A full house at the Underground for this week’s Screaming Blue Murder – that’s what we like to see! There’s nothing like lots of people laughing to make the humour even more infectious. Dan Evans was once again our compere and he did his usual excellent job of comic meet and greet, including dealing with a rather frosty lady in the front row who would clearly not be trifled with. He’s still having a crise de conscience with the new material, which created a lively encounter with a guy at the back who pleaded with him not to do his old stuff again. I got a name check in that little contretemps – to think that I might have spurred Dan on to write some new stuff!

Dan promised three great acts and two marvellous intervals and he did not disappoint. Our first act was Andrew Watts, new to us, who has a rather entertaining persona of an older, slightly posher, very unladdish gentleman, and who bestows his advice to us all about dealing with women. Very funny material, with nice use of cricketing imagery for batting away difficult questions, and I loved his stuff about being asked to give his girlfriend a mediocre night in bed; definitely worth catching his act.

Next up was Carly Smallman, again an act we hadn’t seen before – a girl with a guitar, which is almost always a winning formula for Mrs Chrisparkle and me. She had some good near the knuckle songs, starting with her brotherly incest song that Mrs C and I thought was brilliant but Lady Duncansby, also in attendance, thought was the height of bad taste. It was an entertaining act about being both a slut and unsuccessful with boys, and she had some very good audience interaction with Carl at the back, to whom she directed her amorous attentions. Again, a very funny act.

Headline act was Nick Wilty, who we had seen about 18 months ago, whose material involves lots of fast-paced one-liners, many of which were very clever indeed. He bases a lot of the act on his observations during a considerable amount of world travel and is very funny in a sarf Lahndahn sort of way; in many respects he’s the antithesis to Andrew Watts. The whole programme was a very successful combination of comics; they were all sufficiently different to make each one stand out in their own way. Book early for the next show!