REGULARS at The Other Side comedy club know to arrive early to avoid having to sit in the front row.

Pity the poor audience member who makes the mistake of sitting right under the comedian's nose, especially if, like a hapless woman at yesterday's comedy night, she chooses to put her coat on the spare seat beside her.

Sounds innocent enough, but it was a gift to a brilliant stand-up like Andy Parsons, star of the BBC Radio 2 show Parsons And Naylor, who based much of his set on one woman and a coat.

He had the audience in uproar for 40 minutes as he poked merciless but good-humoured fun at other audience members, one of whom even bizarrely wandered out mid-set and bought him a drink.

The ideal comedy night is one which provides a trio of varied performers, and last night very nearly came up to the mark.

First up was London comic Geoff Norcott, who won the audience over with some well observed material about travelling up the A1 and never once seeing a sign for York.

A talented impressionist and rap satirist, his hip-hop and garage versions of old English lullabies were inspired.

Ross Wagman's brief appearance in the middle of the evening struck the only wrong note.

The Bolton comic seemed to come from a different generation of comedy as he fired off a series of jokes of the "a funny thing happened on the way here" variety.

But overall, it was a great night's comedy.

Updated: 10:37 Monday, February 23, 2004