Freshly graduated from school, Bo Burnham is an internet celebrity with a Comedy Channel special already under his belt. Or to be more accurate, under his tracky dack elastic band, because he shrugged onto stage in similar garb to that which he wears in his bedroom-bound Youtube videos. He either knew exactly what he was doing or was still suffering from being on Massachusetts time. With the crowd roaring with laughter a few minutes later, the answer was clear.

Bo writes songs on his keyboard in a basic Channel Nine Sunday Night Scoreboard sort of way, but then uses the rhythmic structure to wield wordplay, contrive over-the-top offensive puns, and make a T-shirtload of sex, gay and toilet jokes. His topics are exactly what you’d expect from within a classroom – including references to hot-button issues like race, religion and abortion – but he has twisted the ideas and words to take it a whole lot of levels above school yard banter. His recall, especially in the centre of dense, convoluted raps, is dead impressive and he has worked rhythm and alliteration into lyrics which are otherwise only there to rhyme with oncoming punchlines. There are hits-and-misses, but no flat spots.

On a Festival Club night when several women audibly reacted to MC Randy’s use of the C-word, Bo had everyone loving his similarly touch-n-go material. His young, slacker good looks are slightly undermining his underdog, uncool chic, but nothing could deny the talent required to deliver offence so enjoyably.

Audience members entered this four-hander play wearing badges boasting ‘Sexy’ or ‘Perv’ and were greeted at lights up by Muddy Waters’ ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’ and tight brown lounge suits bulging at the crotch. It’s a bar scene and Bernie (David Bramble) sweats sexual animalism as he regales his mate Danny (Ben Griffiths) with last night’s conquest. It could almost be a scene from Underbelly 2, with Bernie spitting lines through his handlebar moustache.

But it’s not. Sexual Perversity in Chicago was written by Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright David Mamet back in the early seventies – and it feels that way. Women’s liberation was well underway and masculinity in this new shared space was being tested. References to war and immaturity splatter the bawdy script as the two men grate and gyrate against the two women, played by Kellie Tori and Eleanor Jones. However these themes flit in and out of view, overpowered by the standard men-versus-women theme comedy audiences are so familiar with.

The actors and director Ami-Lou Sharpe have worked hard to keep the show pacy – and the spot-lit set is simple, stylish and effective – but the tone is uneven. Drama and subtext sat mostly separate to the comedic potential of gender politics or Bernie’s buffoonery and they undermined each other. Mamet has a reputation for dialogue that veers from sharp and direct to unfinished and indirect, but this preview show left us wondering if something was lost when shortening the original 70-80 minute play to 60 minutes.

If you’re heading along, embrace the characters’ immaturity for the most enjoyment.

Luckily, you know not to stop at this potentially bad sign, and for that you’ll be rewarded. This light-hearted caper is enriched with fun, clever writing which easily wins over the room. Testament to this play’s amusing invention is the fact that this is a murder mystery with only two actors, and yet no clue of the ultimate culprit.

Alex Ellis and Phil Ormsby are mercilessly melodramatic and easily fill La Mama’s small space – unsurprisingly, since they have already toured this show extensively throughout New Zealand. Originally rigging up the sound, set and lighting themselves, they are now joined by director Caitlin Dullard who has brought them and their joyous caper to Melbourne.

This is quite a silly show, but allows for a fantastically physical performance by Ormsby, and the tongue-in-cheek writing elevates it above simple farce. Felicia Fargo (Alex Ellis) and her assistant Dorian (one of Ormsby’s many characters) have the sharpest lines. With a few plot twists and turns, you’ll find yourself really enjoying it. Especially if you’re a New Zealander – apparently chocolate fishes are really big there.

This is a confident production that entertains you during set changes with quick, funny skits or medleys of old TV show themes – reminiscent of Round The Twist, Seinfeld or Ship 2 Shore. The whole cast works well together as they change age, costume, race and even gender in increasingly fidgety, farcical plot lines. In particular, Matt Bolger-Hobson has great comedic presence, like a sober Jason Gann with better hair. Sketches wander up dead end streets and accents wander over oceans, but the high spirits and big characters remain.

The writers clearly had more fun throwing things into the script than throwing anything out, but the opening night crowd of well-wishers got enough laughs to paper over the flat spots. It will be interesting to see how the show develops – such a tight group will no doubt adapt things as their run continues. If you are looking for loud and local, this is one for you.

