Anthony Jeselnik, Karl Chandler, Tien Tran

Rape jokes. They're quite often hit or miss. More often than not, as well, they're pretty capably used as nothing more than an excuse to offend people for a cheap laugh. So, in order to become known as the “satanic prince of stand-up”, it serves to reason that you would have to be pretty well-practiced to pull of rape jokes effectively. Luckily, this night's sets proved that there's no boundaries to good comedy.

Nick Cody MC'd the night, and struggled a bit at first. To be fair, trying to get connected to a few hundred people (most of which were well into the revelling enjoyment of Rottofest), but he ended up getting all on-side and warmed up. Tien Tran was first up, and totally repped the local side of comedy. A lot of his jokes centered around his heritage and cultural and racial divides, but he handled it in good humour (pardon the pun) that had the crowd all chuckling along. He was self-deprecating just enough that he formed an instantaneous relationship with everyone. Melbournian Karl Chandler was an ample taster for the headliner, in that his jokes were crass enough to generate laughs and groans at the same time. Having a good idea of your crowd helps, too – he often targeted certain punters and was happy enough to admit when he would drop a shit joke.

Anthony Jeselnik had a lot of hype behind him, most of it revolving around just how far you can take humour. Known internationally as one of the dirtiest comics performing at the moment, he managed to deliver a very unique performance, one that had people in fits of laughter and questioning moral ethics at various stages. This reviewer was pretty questionable of how funny he would actually be, but he managed to be ridiculously offensive not at the cost of being ridiculously funny as well. The whole night was more or less hectic, with the crowd reeling from what had already been a long day of, er, “enjoyment”, but Jeselnik and co provided a great, if morally questionable, cap to the night.