The Joburg Comedy Cartel performs on the first Friday of every month at the Foxwood theatre in Houghton, along with some of our favourite comedians. The next gig on Friday June 1st will see JCC members Alyn Adams and myself share the stage with John Vlismas and Tats Nkonzo. You can win tickets to this show simply by becoming a member of the Joburg Comedy Cartel group on Facebook, or you can buy them for just R100 each by calling the Foxwood theatre on (0)11 486 0935. We look forward to seeing you there.

For only the second month Comedy Rocks hosted comedy at Picolinos in Fourways and the crowds are already arriving. With over 140 bookings the entire stage area was packed as I took to the stage hosting a line up of great comedians. Dale Amler was set to go on first, with Melt Sieberhagen and Chris Forrest each closing a half, and two open mics Alfred Adrian and Ariel Kagan filling in too. It was set to be a big evening, but it was making me nervous as the one aspect that had proved itself hard the month before was when Malcolm Ferreira had to settle down a fairly rowdy audience.

In the end it was relatively easy. One or two groups who had never been to comedy before had to actively be teased till they settled in, but most were raring to go. One guy who had loudly been talking actually whined, “but I brought the largest table”, when he was mocked into submission. It took me about 10 minutes to get everyone in hand and facing the stage before a few big laughs in a row allowed me to bring up Dale.

Dale has been improving rapidly this year and whereas he was till quite recently, a comedian with one or two huge highlights in a generally mediocre set, his new material is all of his best level. His presentation too is getting better with each performance and his low key delivery kept the crowd entranced and laughing throughout.

My job after that was to return the energy to the room, which I did before bringing up Alfred whose five minutes of explosive high energy rudeness got the whole room laughing. This allowed me a quick change over to Melt to end the first half, which had gone a little long for my liking to that point.

Melt was a star closer and like with the last Picolinos event the end of the first half ushered in some of the biggest, regular laughs of the night.

After the break the show progressed quickly. The new material practiced in the first half I got to do some working material and the crowd responded well. By the time I called on Ariel the room was cooking. Ariel however struggled a bit. Largely this was down to the unnecessary swearing that has become his nervous tic. The material is clever, but the filler harshness rubbed the crowd, which had, until minutes earlier, included children, the wrong way. He still got some good laughs based on his stuff, but it definitely could have received a better response.

I filled the time in between acts with some of my best stuff before I called up a very low key Chris Forrest to headline. Chris’ strength on this night was definitely his audience interaction. His asides and banter with various members of the audience got huge applause and laughs, whereas the material was getting a slightly more muted one. Chris did his time and came off to a nice round of applause, before I wrapped up and brought the evening to a close. It was a great night and judging by the line up at the next one (Deep Fried Man, Jason Goliath and John Vlismas) that venue is only going to get better and better.

Jolly Cools may be in Parkhurst, but it’s certainly not a trendy, exciting or glamerous gig. It pays relatively badly and the small group that’s sitting outside seem almost unaware of what is supposed to be happening when myself and Vittorio Leonardi arrive just half an hour before things are set to kick off. The sound guy beat us there by half an hour and is sitting supposedly ready for things to start – the only problem is he hasn’t tested the mic, it’s not working and basically everything is lining up for a pretty sheit evening.

Al Prodgers, the headliner arrives with fifteen minutes to go before the scheduled start, there’s still no crowd, and the sound guy is trying to set up next to the stage so we can use his spare mic that has a one meter cable. We’ve never felt more rockstar.

The show starts bang on time though and the few people who were outside are lured inside by the noises. Slowly as Vittorio speaks a few more tables of people dribble in off the street. There are now about 20 people here and Vittorio is doing his gamely best to get them looking at the stage when they would rather look at their phones. He does his best, gets some laughs, but apathy still rules as he calls me onto stage.

I start well, but the intention to do material from Spamily in preparation for the Arts Fest throws them a little as I work over material that clearly needs more stage time. Some of the crowd begin to get chatty with me. Fortunately I seem to be on form with the hecklers and quickly win the crowd around through aggressive (yet thankfully funny) slaughtering of anyone who even so much as looks at a phone. One of these attacks leads into a strong bit of material and I end the set on really good applause and cheering.

Al Prodgers closes the evening on a set of his golden material. The small crowd that started out at the beginning of the night has grown to almost double that and people are actually paying attention. At the end there is cheering, laughing and drinking purchasing and the gig that looked like it might be dire has, at least, been fun from a performance point of view. Not a bad night at all.

Jolly Cools may be in Parkhurst, but it’s certainly not a trendy, exciting or glamerous gig. It pays relatively badly and the small group that’s sitting outside seem almost unaware of what is supposed to be happening when myself and Vittorio Leonardi arrive just half an hour before things are set to kick off. The sound guy beat us there by half an hour and is sitting supposedly ready for things to start – the only problem is he hasn’t tested the mic, it’s not working and basically everything is lining up for a pretty sheit evening.

Al Prodgers, the headliner arrives with fifteen minutes to go before the scheduled start, there’s still no crowd, and the sound guy is trying to set up next to the stage so we can use his spare mic that has a one meter cable. We’ve never felt more rockstar.

The show starts bang on time though and the few people who were outside are lured inside by the noises. Slowly as Vittorio speaks a few more tables of people dribble in off the street. There are now about 20 people here and Vittorio is doing his gamely best to get them looking at the stage when they would rather look at their phones. He does his best, gets some laughs, but apathy still rules as he calls me onto stage.

I start well, but the intention to do material from Spamily in preparation for the Arts Fest throws them a little as I work over material that clearly needs more stage time. Some of the crowd begin to get chatty with me. Fortunately I seem to be on form with the hecklers and quickly win the crowd around through aggressive (yet thankfully funny) slaughtering of anyone who even so much as looks at a phone. One of these attacks leads into a strong bit of material and I end the set on really good applause and cheering.

Al Prodgers closes the evening on a set of his golden material. The small crowd that started out at the beginning of the night has grown to almost double that and people are actually paying attention. At the end there is cheering, laughing and drinking purchasing and the gig that looked like it might be dire has, at least, been fun from a performance point of view. Not a bad night at all.