I’m currently reading Doppelgänger by Naomi Klein, a very interesting deep dive into paranoia, conspiracy, and the sinister nature of modern online existence, sparked by her being continually mistaken for Naomi Woolf during the pandemic.

I knew exactly how she felt when walking into Presuming Ed’s on Friday night and finding Brighton comic Simon Harriyot dressed as fellow Brighton comic Martha Casey.

This, then, was Martha Casey Day (Eve), or Boast In Show #6 to give it its official title. This is a reverse roast battle [1], where comedians go head to head to be as nice about each other as possible… while also being funny.

Marth won the last BiS, hence this night being held in her honour. The important thing about ludicrous conceits is to take them seriously, and here they went the whole hog: a video explaining Martha’s importance, with her sat in robes and horns and making honking noises; an MC dressed as her favourite musician, Mark Knopfler out of Dire Straits [2]; and assorted skits and bits throughout the show filling in further lore of the MCDE universe.

Though this meant the event went on for far too long, like ACMS, it did give proceedings a nicely anarchic edge – again, like ACMS. And in a town with far, far too many interchangeable stand-up nights, this in itself was something of a blessed relief.

Our panel of judges sat at the back of the stage, observing all, with Martha in the middle, occasionally deigning to reward her audience with pliant mini-babybels fresh from her brassiere.

First up battling were Aiden Lonergan and Andy Fox, two stand-ups of slightly differing stature and comportment – they would make a good 1980s double act, performing sketches to tens of millions of people on ITV, on the basis of their mildly distinct physical differences.

Both had well written jokes about how great each other were. But Aiden’s on-stage character doesn’t really fit with the being-nice format, and he was docked points by the Martha-doppelgänger adjudicator for making snarky comments about Andy’s home town. And so we had our first controversy of the night.

Up next were two character comedians in Nerine Skinner and Brad John Kane. This added an extra weirdness to proceedings: with a circuit as small as Brighton, all the stand-ups know each other fairly well, and so tho each act is clearly given a bunch of info about their rival to play with, there is a naturalness to the reverse-boast comments.

Here you have an unhinged Australian fitness expert up against a stoic cowboy, which meant the jokes were never going to be as personal. To me, though, this didn’t matter, as the preposterousness of the match-up and the very different styles of the characters on display were funny in themselves before we even got to comments about beans and other cowboy staples.

Last up were two people I know pretty well, Annabel Edmonds and Paggy, having put both on at my own shows and also interviewed them for my newsletter. This was probably my favourite battle of the night, with Paggy’s chaotic energy and earnest enthusiasm went up against Annabel’s improv-lawyer, armed with little more than a pompous voice, a wig, and a series of ludicrous limericks.

Somehow we still had to get through two semi finals and a final before our winner was announced, with the energy in the sweltering room understandably dipping towards the end. But overall this was an excellent night out.

You could really see the effort put in to do something a bit different, and in terms of matching suitable comedians, and also ensuring it wasn’t just another lineup of stand-ups. The organisers were rightly proud of their plan to try out the night in a bigger venue later on in the year (The Komedia). They also mentioned winning some award or other once or twice, but I didn’t quite catch that.

Earlier in the evening I’d headed to The Yellow Book for the launch party of Once&Future festival, at which I’m doing a show next Sunday.

It was really lovely to meet some of my fellow performers, and I headed upstairs for the opening show. And I’m super glad I did: Claire Vine was an excellent singer, who wrote lots of lovely (and very lefty) loopy folk tunes, alongside well chosen covers by artists like Peggy Seeger. She should deffo follow her friends’ advice and get “Everything’s Vine” T-shirts made, as merch, and I bought her CD and am excited to listen to it, as soon as I buy a second hand CD player.

[1] Roast Battles are the worst standup format, shortly beating gong show. Meanness isn’t it.

[2] Or Bruce Springsteen, one of the two.