Monday nights may not be fantastic for comedy, following the highs of the weekend with most people being back at work.

The previous statement may be correct for most of the UK but in Perth things are a little different. Perth Repertory Theatre does not usually perform on Mondays, as an experiment they started putting on music and comedy in the bar area. I spotted the comedy nights some time ago but only managed to get up on 1^st December when local comedy hero Bruce Fummey introduced Sean Grant and Al Pitcher.

Bruce is known both for his Scottish based Fringe Shows but also for his comedy clubs in and around Perth, Dundee and Tayside. Comparing this gig Bruce had his work cut out for him, the audience were well spread out over the room and he had a very difficult party who seemed determined to disrupt the show as much as possible. He succeeded in warming us up for the first act.

Sean Grant seemed very familiar to me but at the time could not think why. This Glaswegian has a fairly dry presentation with some very funny moments and despite the continued disruption coped very well. There were times he had me almost falling off my chair. It was only when I got home the oracle that is Geoff was able to point out we had seen Sean at The Stand Comedy Club Red Raw night in November 2007. We both commented on his material and said we would look out for him in the future. He certainly seems to be going strong. He is apparently appearing at The Stand in the future look at the website for information.

After a short break, during which our disruptive element left ‘Yehh!!’ Bruce returned to the stage and completely wowed the room you would have thought it was a different night. Not that he had changed his presentation but had slightly changed his material in preparing us up for the headline act.

I only went to see Al Pitcher Fringe 2005 simply on the title of his show ‘Al Pitcher – The Wolf Catcher’ and admit to being totally caught. I went back in 2006 for more, sent Geoff on 2007 and was devastated when he didn’t do a show this year. This Kiwi certainly has stage presence and I adore his comedy. The material used tonight was 98% new to me and left me wanting more even though he did just over an hour. The set was quite strange in that it seemed he was playing with waves at the seaside, all totally with him, then slightly moving away from him then, back totally with him. Despite this too-ing and fro-ing the whole audience had a great night and Al himself seemed to have fun. He presented us with a one man Hakka and I wanted to scream ‘more, more, more!!’ Al has promised us a UK tour in 2009, lookout for dates on his website www.alpitcher.com.

I had an amazing night after a very sad lousy day thank you all. For further information on comedy see www.thestand.co.uk   www.horsecross.co.uk  www.brucefummey.co.uk  and www.alpicher.com.