"What if edible pants became your favourite food?"

The night started late due to three pissed-up scally cocks who wandered in and refused to pay (big pat on the back to manager Mark for eventually getting rid of them), and first up onto the stage was the energetic Vince Atta.

Vince has only been doing comedy for a few short months but already shows massive potential. The material was mainly strong and he showed great enthusiasm and confidence on stage which garnered some good laughs from the crowd early on, but the piece of material which was probably the highlight was the bit about Columbo. I don't normally like impressions as they're usually nothing more than comedic devices intended to elicit a Pavlovian response from the audience in the form of a cheap laugh, but thankfully Vince had the material to back it up. This boy will go far, I think.

Second on, another energetic comedian, this one from London, Geoff Norcott.

Geoff's material ranged from Gollum from Lord of the Rings (note to comics: please, please stop doing Gollum impressions!), combining army recruitment and McDonald's adverts, 'odd couples' (specifically Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley, culminating in a real groaner of a gag), and the London Underground. Quite a bit part of his set featured rapping at high speed, which, while not my cup of tea was fairly impressive to watch. A decent XS debut which the crowd seemed to enjoy.

After the break came an act I was looking forward to seeing immensely (after seeing her in the Big Value Comedy Show in Edinburgh) Josie Long.

Wow. Just brilliant. Anyone who can introduce the line, "What if edible pants became your favourite food?" into the middle of a set gets my vote. Josie had a fantastically silly sense of humour which immediately endeared herself to the crowd, plus an excellent sense of pedantry. There were some great callbacks, particularly with the bit of material about George Foreman grills ("I liked it so much, I put my name on it!"). It's fairly safe to say she was one of my favourite acts of the year so far. The audience gave up some good laughs but I thought she deserved more. In fact, I liked her so much, I put my name on her.

After Josie came a stalwart of Malarkey's, Jonathan Paylor.

Jonathan - the least camp camp person I know - arrived onto the stage to the sounds of one-hit-wonder Sinitta's So Macho (Lee's choice, not his) which tied in fairly neatly with his opening material about being gay but liking football. I've heard the material before but it's solid and always gets a laugh (a couple of new lines in there as well, and a sly pop at David James for his World Cup qualifier gaffe). He followed that up with some great new material about the film Titanic, and the odd bit of audience banter here and there. Jonathan (or indeed any comic) had his work cut out following Josie's set but he coped admirably and produced probably his best Malarkey appearance yet.

Headliner of the night was the prolific Blackpool-based comic, Greg Cook.

It doesn't seem that long ago when Greg did an open spot at XS Malarkey; now he's a fully fledged headliner, and deservedly so. I'm not sure how much material Greg has got in total but he must spend a fair amount of time writing. I lost count of the number of gags, one after the other, that Greg delivered in his trademark laidback way (a couple of groaners but most got decent laughs). Normally I'm not really a fan a comics who just come out with a stream of gags one after the other but I think Greg is the exception to the rule.

Spider.