GOOD things come in threes. So finding four funny people on stage at the Wolsey last night was a bit of a bonus.

Dominic Castle

Up for a Laugh

The New Wolsey

GOOD things come in threes. So finding four funny people on stage at the Wolsey last night was a bit of a bonus.

Hardest worker was compere Matt Reed, who found himself doing a full turn as we waited for the other acts to turn up after a car breakdown on the A14.

The affable Reed managed to keep the room laughing with a improvised set; fortunately he has a talent for interacting with an audience and handled the curve ball he was thrown pretty well.

Gary Delaney is a quickfire one-liner merchant. That's not to decry his talent as many of his jokes hit the bullseye and some were very sharp indeed.

Jimmy Carr may have the profile but for my money Delaney would give him a run in a comedy head-to-head though neither have that many jokes that could be repeated here.

The headliner was nominally Sol Bernstein, the 84-year-old Jewish comic invention of the rather younger Steve Jameson.

Bernstein is something of a monster, happy to trample taboos with a barrage of rapid-fire material, blue enough already, but somehow given an even deeper hue for apparently coming from the mouth of an elderly gent in blazer and Homburg hat.

But the biggest cheers of the night went to Sarah Millican, a familiar face to watchers of quiz-coms. Her chatty stories, delivered in a beguilingly soft Geordie accent, were gloriously funny and told with fine timing.

And by saying the most outrageous things with all the innocence of a librarian or primary school teacher she extracted maximum value from her material; appropriate enough on an evening when we had four jokers for the price of one.

Dominic Castle