What the hell is going on at...Michael Redmond's Sunday Service?

Valliant. Dedicated. Related to the act. There must be a good reason for people to divest their CSI/slanket combo and trudge to Michael Redmond's Sunday Service, on the grimmest Sabbath on God's earth. Tonight, the main motive seems to be 'date night.' Never have I seen so many starry eyed couples at a comedy gig, patently still at the stage where a beery basement and howling gale is more appealing than Grissom tweezing larvae out corpses.

Compere Redmond - Father Ted's glum houseguest, Father Stone - looks like Yosemite Sam's tall Irish Grandpa. As a comedian, he is soul suckingly deadpan, drier than a job lot of silica gel. However, as a compere, he's really rather charming, energetic and smiley, with the occasional startling laugh. That's not to say he doesn't pick on the audience – you're not safe in the third, fourth or even fifth row. However, it's done in good grace, amiable joshing, even when confronted with a particularly irritating heckler (hello, bell-end from Ayr).

Over the course of the evening there are four acts, all of which fall into the vibe that Redmond sets – enthusiastic and likeable, rather than jaded and snipey.

Mikey Adams is a young man who looks like an old guy. He delivers confident stories about protesting and nights out, but some of his humour leaves you open jawed, less in a 'Oh my, how outré' way than 'Oh my God, you need to grow up a bit.'

In his cap, beard, and dungarees, Dogshit Johnson could pass as Tina C's backwater bruncle. His slot seems sadly short, with time for two geetar blues songs, one about his hometown, and another about wishing you'd never had children, both of which have the audience snorting with laughter.

Ray Bradshaw is great – totally at ease, a brilliant, grinning storyteller with a stream of anecdotes about unlikely ginger lookalikes, family pisstakes, and Grade A overheard train conversations.

Then, when Simon Donald shuffles onto the stage, clad in a hi-vis vest and clutching a clipboard, the audience mentally prepare for an anticlimax. But no. Co-founder of Viz, creator of Sid the Sexist, Donald has invented a cracking character; the wet, pathetic market researcher Barry Twyford, who cracks out a series of breathtakingly foul-mouthed questions (apparently made up by Geordie neds) on matters from appearance to sexual health.

For a bona fide belly laughs, the Sunday Service had one of the best hit-rates I've enjoyed for a while. Well worth braving the weather for - with or without a date.