Just For Laughs All Star Gala

The best thing about comedy festivals is the embarrassment of riches served up when organisers turn up the star wattage. From host Judith Lucy, who pondered why men like to send dick pics and shared a glimpse of what it's like to date a younger man, to the top-flight international and local talent on the Just For Laughs All-Star Gala roster, the packed house had much to enjoy.

According to Peter Helliar, he's been featured in two dick pics thus far: in the first, he was an unwilling participant, snapped at the urinal at the MCG; the second he sent to his wife. She laughed, he laughed, they stopped laughing when the children saw it in iCloud.

Margaret Cho spoke of reclaiming the word 'chinky' and the ire she roused in the Asian media action group when she used it on a US TV talk show. "Do you know how many people heard you say that? Um, no, because I was on television".

In his anecdote about saving Joan Collins' life, camp comedian and renowned homosexual Julian Clary highlighted the importance of keeping one's Wikipedia page nice.

"Just standing around watching the poor woman expire would not look good," he says, before observing that the Dame's line of Eternal Beauty products is not waterproof - even when liberally applied.

Beardyman, the human beatbox and sound effects man from the UK - eerily reminiscent of Police Academy's Michael Winslow - definitely has the drum'n'bass crowd sorted, but one of the highlights of his take on musical performance comedy was the baby in a blender joke.

Jim Norton says comedians are not always the happy-go-lucky people we see on stage. Which goes a long way to explaining why his dating life is not the success others seem to enjoy. And also why at the age of 46, his essential dating profile parameters have boiled down to candidates with a vagina anywhere within the continental United States.

Charlie Pickering's set ranged widely, discussing his love of hip hop, God, and space and ultimately why horoscopes are "a lie, bullshit and genuinely holding us back as a species".

Which leaves us the audience counting down the days to next year's line-up.