Comedy blog

In fact I'd even go as far as to say that if I weren't such a red-blooded heterosexual sex-dynamo having to service countless young women on a nightly basis, Dara would be the man I'd most like to snuggle up to and share my cocoa with at night. He reminds me of a friend I once had at boarding school...

Unfortunately, last night Dara lost some of his sparkle in my eyes by joining the foolishly grinning Hound to take on the reds, and that really hurt. Nevertheless, I'm more than amply partnered by the wonderful Will Smith, a comedian I love not just simply because we share a dressing room, but as a fellow member of the gentry we also share much of the same DNA and one or two of our sisters.

Hound, as you know, likes to think of himself as a barometer of cool and thinks he understands what the cultured young people of this country enjoy. The reality is that he adopts these interests and jumps on the latest bandwagon to make himself look cool, but instead just comes across as the sort of weird, beardy, scoutmaster you'd think twice about before even leaving your cat with.

Sci-fi is one of these areas in which Hound professes to excel, but Will Smith is a man who's represented Earth at the inter-galactic nerdy sci-fi fact championships on the planet Yorg and won gold. So when Will steers the 'Supermarkets are ruining Britain' argument down the aisle marked 'Terminator movies' I know that no matter how good a debates-man Dara is, or how many vaguely interesting anagrams of supermarket slogans Hound manages to come up with, this one is firmly in the bag for the Reds.

Following the now weekly accusation of vote-rigging from the blue corner, I'm up against Dara for head to head, and it's his job to argue that the theory of evolution is nonsense. Coming from a country which produced the fantastic U2 thirty years ago (but have subsequently only managed to stump up a bunch of dancing chimps called Boyzone) he really should walk this.

I'm incredibly passionate about Darwin and I'm convinced it's going in my favour until Dara introduces his own brand new and very vague 'third-way' of creation which promises more sex for every member of the audience. He doesn't say how, but tonight's audience look like they don't mate easily or often, and Dara takes it.
Rufus wins the slide-show against Will, which I think must have been a sympathy vote following his drubbing in the first round, although he does know a lot about duvets as he sleeps under a Doctor Who and the Daleks cover (single-bed) which he asked for as his prize for winning the first series of Argumental.

'Tom Cruise is the greatest actor of all time' is probably the most ridiculous statement of this series. Even Tom himself would think that's a bit far-fetched and he's someone who believes that the first humans arrived on earth in a spaceship made entirely from bananas and old lottery tickets. (OK, I haven't studied Scientology that closely).

Even against Dara I reckon I can take this and, sure enough, the talented comedian is struggling to find anything with which to champion the little-talented actor and instead ridicules him instead. It just remains for me to throw in a few choice observations and sharp one-liners and I can sense that the audience know this is a one-sided argument. Come to daddy, my little lovelies, come to daddy.

Instead though, they go to Dara and vote Blue. It's like they're not listening to the argument or the hilarious banter coming from Will and myself but are instead transfixed by Dara's charm, his physical presence and his warmth. It's disappointing. It's upsetting. It's just like boarding school all over again.

SERIES RESULTS (after 9 shows)
MARCUS' RED TEAM: 4
RUFUS' BLUE TEAM: 5