Four fledgling comics, two Kiwi, two British, share an hour in a random order as determined by the onstage spinning selector wheel. 

First up on Thursday night is Sanjay Patel, a local lad of “Indian human” descent.  His grimacing demeanour is at first jarringly stiff as he rambles about stereotypes he’s always confronting, like if he walked around a hospital’s corridors people would assume he’s a doctor.  Then he starts talking like one, spouting mathematics, biology and geometrical functions in the course of discussing topical issues ranging from cricket to swinger parties. 

Ultimately Patel’s relentless patter, bordering on monotone, has a curiously endearing quality that makes him (for me) the most unique and interesting character of the night.

Spin no. 2 lands on Ferg: long hair, beard and vintage duds create a look he calls ‘Jesus on Life on Mars’.  In his giveaway North-England accent, the kind tailor-made for standup, he identifies his home town as Carlisle, which makes me think of Robert Carlyle who played Begbie in Trainspotting, which seems appropriate given the way Ferg describes his allegedly wholly unpleasant hometown. 

He covers a lot of ground in his 15 minutes – Avatar, smoking, customs cavity searches, animal testing on racist sheep, and still finds the time to practice his Kiwi accent on us and list his favourite phobias.

3^rd up, 2^nd local Chris Cook.  With fudged-up hair and a wry grin borrowed from Paul Ego, he begins with the suggestion we don’t set our expectations too high.  He then sets out to prove the soundness of this advice by apologetically meandering through a selection of vaguely humorous gags the best of which involve fathering an infant and eavesdropping. 

Rounding off the night, Brit # 2 and sole female Stella Graham, a half Sri Lankan lass from Coventry, recently migrated. Like Ferg, something about her accent has us ready to laugh to laugh before she even cracks a joke but she still struggles as much as the others to generate any real rapport with the reticent crowd. 

She draws enough chuckles however, and her observations on texting emoticons and the pitfalls of Cockney rhyming slang are well pitched with requisite wit.

This is the only second-night performance I’ve reviewed this festival, and it certainly is a different beast particularly for a rookie ensemble – smaller crowd, fewer comps, altogether harder to please. 

The Four Heads manage to keep their chins up throughout as, with rather diverse personalities, they test out their developing material with hit-and-miss results. 
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