Grin & Tonic Comedy Club at the Civic Theatre, Rotherham

What better than a bit of comedy to cheer you up on a bleak and rainy Friday night?

Opener Jack Carroll would not want to be labelled a disabled comedian but tackles the subject head-on. He says he could never be a Liverpool fan because he sits in the wheelchair area and couldn't stand the endless singing of You’ll Never Walk Alone. Jack, who was runner-up in 2012’s Britain’s Got Talent final in which he was beaten by a Hungarian Shadow Dancing Troupe, says he wishes Brexit and the resulting anti-Eastern Europe hatred had come seven years earlier as he’d have won and been £250,000 richer. Top logic.

Rivka Uttley lives alone with her cat, who she calls Matthew so she can join in conversations and say things like ‘Matthew came in at 11.30 last night, ate his tea and buggered off out again, then he farted in my face’. Her single person jokes hold true for most.

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I’m not generally a fan of impressionists, but Charlie Hopkinson is brilliant and his 'Peaky Blinders in school' skit is unbelievably good.

Archie Kelly has been doing stand-up for a lot of years and the Phoenix Nights star (Kenny Senior) knows how to work an audience. His laid-back set includes a borderline sexist take on sexism, some great banter with a teacher - “Primary school? Not a real teacher then? ‘Had a nightmare day, got sand in my shoes.’ On holiday are you?” - a bit of anti royal material, a rant about the use of poor grammar and oxymorons such as “deafening silence” and “police intelligence”, and a cracking joke about a Children in Need show he took part in that raised millions, but it would have been cheaper to adopt 12 of the kids as “they don’t eat much”.

Compere Anthony J Brown held the whole thing together and called my caption competition entry ‘bleak’ - I can’t tell you what it said and fortunately I didn’t enter it under my own name.

The next Grin & Tonic show at the Civic will be on February 21 and will feature the brilliant Ivan Brackenbury - have a watch on YouTube.

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