Addy Borgh has them rolling in the aisles before he's even said a word. It's not just his moustache, which appears to have been dug up from Groucho Marx's final resting place. It's also his intriguing facial expressions and brilliant use of mime. For the opening minutes, Borgh does nothing more than "conduct" the audience applause, which swoops and fades like a classical orchestra with every twitch of his moustache or raising of his eyebrow.
Borgh has developed since his Edinburgh debut last year. His hangdog, Walter Matthau humour repeatedly hits the funny button during acutely observed sketches about stoned interviewees and hangovers. Some jokes fall flat, but those facial expressions are priceless during his spoofs of oral sex and camp horror.
Irish comedian Andrew Maxwell's intimate, conversational style is perfect for the small screen but he is also a natural live, thinking on his feet and easing into his surroundings with withering pastiches of Leeds males. Unlike some comics, Maxwell doesn't demand heckling to sustain a performance, so he appears genuinely bewildered when confronted by two particularly weird hecklers. One is a Brummie "necrophiliac", the other an Irishman who claims to represent a terrorist organisation. Both are roaring drunk.
But Maxwell turns what could have been an awkward situation into a triumph. As the hecklers get more surreal and unpredictable with ever pint, Maxwell nips from supermodels to Tricky to a genuinely impassioned attack on foxhunting, and never once loses his composure.
Andrew Maxwell plays the Manchester Comedy Store (0870 5932932) March 16 and 17.
Addy Borgh plays both Comedy at Sohoho, London WC1 (07956 273771), and the Meccano Club, London N1 (020-7813 4478) on Saturday.