Perched in peach-coloured shirts, the band played keyboard and varnished string instruments as they welcomed in the audience. Location is a defining factor of cabaret (smoky nightclubs or themed restaurants being the norm) so the restrained surrounds of the Old Chamber Rooms at Trades Hall gave the Duskbuskers an uphill battle. But hills aren’t so important in modern warfare, and they quickly won this battle with Aurora Kurth emerging in diva-esque, shimmering red silk. Her velvety vocals weren’t an immediate match with the bar room banter of Casey Bennetto of Keating! The Musical fame, but they embraced this to build some men-versus-women interplay.

This show isn’t strictly comedy. As their promotion says, it is about the time in-between light and dark – the grey gloaming that turns down the colour and noise, fuzzing and re-focussing the mind as we search out pockets of light where we can meet for a yarn and a yard glass. Evening: A Cabaret’s stereotype-centred jokes and more effective made-for-Melbourne observations are intersected by denser lyricism suggesting the desires and insecurities suffered in night-time pursuits of love. Poetry slips by without punch line, and the feel of the evening changes. Barbecue observations slide into deeper explorations of the hazy mind and by the time the band was singing “the less they know, the more they understand” it felt almost subversive.

Perhaps a second viewing would help (Aurora sings one song twice, enabling the clever wordplay to become much more apparent), but overall the thigh-slapping is reserved for the jaunty music.

Patrick Magee is the star of this show, frequently stealing the spotlight with bold, energetic performance. His colourful embodiment of characters takes a fair chunk of inspiration from UK comedy characters and he comes off as a combination of Jez from Peep Show and The Mighty Boosh’s Dixon Bainbridge, but there is versatility and skill that suggests a promising future in comedy. On several occasions an actor disappears off one side of the stage, only to reappear from the other without any visible presence of the running around which must have taken place.

A lot in the show also takes inspiration from the UK, and sketches often have accents for no particular reason other than meta-reference. The belly-laughs were a little light on and were both helped and hindered by a crowd member who had an improbable laugh that often began before anyone had said anything. There are big ambitions for the team working behind Comicide, and having a member pull out would’ve affected preparations (the poster art had already been printed), but I do think that from a year’s worth of material the show could have been denser with shorter skits. A transformer-related joke proved their worth and better illustrated the talent on offer.

Randy is a rough-around-the-edges character, and despite his friendly pink furriness there’s a lot in the show that isn’t child-friendly (including the stripper’s pole up the back of the Portland Hotel room it’s housed in). The humour doesn’t come from seeing a puppet swear, though, but from Randy’s character and the way he looks back over his adventurous life. He’s been to London, he’s been to hippy communes, and he’s been to a lot of kids’ parties. Now he’s trying to make sense of it all so he can head into the future with new insights like ‘how you manage your attraction, makes you a man’. The storytelling is fast and effective, focussing on Randy’s relationships and letting the crowd imagine his world.

McIvor, through Randy, is a gifted storyteller and with only the help of an occasional prop he created a wholly believable world that entertained and got a lot of laughs as well. The show makes my top three for the festival.

The three comedians did a 20-minute set each and then came together at the end, where surprisingly the well-known Deveny came away with a few bruises. Onstage and freed of editorial control, she didn’t have to creatively word her aggression and so resorted more to swearing for impact, losing some of her punch. That’s not to say she was bad, just that the other comedians outshone her at the final bell (okay – no more boxing metaphors).

Nelly Thomas set a political tone with some material about maternity leave, and her closing theatrical re-enactment of giving birth was a winner when it so easily might not have been (Thomas did break her promise that it would be mimed, but it still avoided the disarming displays of distress Hollywood films relish in). The highlight, though, was Christine Basil. Her twenty years on the comedy circuit came to the fore as she slickly and simply ran through her hilarious and heartfelt take on motherhood.

The marketing of this show means it’ll mostly be a ‘mum’ crowd that attends, and there were plenty of happy murmurs of agreement at the references throughout the show. But most people have at least one mum and there’s joy to be had here for a wider crowd.

Deveny may not have lived up to the hype, but her notoriety will get more people discovering Thomas and Basil. So it’s a good result either way.

