text: If paying ua to be patronised and insulted is your cup of tea head on down to Mondays standup comedy night at Footlights I have been to a fair few amateur gigs but rarely one with such antagonism between the acts and the audiencennThe tone is set by the compere and I think organiser Davey whose warmup consists of pointlessly quizzing each audience member in turn about their background and reason for being there He did not manage to generate much in the way of comedy from the answers but at least we all knew each other a little better by the end of it Oh and he also referred to one of he female acts as a prostitute within the first five minutes for no readily apparent reason He had himself doubled up with laughter quite a few times though so at least someone was enjoying themselvesnnThe unpleasantness continued to varying degrees for the next hour Some of the acts were just nervous and new which is fine while others went out of their way to be as obnoxious as possible One young guy asked if my girlfriend was a prostitute poked me repeatedly in the face with his microphone when I refused to play along and then apologised to the stoney silent audience for not giving us the Peter Kay observational shte we were obviously looking fornnThe second half picked up a lot with two out of nine genuinely funny acts The headliner in particular had some great material and a really good way with the audience It is just a shame she was immediately followed by five more minutes of Davey leering after the four women in the crowd complaining about his divorce and predicting that those London cnts would soon be begging for a slot at his nasty little clubnnBottom line One of the most awkward meanspirited nights of comedy I have ever experienced It was misogynistic aggressive and bitter none of which are insurmountable problems except that it was also desperately painfully unfunny