Another very full house last Friday night to enjoy the usual selection of three comics, two intervals and one compere, who this time was Kevin Dewsbury. He compered here last June, was excellent then and was excellent this time too. He has a very relaxed style of humour, coming across as rather caring and kindly, but still with very good material with proper punch lines! He did repeat a bit from last time, but it’s entertaining stuff and we enjoyed hearing it again. I love his observations about pompous people who speak normal English but then go into a silly foreign accent when they say “Sarkozy” or “Reichstag”. Guilty as charged.

 First act was Alfie Moore. He had been on that “Show me the Funny” programme last year – the reality/ comedy programme that sounded great in theory and ended up being a damp squib as it was all background and no comedy. Anyway Mr Moore successfully eradicated any disappointing memories of that series. He was superb. He trades creatively – but not intimidatingly – on the fact that he is a serving police officer as well as a stand-up. He does a lot of un-PC comedy without causing any offence, which is a good trick. He had some great material about Postman Pat’s employment in the light of the Disability Discrimination Act; and I loved the line about how you are no longer required to state your sex on a job application form – ridiculous, how else are you going to know how much to pay them? Also his observation that he was in a same-sex relationship; well, it’s with a woman, but the sex is the same, always…. He was a complete hit and we would like to see him do a longer set in the future.

 In a sense, everything went a bit downhill after that. The second act was Danielle Ward, whom we saw here in July 2010, and she was very good that time but this time she never quite took off. Quite a lot of her material seemed to just fizzle out without any real payoff at the end. I’m afraid her applause was only lukewarm. Perhaps she just wasn’t the right kind of comic persona to follow Alfie Moore.

 Final act was the rather manic Steve Best; again we’ve seen him at the Screaming Blue Murder before, almost exactly a year ago. He’s fast and furious and rattles through his almost schizophrenic material – it’s a constant battle within himself as to whether he agrees with himself or not. I think the whole act very much relies on his hitting absolutely the right tone from the start to keep the audience in touch with his nonsense. Again this time I don’t think he was quite as successful as his last appearance– but nevertheless it’s delightfully stupid, deftly performed and overall very funny.

 A great night out, as usual, and very rewarding to see the Underground absolutely packed again.