The Small Poppies’ promotional material says they are from Canberra, but their show has detail and video that suggests they must know Melbourne pretty well. An opening sketch poking fun at faddish urbanites staking out milk-crates successfully mimics the inner-city scenester scene, and is a preview of the terrific flexibility of the actors. I only registered when they took their bows that there were only three of them. Adam Brodie-McKenzie in particular effectively inhabited many different characters, but Caitlin Croucher and Andrew Nichols also deftly shifted styles.

As the last on a billet of sketch shows, Poppycock! took a more political approach having cracks at George Bush, aggressive atheism and “stupid people”. This directness means it doesn’t feel like a regular sketch show, because there is a central message and the sketches themselves also contain a whole lot of political opinion. This means that even when they weren’t getting many laughs everyone remained interested in seeing what they had to say on the topic.

It’s fantastic to see a young group ploughing into the cultural clashes which dominate the global Op-Ed pages. They’ve clearly gone to an effort to synthesise their material and give the audience a take-away message and the applause at the end showed it was appreciated. It was not a hit laughter-wise on this night but you can check their website (http://thesmallpoppies.com.au/video.html) to see if it’s your thing. Otherwise I’ll be interested in seeing how their ideas and perspectives develop and it would be good to have them back again next year.

“Do you want any choof?” asks a pale man in waterproof jacket and striped shirt as he walks down Swanston Street. A lot can amuse when walking Melbourne’s streets and keeping your eyes and ears open to what’s around you. Al Pitcher has taken this idea and run with it, camera in hand. His show is the self-confessed equivalent to your mate showing you holiday pics, except his holiday is in the streets of Melbourne and occurred on the day of the gig. It is the ‘mate’ aspect of this idea that should be emphasised most, because Al is at his best working the crowd and getting people to chime in with a little bit about their own lives. In the small, warm room in Roxanne Parlour he even handed out Icy Poles to the audience, and then had fun joking with the bloke who was unhappy he’d got the green one.

The limitations Al has put on the show are ambitious and he proudly points out this method means he can’t say ‘a funny thing happened on the way to the gig’ without having the evidence. However, they are limitations. Al had only been in Melbourne for four days when we saw him. His local knowledge was still building and errors like referring to Brunswick Street as ‘Brunswick’ or not knowing that almost every local paper is called The Leader weakened the potential comedy and banter. Some in the crowd were visitors, though, and perhaps if Al took a few touristy scene-setting photos he could create a fun travelogue of a section of town. This is not the focus, though, and it felt to me that the slideshow actually distracted Al from exploring funnier tangents even when he was getting strong laughs. But these are laughs which prove that on another photo-documented day, this show could be a hit.

Travers Purton wrote about the new Festival Club format last week and I had the happy role of seeing the second weekend‘s headline act, Al Madrigal. Al is from San Francisco and has featured on US late shows like Jimmy Kemmel Live. The Festival Club setting is perfect for him as he spoke about his young ‘interracial’ family in the familiar American sardonic style, touching on subjects ranging from The Wiggles to Mexican strippers. There was heart behind it too (as you’d hope when someone is talking family) and his bittersweet frustration at being the second favourite parent felt almost uncomfortably authentic. The International Date Line had tripped him up heavily and more than once he was left with a blank stare saying “Let’s see…” while he remembered his routine, but like the American food references that popped up throughout his jokes, it didn’t matter.

The MC was Sam Simmons and it was a night where people persistently spoke at the back of the Hi-Fi Bar. Why people go to a gig to not watch it will always be a puzzle, and it isn’t an annoyance exclusive to comedy. Nor is it uncommon to The Festival Club, but tonight it unfortunately got to the comics who all interrupted their patter to mention the ‘weird’ crowd. Jetlag was a factor for Al, but in the insecure business of stand-up we again wished comedians would concentrate on the many people laughing, rather than the few not. Al got plenty of laughs, proving his natural talent even when it was stop-start. With the combination of five other comics The Festival Club should have something for everyone, but if your ‘something’ is socialising loudly at the bar, it’d be better if you just went to the pub.

A bump n’ grind bassline signals the start of a Britney Spears medley and everyone is unsure whether to laugh. The inaugural Keep Your Skirt On is a comedy night, but most of the crowd secretly loves a bit of Britney and no amount of ironic smiling could hide it. The tribute trio Toxic was the first of fourteen acts on a successful night brought to us by the Skirt Network and hosted by the devilish and dashing Celia Pacquola and Oliver Clark.

