Andrew Maxwell, Gary Delaney and Caimh McDonell

Another triple bill at my local comedy club. Work commitments whittled down my party to jst 4 of us and ther was dissension in the ranks after first act Gary Delaney. Gareth made it very clear he didn't like one-liner comics, and Gary Delaney fell into that category. Squarely. So even though he went down well with the crowd generally he didn't in our little corner.

Of course whether you like one line gags and puns is a matter of taste. But what I did notice about Gary, on stylistic grounds, is his tendency to look down at his feet more than the audience, and to laugh at his own jokes.

We recovered with middle-act Caimh McDonell. There are an astonishing number of Irish comics performing in London, and you can't ask for a much more Irish name than that. He was back in the story-telling tradition, And very good too, although had never come across him before. Another one for my list.

Headliner was Andrew Maxwell, also very Irish and whom I had seen twice in the last year or so. I was expecting to hear some familiar material, but actually only recognized a couple of lines. In part that was because he did almost no material at all, no gags to speak of. He just talked to the audience - the exact opposite to Gary Delaney. And he was brilliant. He lives locally so some of the stuff is pretty unusable anywhere else. The chat about the giant fibre-glass gorilla at a local garden centre is, well, only of local interest. Which of course made it feel all the more special.

One of my mates persuaded me afterwards to come back to his place to watch the rugby. And then a lesbian couple popped round and we stayed up all night drinking. As you do. And you wonder why I love London so much as 52 year old bloke? Because you don't have nights like that in the provinces.