This is turning out to be one of the most successful Screaming Blue Murder seasons we’ve witnessed, both from the point of view of the number of bums on seats – lots – and of the quality of the comedy on offer. This week we had two comics we had seen before plus a new one and also a new compere.

The new compere was Paddy Lennox and he was terrific. A last minute stand-in for Dan Evans, he was full of attack and had a very warm Irish personality which he used to great effect. He was superb bouncing comic ideas off the front row characters, and generally he had some great material. He didn’t shy away from the ridiculous but all his stories were totally believable, which helps you identify with him. We’d really like to see him again sometime.

Our first act was also new to us, Paul Ricketts. He has a very nice unhurried charm and a great story-telling ability, with the result that he literally had the audience in the palm of his hand. Intelligent, thought-provoking material that was still very funny and a perfect opener for the evening.

Next up was Meryl O’Rourke, who we’ve seen once as an act and once as an MC. She was on extremely good form, with some excellent material about sex and motherhood, but mainly about sex. She ratcheted the energy levels up quite a bit with a lot of high octane comedy and it was an extremely funny set.

Our final act was Christian Reilly who we saw over two years ago, doing more or less the same act but it’s absolutely brilliant. A man with a guitar, his material is based on musical pastiches, funny voices and guitar trickery and it all works amazingly well. Even when you don’t know the original song he is lampooning, it’s still really funny. We loved him, and so did the audience. I’ve never heard that amount of whooping and cheering for an act here like that. Definitely the best reaction from a crowd in the five years we’ve been coming here. Simply superb.

A really successful night – one of those surprisingly rare occasions when the energy and humour levels continued to increase as the evening went on. All too often the second act isn’t as good as the first, or the third act isn’t as good as the second. This time the recipe was faultless. The perfect comedy night out.