Remember the Andrews Sisters? No? The Curly Wurly ad girls? Doesn’t matter – the World War Wonderful sisters’ songs stand alone. With snappy writing and crisp choreography, Karin Muiznieks has taken the confusing contradiction of being anti-war while still supporting our soldiers and sent it straight to the frontline with this twist on ‘entertainin’ the troops’.

It was a strong start and soon stand up acts Claire Hooper, Deborah Frances White and two local Jeez Louise graduates, Maz & Bonnie, had all the crowd laughing except for one fellow who – during White’s spruik for her show – couldn’t quite understand what the British woman wanted out of him – or any woman, from the gauge of the audience’s groans. The show did run a little flat with Wendy Little and Emily O’Loughlin, whose yelled material is aimed at more of a middle aged crowd, but they certainly proved they could dance. Lou Sanz used music as a bluesy background to her deft storytelling and her guitaist accompaniment added a fun dynamic as she talked about him like he was a handsome handbag as he remained blissfully unaware.

With everyone excited by the promised international special guest, Alison Bice put a stop to any impatience with a delightfully direct style that stood her out on this eclectic night. The night was perfectly concluded by the cheek and charm of Nina Conti, who provided the only male voice other than Oliver’s, and seemingly cannot put a hand wrong.

It cost $20. Bargain.

The crowd hugged the edges of the club, hesitant to sit in the light looking at the empty stage. Appropriately for a show titled Be My Friend, Mark Trenwith reacted, bringing the audience in one by one like a slow embrace of the bare seats up front. This is a friendly, inventive show which soon picked up the pace as Mark enthusiastically launched into his material, in between introducing filmed segments on the video screen.

On this media night there were technical difficulties, but true to form Mark introduced the audience to Keiran and Ishan working the mixing & lighting desk, and the crowd eagerly applauded the staff when they finally got the entertaining photos and filmed segments up and running.

The promotion for this show says Mark “wasn’t very nice so he attempted to become friendlier”. I hadn’t read this, and felt the story arc could’ve been emphasised more early in the show for lazy folk like me, but the strength of the pre-filmed pranks and social experiments meant I soon caught on. These public pranks are the sort of thing you may have wistfully thought of doing but never had the confidence – at least not sober or in sunlight as Mark does. It is interesting watching his developing comedy style and he has clearly taken influence from Jim Carrey. His physical comedy may be just an excuse to show us how well – and often – he can dance, but his wicked grin and rubbery face made the comparison to Carrey easy.

Without the technical limitations, the audience would have felt more alongside Mark in his journey, but the friendly humour came easily in this fifty minute show, and by the end when the crowd gave him far longer applause than the support staff earlier, he’d earnt it.

Jaymie Wilson opens the triple bill with stories of America and getting drunk young, giving the tales his own enthusiastic departures and observations. He works the crowd and his microphone technique well and is a boisterous warm-up for the crowd.

Wilson is followed by Magesh, who you might have seen on Channel 10’s love-match game show Taken Out – the show that got shifted from 7pm to past midnight, so now you have to sneak home early from the pub or just stay in impatiently flicking between movies waiting for it to start. Magesh was one of the thirty blokes trying to get a girl – just one of the colourful experiences he’s had in his life. Monkeys, cross-dressing, showbiz egos; they could all be stories flowing with jokes but unfortunately Magesh’s comedy suffered from following a repeated pattern of build up and twist. On his final joke someone even laughed halfway through the set-up, thinking they already knew where he was going. They didn’t, but the fact that person still found it funny showed how ripe with potential his material is.

This is a night of young comics, though, so you can’t expect the world, and so it was a joyous bonus to discover the off-kilter wit of Sydneysider Mikey Mileos. Mileos is in the Raw Comedy final and, even though I haven’t seen any of the other competitors, I’d still suggest he’s a good chance to take out the title. Mileos has developed a longer show where you get a good sense that he’s developing a unique style, despite a sore throat.

With development, and more interplay between the comics, this night cap could have some kick.

Raised in a Christian household and bored by Canberra’s national monuments, Bogdanovs delights in subverting and inverting the artforms around him – belittling the egos of those that purport to know the difference between ‘high culture’ and ‘low’. The only problem is that he cannot know how much his audience already knows. To set up the context for his jokes requires a lot of explaining. Bogdanovs seems to sense this and rushes through the set up, making it hard to keep up with all the knots and subtext of his explorations. The result for me felt like watching someone in the middle of maddened message-board posting.

