Price: £13.00

I went to The Comedy Store for the first time on this night to see what it was like and thoroughly enjoyed the Best of Stand-up night which was on. At £13 a ticket, it's not something you'll make a habit of doing on a weekly basis, but every single one of the acts I saw was excellent in their own way. The show was compered throughout the night by John Fothergill from Newcastle, who expertly took the piss out of several audience members, so it didn't take long to realise that if he looks in your direction you should look elsewhere, as well as not moving an inch from your seat at any time while he was on stage. The first act was loudmouth Scot Freddie Boyle, who found an audience member old enough and similar enough to be confused for his father, so suggested a Proclaimers tribute (this didn't happen, sadly); then the laid-back Gary Delaney told a series of one-liners which ended by twisting the preconceptions gathered from the first part and threw in a line about going out with a pink mouse who lived on the moon, but once he dumped her he felt like he'd dropped a clanger. "For anyone under 25..." (and then went on to explain it for them). The third and final act of the first half, Helen Austin, a short-haired blonde girl, also took swipes at various audience members but brilliantly added in a few songs from her electric guitar that blended a fantastic voice with clever and insightful lyrics and played them to established tunes, so "Smooth Operator" became "Smoother Vibrator". An example soundclip of her performance can be found here. The first act of the second half was Asian comedian Paul Choudhury. He started off being a bit of a 'sweary Mary', but settled down and explained how he wished he could be part of the Al-Qeida Network... "because the One2One Network is shit. At least with the Al-Qeida Network you'd get good coverage in caves, but none at all in Cuba". He also claimed that Osama Bin Laden was starring as Fagin in Oliver!, singing "You've got to bomb a tower or two(!)"

Finally, they saved the best for last - and the first name we'd heard of - in the form of Marcus Brigstocke (right), one of the guest panellists for ITV's one-series-wonder Casting Couch - hosted by Mel & Sue and which I'd like to see return, star of the unbelievably crap BBC1 sitcom The Savages (which he clearly only does for the money) and the recent BBC2 10-minute comedy series We Are History. He was quite clearly more comfortable than the rest of the acts about appearing on stage and made several side-splitting wisecracks, including that, for the 2002 Grand National, he'd placed a bet on Shot in the Paddock and closing with swipes at compensation culture, the Declan Swan adverts from Claims Direct, plus the one about the football player who fell off a ladder at work, complaining why the ladder wasn't "two or three storeys higher" and on debt-consolidation companies: "Why get shafted by 100 little cocks? Come to 'Baines and Ernst' and get fucked up the arse by one huge one!... 'Baines and Ernst' - so good it'll crack your pelvis!" An example soundclip can be found here. Both soundclips are linked to the Jongleurs website.

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2002.