JOHN LAWSON The hardest job in the world they call it. Stand-up comedy: the ever-present danger of arriving to the sound of applause and leaving to the sound of your own footsteps.

JOHN LAWSON

The hardest job in the world they call it. Stand-up comedy: the ever-present danger of arriving to the sound of applause and leaving to the sound of your own footsteps.

And there were moments at the Playhouse when any one of the four acts were in danger of doing just that.

The crowd took some winning over and all but one of the performers didn't seem to have enough good material.

All had their moments: Mickey Flanagan's musings on the real reasons for buying a Sunday paper; Harvey Oliver berating the audience for having as much social awareness as the Galapogos Islands; and bill-topper Daniel Kitson's off-the-wall hunting of an errant fly and discovery of some strange piece of detritus on the stage.

Kitson's was the most coherent act, linking themes back and forth, while the others were straightforward joke-tellers.

Kevin McCarthy, a comic of the old school with a friendly face, had the audience firmly on his side – even the lad who became his regular target.

He warmed up the audience to just the right level of expectation, despite claiming that he was really just a lorry driver who had broken down on the Norwich ring road and had wandered into the theatre out of the cold.