The topics fascinated, but the material won’t reach a wide enough audience. Opening-night nerves were present, as was a persistent cough, and Bogdanovs’ awareness of the audience’s ignorance on most topics meant that he tried to compensate by upping the volume of his punchlines. But this all showed his professional commitment to his comedy, and he will no doubt improve in the coming years.

No, just kidding. Occupation: Ugly is the inaugural production of Comedicate, a young group with high hopes of making RMIT’s Kaleide Theatre a place-to-be during the Comedy Festival. This squadron of seven comics and a producer feature a strong sampling from the University of Melbourne Law Revue. By holding a hugely successful sketch comedy night they’ve stolen from critics the right to dismiss shows as being ‘university-revue humour’. In what way can we now demean accent-over-content mimicries of overseas sketch shows? What pithy phrase will describe repetitive, mirthless meanderings or over-long excursions into stereotypical ‘surrealness’? ‘A pale imitation of Monty Python’, you say? That only works if you accept Monty Python can be a pale imitation of itself. No, with this fast-paced, well-acted show we just have to accept that university revues have been unfairly tarnished and are officially, occasionally funny.

The theatre was packed full of college students bubbling with alcohol-free excitement (an achievement in its own right, if my experiences of college social life are a guide). With people sitting on the stairs, the show got underway with the actors using scant props and dressed in white T-shirts, jeans and sneakers. The show was frequently funny, and if a sketch was a weaker idea it was usually saved by a great performance or punchline. If a sketch was flat, you could still sense a strong idea behind it. Time wasn’t wasted during set changes either, as we listened to clever audio sketches.

With proceeds going to the Cancer Council, you’ve really got no excuse. Occupation: Ugly is the best live sketch show of the festival, and there is plenty of room for it to grow.

It can be hard to get your head around whether 125 is a lot or a few. At Christmas time you might bust open a cracker with a relative and find the corny lines inside seem short, but by the time a few people have read them aloud they just drag on forever. Luckily, this show has no such problem, and if his jokes were in Christmas crackers they’d be sharing space with brand name goodies rather than easy-to-choke-on plastic. (If this sentence sounds like hyperbole, it’s not.)

A lot of comics complain that when they have to submit their show names to the festival guide they do not know what their show will be about and so can’t be specific. Chandler’s show sounded like it might be one of these, but it’s definitely not. This show is all about the jokes, and every one of them is counted down by a cheerful screen at his side (cheerful in colour, I mean – it doesn’t chip in with one-liners like Melvin did on Now You See It). His quick-fire, funny observations soon get the crowd going and are presented with inventive tricks to make sure it isn’t monotonous. Some of these tricks could have been explored more, but they aren’t the focus and the jokes are strong enough for this not to be hindrance.

The show eschews autobiographical approaches and storytelling and Karl doesn’t even play an instrument to evoke whimsy like Demetri Martin might. It’s simple, highly enjoyable and for next year’s festival I’m sure Chandler will be upgraded to a larger room than the intimate upstairs of Three Degrees at QV.

First instincts are ‘Of course it does – infinitely’, but after detailed research I’ve worked out that this is a fallacy. Time Lord, Time Cop and, luckily for us, Time Ninja are really all there is (debate is welcome in the comments section). Either way, Time Ninjas is certainly awesome and means festival favourites and local lads Andrew McClelland and Lawrence Leung have cracked off another chunk of fun for audiences this festival.

Leung is now a ‘Name’, with an enviable slot in the ABC’s popular Wednesday night comedy line-up. McClelland, happily for us, is still the same charming, theatrical, sweaty-shirted self. The duo have known each other since Kindergarten, and have a crackling chemistry on stage that allows them to break out of character as they take pot-shots at each other and laugh along with the crowd. Their ‘characters’ aren’t a big step away from their regular comedy roles, which allows for ample improvisation and chaos. Leung described the first big crowd laugh as ‘a wave that rolled right over me’ and Friday night’s show would have suited surfers of all skill levels, with regular easy laughs rolling from left and right.

The show is co-written, but the historical theme and the fact Andrew crowbarred a Radiohead reference into the script suggests he may have gotten his way fairly often in the writing process. No doubt Leung’s commitments to his television show have meant a more hectic lead-up to the festival, but a double-act from these two means we aren’t deprived of him altogether. There aren’t vast wire-assisted fights between never-ending enemies like ninja shows really should have, but the paper cut-out effects make up for it and deftly match the 1990′s references.

