Ginger compere...

While Toby was off starring in The Talented Mr Ripley the stand-in compere for tonight was the ginger behemoth, Mr Chris Brooker.

Chris got off to a good start using hand gestures to get the audience to cheer and got a good response before he'd even said anything. Then followed some Brooker-style banter which was met with a decent enough reaction from the crowd, although the thing about Malarkey's is that almost any compere will get a confused look when they take to the stage instead of the more regular Toby.

First act of the night tonight was local comic Alan Donegan.

One of the thing Alan likes to do is banter with the audience (with varying levels of success - usually quite good), possibly because his material tends to be full of gags and puns which elicit groands from the crowd. Tonight he started with the banter (and got lucky with three people's names who he picked out of the crowd) followed by the frankly terrible Asda gag, although it was followed by a great bit of banter about swearing to dogs. I quite like Alan's slightly haphazard style because sometimes the gig can seem to be meandering and then he'll hit you with a bit of bona fide Gold. A decent start to the show.

Second up onto the stage was the somewhat bizarrely named The One Like Fish.

It's fair to say that Fish's material is quite near the knuckle. However, he comes across as quite angry with it as well; I'd say it's best to do it tongue-in-cheek or develop a bit of vulnerability into the character so the audience don't seem quite so threatened. To be fair he got some laughs, but I'm not sure the audience were quite ready for it after the relatively placid Alan Donegan. The bit about Sally Webster from Coronation Street merely reminded me of a watered down Mark Hayden. There needs to be a justifying point in hating something when using it as material, rather than just saying you hate Sally Webster and saying how you'd like to kill her. There were certainly glimmers of potential there but it needs to be toned down a bit (or develop punchlines to match the ferocity of delivery). Oh, and continually saying the 'F' word diminishes its impact.

Next on came a comic who's played XS Malarkey quite a few times, but not for a while, Mike Landers.

Mike has some genuinely good material, with some cracking gags, but for some reason tonight he seemed to get a very subdued response. Maybe due to the constrast in styles between himself (laid back and fairly quiet) and The One Like Fish (loud and sweary). Saying that though, there was a lovely bit of banter midway through, and some near the end as well (something I've not really heard Mike do a lot of). To be fair to him, he worked hard and deserved a better reponse.

After the break the humour definitely stepped up a gear with the impressive Mary Bourke.

Wow. It was just what the night needed. The audience were taking time to get into the swing of things but Mary got them going with some top notch material coupled with an experienced delivery with great timing. What more can you ask for, really? I quite liked the bit about her mother's voicemail, involving pressing 1, 2 or 3 for different options. Okay, there were one or two bits in the set which were basically, "Aren't men and women different?" (one of the hackest of subjects) but the laughs were there and that's the important thing.

Headliner of the night was London comic Simon Clayton.

Howard from the Halifax adverts lookalike Simon started with some familiar material about being mixed race and fat, which garnered some good early laughs. Simon is what I would call a solid comic, rather than a comic's comic - a no nonsense half hour of decent, solid laughs from the crowd, ending the show on a good note.

Spider.