Over the last six weeks The Edinburgh Comedy Collective has been entertaining theEdinburghpublic live, and the world in general via their podcast on itunes, with a ‘different’ comedy evening.

Comedy Collective mainstay Jo Caufield was as always in command of the night and as usual warms up the enthusiastic audience, limbers up the chuckle muscles and sets the scene for the entertainment on offer for the evening, majoring on the live recording.

The host of the game show was as always Richard Melvin and the two teams on the night were Jo Caulfield herself, ably supported by Glaswegian funny lady Janey Godley versus Joe Heenan and his colleague author Professor Richard Wiseman. Hmmmm, two Richards, two Jo(e)s could lead to complications me thinks.

But no, as all accomplished pros, nothing fazed these guys, head to head games, unusual topics to expound, as three basic rounds, the eponymous The Good, The Bad and then The Ugly, questions from various listener suggestions garnered from all the media sources.

Over the weeks there has been a variety of guests, each adding to the experience and the evening had gathered a regular hard core of followers, I have seen three of the recordings myself, such is the appeal, but unfortunately this was the last of the scheduled recordings. Hopefully they will return in the not too distant future.

The recording took place live, and in two parts, each around half an hour in duration, but once this was completed, it didn’t mean the evening was finished. No way.

The ‘normal’ Comedy Collective style was the mainstay of part three, established stand-ups doing either new experimental material or doing other styles of performance such as sketch or character comedy.

Part three started with a little preamble by Ms Caulfield explaining to those unaware of the situation the format, prior to Gus Lymburn introducing us to his comedy creation Eric Hammond. Now I know this was new stuff, but I felt the material on offer was not quite up to his normal standard, but it did register quite a fulsome amount of laughter at times. I’m sure with some fine tuning this character has a lot of mileage in it.

Swiftly following on where two for the price of one which Jojo Sutherland and Keara Murphy taking centre stage and delivering a couple of sketches, The first entitled ‘Women in Comedy’ as two stand-ups meeting backstage. I’m sure there is not the bitchiness in reality that they exhibited, but it sure was entertaining, and sketch two, ‘LK Today’ giving Ms Murphy a medium for her to showcase her talents as a mimic. Close your eyes and Lorraine Kelly was in the room with us.

And still more value for money entertainment followed, with a lecture by the babe magnet that is Gareth Waugh giving the benefits of his experience in picking up women at the zoo.!!  His set was well thought out and delivered as always. I am more impressed with this young performer each time I see him and look forward to seeing him maintain this undoubted development.

Closing out the night was the legendry Jim Park, who for me is a Marmite comedian in that you either love him or loath him. It was in partnership with the Impro master Garry Dobson, for once working with out his normal sparring partner Stu Murphy.

Jim told a series of new jokes, while Garry ‘interpreted’ them for the deaf. The material, much of which was funny on it’s own, was greatly enhanced with the addition of Mr Dobson.

Like all things it finally had to come. It was the end of proceedings for another evening…. unfortunately.

To see what the future holds for this and other comedy nights check out the websites www.thestand.co.uk or www.edinburghcomedycollective.com

Reviewed by Geoff