For $6.99 I can get a kilo of mince from my local butchers. That does me for both a spag-bol and a taco night. Now that’s what I call tasty value. So when I saw a Comedy Festival show called $6.99 kg I immediately began to salivate in a base Pavlovian response.

Offering up five tasty morsels of raw Australian talent in the form of Pete Sharkey, Dana Katz, Dean Eizenberg, Clare Turner and Kieren Yap, $6.99 kg is served up in The Amber Lounge in a sort of yum cha assortment of comedic titbits.

While these five young lambs may have been a little underdone in places, the shaky nerves and confidence in their material should improve in flavour as they marinate throughout the festival (ok, last food pun metaphor).

Clare Turner as MC held the show together particularly well and the decent sized crowd, who were coaxed in from the street, were eager to be entertained and forgiving of the flat bits. I particularly enjoyed the enthusiasm of Sharkey and Yap’s one-liners.

It’s interesting to see young performers finding their voice and hopefully discovering the fearlessness that makes a good comic stand out as a memorable act. At $8 it’s hard not to give these guys a go, and with each performer on stage for around 10 minutes, they all provided at least some good laughs and none wore out their welcome.