"His mother used him as a draught excluder, and always called him caterpillar TWAT!"

First up tonight at XS Malarkey was Bury comic Danny Deegan.

Danny was doing a last minute spot tonight as he wanted to try out some new material for his upcoming show, Rudgy. It consisted entirely of stories about his thick mate Rudgy; saying the wrong thing at an Aussie rules football game, being held up by two scallies at a petrol station, racist working men's clubs, Rudgy's two-timing shenanigans and occupying people's gardens as a bet were all there tonight. Danny's humour isn't gag after gag and it can be up to a minute before a punchline arrives but the stories manage to hold the audience's attention until it does arrive. A good rehearsal for his show which the crowd went for.

Next on after Danny was the gorgeous Jonathan Mayor.

Jonathan started off with his usual grand entrance (fnarr!) and had a bit of fun with a couple of members of the audience, then settled into some bits of material about his shoes and the war, with varying levels of laughter (mainly good). Unfortunately he suffered a few technical difficulties with the microphone (as evidenced by the sound dropping out while I'm doing this review) but I think he got away with it. He did a new bit of material about black people fox hunting which certainly had potential. Following on from that was some more familar material mixed in with the inevitable 'volunteer' from the audience. Overall it was a good gig but I've seen him do better, mainly in a compering role as it allows him free reign to banter.

Third onto the stage after the break was scally character act Nige.

Nige started with a great gag about when you leave the room because you've forgotten what you came in for - and promptly left the stage! Luckily he came back for scally humour and tales of his mate Dogshit Barry. Scally humour seems to be everywhere on the comedy circuit but Nige was there several years before most of the Johnny-Come-Latelys, and for my money he's still the best (by some way). Not for Nige the lazy observations about shellsuits tucked into socks and Rockports, this is more subtle and invariably more funny. The humour was mainly anecdote-based and works well with the character. And the performance was utterly faultless.

Headliner of the night (well, technically Nige was the headliner of the night but went on second-last) was a familiar face at XS Malarkey, Canadian comic Jason John Whitehead.

There were no new surprises from Jason this week, just a solid collection of tried and tested material, but for the uninitiated it was a great performance from a great comic. I would personally have liked to hear some new stuff, but then again, I'm at Malarkey's every week (and several other clubs) and I've seen Jason's set quite often. Still, the audience loved it, which is what I would have expected.

Spider.