good night tonight with decent acts all the way through, starting off with an act making his debut at XS Malarkey, London comic Gareth Berliner.
Gareth had a good, confident stage presence and some good gags, but it still took the audience a little while to warm up but they got into it after a while. One of the highlights of his set involves him explaining about his medical condition (a catheter to inject fliud directly into his heart) and the problems with getting on planes with his electronic pump looking like a bomb (this involved a lovely little callback to a gag earlier on). All in all it was a decent start to the show but the audience needed warming up a bit more before he came on.
Second onto the Malarkey stage, and another debut, was the amusingly named Owen Niblock.
I'd seen Owen a few times before (although relatively new to the comedy circuit he does tend to gig quite a lot) and he's been a little bit hit and miss (usually more hit though) but tonight the crowd seemed to go for it. He started off with his Frog Skimming song, followed by a few gags and another song, the amusingly brief Insomnia. The crowd seemed to be enjoying themselves at this point so he must have been doing something right. One of my favourite songs was Animal Genital Band, simply for the way it ended. Great stuff.
Third onto the Malarkey stage was me, Neil Smith.
I wasn't originally booked for the gig but at the start of the night it didn't look like Owen Rankin was going to turn up originally so Toby asked if I'd do ten minutes. I agreed but later on Owen arrived. However, I asked if I could still go on and do a thirty second set in which I performed a two line poem about wanking, then buggered off. I think I now hold the record for the shortest official set at XS Malarkey.
Next up was one of my favourite comics, and someone with whom I've gigged a lot, one-liner merchant Stewart Spaull.
I know for a fact that Toby enjoys Stewart's material as well as a lot of the gags are quite cerebral, and there's no wasteage of words here. Deadpan gag after deadpan gag, met with varying reactions from the audience, from slightly confused mumbles, through groans, all the way to outright laughter. It's a risk you take when you do one-liners - it's gag after gag and they need to be good quality. It's also quite brave of Stewart to refuse to give in to cheap nob gags (well, there is one, but it's a good one). When faced with a fairly intelligent and comedy savvy crowd Stewart can take the roof off. He did quite well tonight but not as well as I've seen him do at other times (through no fault of his own, really).
Main support comic of the evening was a stalwart of XS (and Murphy's) Malarkey, a man who'd not played here for quite some time, Owen Rankin.
Owen started off with his trademark breakdance routine followed by some rather old 'topical' material (although to be fair he cracked a great gag about the fact that it wasn't topical at all). A couple of props followed (Andy Cole's record and Simon and Garfunkel's porn moustache), which were met with a good response from the crowd (in fact they took to him straight away). Poems, stories and popular culture were the order of the day, all delivered with Owen's charismatic and slightly shambolic way. It's all in the delivery; there's something intrinsically funny about it but I can't quite pin it down. Either way it got good laughs.
Headliner of the night, making his return to XS Malarkey, was the energetic ball of comedy, Jarred Christmas.
Some of Jarred's material comes from his New Zealand view of the British way of life (apathy and phrases such as, "I'm going to twat you."). There were some familiar bits from last time, but the material is strong so that's understandable. Jarred's at his fiery best when he goes into a rant about something (in this case it was salad) - it's a good comedy technique as when he ends it almost certainly results in a slightly Pavlovian response from the audience in the form of a cheer and a round of applause. Overall it was a typically energetic and funny Christmas performance. And good end to a good night.
Spider.