A proper sell out of all 150 tickets for last Friday’s Screaming Blue Murder, and a super set of comics to enjoy. Dan Evans was back as our host, and is still refreshing us with new material, good man! His lightness of touch with the crowd appears effortless, which, combined with his slightly self-deprecating style, ensures a secure comic thread running throughout the whole show.

Our first act was Richard Morton, whom I’m pretty sure we saw here about three years ago, long before I started to blog these events. You can’t help but love him. He’s completely zany, basing a lot of his material on his guitar and creating hilarious Country and Western songlets about members of the Royal Family or indeed, I expect, any subject you’d care to mention. He’s fast and furious, with a good degree of silliness tempered with genuinely witty material with proper-funny punchlines. He went down a storm. Definitely one to catch.

The second act was Tom Craine, who has a splendidly upbeat style and keeps his act moving at a very good pace. He’s very likeable and reacts well with the audience; all that’s missing is some better material. He was up against top class competition in this line-up and it did make his stories seem a little underwhelming in comparison. I’m sure it’s within his capability to up his game and then I would have thought he could be really excellent. Mind you, he did describe me as looking like an apple – half man, half Braeburn. That decides it, I’m definitely going on a diet.

Talking of really excellent, we ended with Paul Sinha, who won the coveted Chrisparkle award for best Screaming Blue Murder comic of 2010. Like Richard Morton, I’m sure we had heard a lot of his set before, but, also like Richard Morton, it’s so good that you really don’t mind. Paul Sinha bases his material on his unique character of being a gay British Asian doctor quiz-king stand-up; from which position there are lots of wickedly funny observations to make. His delivery style is calm and clear, sometimes almost as though it were a lecture; not in a preachy way, but simply letting his carefully chosen words work the comedy magic. At the end of his act, he always makes an “approach” to a member of the audience; all I can say is – Ricardo had it coming. It was squirm inducingly hilarious. The appreciation for Paul Sinha at the end of the evening was about as enthusiastic and sustained as I’ve ever heard at the SBM.

£11.50 for all this. It’s ridiculous really. A great night out.