You don’t sit in the dark with Brendon Burns. He wants to interact with you and on a night when media representatives made up the majority of the crowd, their dogged observation of non-interventionist journalistic standards left Burns “pushin’ shit up a hill” to try and get people to talk to him – despite the fact Brendon is Australia’s best-barely-known-comedian.

Perth-born, Burns built his reputation behind the barbs and banter of Britain’s stand up scene. If overseas validation is something Melbourne audiences look for – and Brendon might suggest they do – then you can’t get higher than Edinburgh’s if.comedy Award, which he won in 2007.

Never has crudity been expressed with such clarity. Every topic is loaded and the audience is kept on task by Brendon’s constant interaction. If someone laughs a little less he’ll talk about it, if someone laughs a little more he’ll keep on about it until that person has to shove their fist into their mouth to gag the laughter. This reviewer drew attention for writing too many notes (tips for beginners: pad and pen are hard to hide if you’re too close to stage) and the brazen back-and-forths illustrated Brendon’s bare-faced desire to be understood as well as piss-funny.

After so many years overseas, Brendon has returned to Aus direct, detailed almost to the point of disgusting, and determined to mug ocker Aussies and scenesters alike with his message made for Melbourne’s Festival. See him if you like it raucous, raw and racial, and see him even if you don’t.

Albert’s Party is not a birthday party. It’s a party for another reason, which could have been unveiled in a clearer, more revelatory way on this Saturday evening but for a spit of the tongue which booby-trapped the build up. Nonetheless, everyone had a good laugh and Luke & Wyatt kept the energy up at all times. Being a party, there was dancing, party poppers and conical hats in your favourite colour (how did they know?) but they don’t go too far with the party game potential so don’t worry if you prefer to just observe. Waiting for the arrival of Albert gives the show good direction and even when the chemistry doesn’t quite work or when a song falls flat, things move along quickly and colourfully.

There are enough puns and potential to mean this show’s fairy bread isn’t just butter, but if they worked the material a bit harder and emphasised the more unexpected images in their jokes the sugary high would help audiences spread the word.

To get to the show you enter the opulent, open surrounds of Rosati on Flinders Lane. Descending a set of stairs in the middle of the restaurant, it feels almost like a Michael Gondry film as you discover a mini-venue underneath, with red curtains and guitars symmetrically heralding the on-stage office where we will watch a day in the working life of Jase and Doody.

Musical comedy is currently in fashion so its good to see AFT’s songs are often clever and funny. Seemingly inspired by Flight of the Conchords, their songs include a catalogue of well-structured tunes on the similar theme of love. They don’t fall for the one-verse-too-many trap as often as most, which is why it’s so surprising the narrative material in between the songs is underdone. The 70 minute length was far too long for watching an office space on a Saturday night and the many characters, cues and scenes mean the boys have too much to remember and can be stiff on stage. Coming from advertising, they should know less is more and could speed things up (especially when waiting for audio cues). Greater exaggeration of the dramatic elements would also help, as the cut-throat threats in the story line end up appearing exceptionally tolerant of the boys.

There are new ideas here and they write catchy songs. With some cutting or a patient audience you’ll have a fun night.

This is 60 minutes of straight stand-up. A rather literal framing device is the only structural aid as Josh plays with share house etiquette, travelling, his chances with girls and an old workmate he really wants you to hate. His awkward approach and slender frame give Josh great licence to surprise with edgy punch lines, and his take on Belgian paedophiles is the funniest of my festival so far.

Josh’s confident performance has all the hallmarks of a seasoned internationally successful comedian, but he’s actually Brisbane born and only 21. The impression may be helped by his admittedly Irish-tinted international accent, but more so it’s because he’s been doing stand up since he was 17, when he won Raw Comedy 2005. Further official esteem was sent his way when he was a finalist in the Edinburgh Comedy Festival’s version of Raw Comedy, and when his first solo-show received MICF’s 2007 Newcomer award. Of course, all these were overshadowed when he scored a regular column in Girlfriend Magazine.

From here Josh could go anywhere, and when talent is rewarded this early that generally means in a few short years he’ll roll with Ben Cousins and drunkenly cheat on a Veronica with Tiger Lily Hutchence, so it’s probably best to see his polished potential now.