Liverpool Comedy Festival - an apology...

I love the Liverpool Comedy Festival. Yeah, so it's not as big as Edinburgh but who cares? It's on my doorstep which means I can walk to most of the shows, and I'll take convenience over size any day. Just ask the overflowing bin in my living room. (It won't answer back because it's a bin.)

This year was another success as star names mixed with up and coming talent and brand new local acts just starting on the comedy ladder.

The Best of Liverpool show is always a great send-off for the festival on the final night. Mickey Finn (pictured) seems to steal the show every year and it never ceases to amaze me what a great performer he is.

It was an honour to be sharing the same bill as the likes of Mickey, Sean Styles and Willie Miller, and some of the guys that were heroes to me when I started off in comedy like Brendan Riley, Simon Bligh and Steve Gribbin.

Some alternative comics I've met in the past tend to look down their noses at the more traditional guys, believing them to be a level below on the comedian's caste system. This opinion tends to come from shortsighted acts who don't know their La's from their Lloyds Bars. For me, the Best of Liverpool is a great snapshot of the different styles of humour and comedy that buzz around this city, and the crowd lapped up every minute of it.

My favourite part of the fezzy has always been the legendary comedy pub crawl Drink Up Stand Up. Four pubs, with a different comic in each. Not only was this my first 'proper' paid gig a few years back but the catalogue of incidents during these shows have become the stuff of legend.

Audience members getting arrested down Lark Lane during the show, acts falling off tables posing as makeshift stages, scally girls punching the compere, venues flooding hours before the hordes of punters arrive, the list goes on.

But these incidents don't detract from the experience, they only enhance it. As a comic, I always like a challenge. (N.B. read 'always' as 'once a year'.) It's an easy trap to fall into of phoning your set in every night, telling it rather than selling it. You'd better not do that on a Drink Up Stand Up gig or you'll get eaten alive (and possibly bottled).

With the compere leading the drunken army of comedy fans between each venue with a megaphone, the next venue is always a secret to the punters, and sometimes to even some of the staff in the venue itself!

Head of PR for the festival Iain Christie once coined the term, 'guerilla comedy' which comes pretty close to describing the whole affair. It's a truly unique night out and I always think it's a shame that it doesn't run all summer long as the demand certainly seems to be there.

Although I'm not sure whether I'd ever want to get too used to doing stand up perched on the end of a bar...

* Read more from Sam on Channel 4's food site at http://blogs.channel4.com/food/author/sam-avery/. Completely coincidentally, he's also on the bill of Rawhide this weekend (June 12 and 13) at the Royal Court, with Richard Morton, Stan Stanley and Justin Moorhouse.