"I'd bum your sweet little Jesus of Nazareth arse. I'm not gay but I'd bum you 'til you nailed yourself to a cross."

Justin Moorhouse The night got off to a good start tonight thanks to the talents of Toby's stand-in compere replacement, Justin Moorhouse.

Justin showed his talent for thinking on his feet with some top class audience banter, and had a stage presence which said, "Don't fuck with me!" He got a potentially rowdy crowd settled with the minimum of fuss and built the atmosphere up very nicely for the first act.

Mark Jackson And the first act of the night was Barnsley comic Mark Jackson.

Mark started with some standard issue material playing on his broad Yorkshire accent and the old "aren't the women in [insert place name here] ugly?" gag. There was a quite nice gag about Sheffield United getting to the FA Cup Final, but unfortunately I could see it coming over the comedy horizon. This was followed by a gag about Andy and Steve McDonald from Coronation Street being twins (a gag Toby has been doing for years, incidentally). I had high hopes for the bit about Peter Sutcliffe but unfortunately it ended with a fairly weak gag. The other joke I could see coming was the Cliff Richard/Hank Marvin gag. There was some potential there but too many of the gags were groaners and the delivery was way too slow (giving the audience - or at least me - time to work out the punchline before it even arrived). Still, he got a decent round of applause at the end, although to me a lot of it was 'comedy Andy Kelly by numbers'.

Second onto the stage, and taking the comedy up a notch, was Andy Kelly.

Relatively new comic Andy took to the stage with some material about being Anglo-Irish, which was met with a decent enough response from the crowd. This was followed with material about low-fat options at McDonald's, barber shops and the Disability Discrimination Act. It was generally well received, with a confident (if somewhat loud) delivery. Given time and polishing up a bit of the material he could do well on the circuit. And fair play to him for wearing a Salford Lads' Club t-shirt.

Gonzo The final act in the first section was someone who'd not played Malarkey's for a long time, German comic Gonzo

I don't know what happened tonight but Gonzo pretty much - with the exception of a few gentle laughs about a minute in - died on his arse, which is stunningly difficult to do at XS Malarkey. He's capable of so much more, I've seen him do far better, but for some reason his heart just wasn't in it tonight and he tended to ramble on stage with no real point or direction. This was a shame as I was really looking forward to seeing him again, and he's such a nice guy it felt awkward watching him do badly. I don't know how often he gigs but he's definitely got something and should work hard at it.

Meryl O'Rourke The main support act of the evening came in the form of a debut Malarkey appearance for Meryl O'Rourke.

Meryl had some quickfire, sharp humour, including boyfriend material (which had some clever enough gags to prevent it being hack), getting older and checking yourself for lumps. The gag count was really quite high and there was no skimping on the quality either. A very good debut all round - she'll be back soon, I'll wager.

Silky Headline act of the night was one of my favourite acts to have played Malarkey's (I voted for him in last year's awards), Silky

I was quite gutted to realise after the gig that the batteries had run out in my MP3 recorder and so it didn't get any of Silky's set - annoying for two reasons; firstly because Silky is a genius and I wouldn't have minded hearing that again, secondly because as I'm doing this review over two months later (lazy, I know) I can't remember it in detail. What I do remember was that he took the roof off (no surprise there) with some top class Silky gold. Maybe next time I should write the review sooner... oh well.

Spider.