"Otters and butterflies... obviously if you like one you're going to love the other."

A strong line-up tonight and leading the charge was London comic Alexis Dubus.

Alexis was making his debut at XS Malarkey and made a decent job of it, especially due to the first spot of the night traditionally being the most difficult. Alexis started with some material about doing student gigs, followed by a lovely paedophile gag, an otter and butterfly sanctuary (!) and the small village he comes from featuring a Hannibal Lecter soundalike on the local radio station. All in all a very slick gig with sharp gags aplenty which got the night off to a good start.

Second act of the night, doing her first 'proper' gig at Malarkey's (the first appearance was at the Funny Women Competition) was Hazel Humphreys.

Hazel's material can be quite near the knuckle but she started off with a couple of 'safe' gags, then launched straight into the smut with a Werther's Originals paedophile gag (which got a laugh and a groan of disgust from the crowd). She also had material about The Vagina Monologues, a fairly sick tampon gag, and a great gag about Jesus being Trigger from Only Fools and Horses. Overall it was a fairly good debut, a few gags worked better than others, but fairly solid on the whole.

Next up was a comic with his own show (indeed, his own tour), trying out some new material, Justin Moorhouse.

Justin started out with three gags which he fully admitted weren't his but got laughs anyway due to the fact that if they didn't work he simply said, "Fuck it, it doesn't matter - it's not mine." His own material included foxhunting and a couple of 'touchy' subjects including Princess Diana and Ken Bigley (although delivered with an air of confidence that said, "Don't fucking complain!"). Some great new material from Justin (just a couple of things were a bit hit and miss but that's the whole point of trying out new stuff).

Next on was Matt Tinker, making his XS Malarkey debut.

Although Matt was an open spot he was on later as he apparently had an horrendous car journey from Lincolnshire. His material included the reason why he's not allowed pets, reprogramming talking teddy bears and getting superpowers from radioactive waste, including the cracking line, "If I got cancer but I could fly I'd still be pretty fucking chuffed." Beautiful. He had a top-ten of the worst British foods you can buy, which worked quite well. The material in general had highs and lows (more highs than lows, thankfully) and it was quite a good first gig at XS. He's still quite new to the scene so it'll be interesting to see how far he's progressed in about a year or so.

After Matt came the first of the two headline acts of the night, former City Life Comedian of the Year, Seymour Mace.

After a typically meandering start he did his routine about hiding in the darkness ("Not the band") and then reconstructed - with the aid of a backing CD - what it really would be like to hide in The Darkness. Next came new bits of material about C3-PO as a Village People member, and penguins taking over zoos (using ostriches as hired muscle). He also had other more familiar (but still quite new) material. It wasn't his best ever gig, but compared to most other comics it was superb.

Last act of the night was Paul Foot.

And what a disappointing end to the night. I've seen Paul before on a couple of occasions at XS Malarkey and I've seen him do well, but this time he seemed to just waste vast amounts of time by taking a joke and using it until it just wasn't funny anymore. And beyond that. He must have spent about twenty minutes talking about price rises in Chinese food - five minutes would have been funny, twenty minutes produced awkward murmerings from the crowd. I'll put this one down to an error of judgement on Paul's part as I know he can produce the goods if he wants to, but he didn't exactly do his reputation much good with this gig. An unfortunate end to an otherwise great night.

Spider.