Credit: Found On Internet

"You should get your heads kicked in, you fucking c*nts!" It’s not gone very well for Tony Long. The Canadian comic shouts that final insult at the booing crowd as he walks offstage at the Hackney Empire. Earlier in the evening, fellow Canadian comedian Jason Rouse suffered a similar fate.

Tonight’s Up The Empire variety night hasn’t been as smooth as the promoters would’ve liked. The Hackney Empire must’ve seemed like a great idea on paper – London indie faces, Dirty Pretty Things, heading a bill that mixes stand-up, caberet, and a variety of musical performances - but it has, quite frankly, gone to shit.

Indeed, earlier that night it had taken a set from Libetines-lite, The Paddingtons, to calm the tide of hecklers down. While they will never totally escape the spectre of a career built from clutching coat-tails of the main attraction’s former band, the put on a credible job in bringing the crowd back around. The kids are climbing over seats, falling over each other and cramming the front of the stage.

After so-so performances from both Glasvegas and Lisa Moorish, who for reasons unknown are performing in a box up on the balcony level (forcing everyone in the stalls to crink their neck to get a view), an increasingly aggro crowd just wasn’t up for some sub-par stand-up. The earnestly-enough singer-songwriter acoustic set that Matt Saunders calms things down, but the musician is clearly on edge up there on stage.

Stephen Merchant rolls out to introduce Carl Barat’s gang of four, and unlike his comedic Canadian counterparts, within seconds he disarms the crowd, pulling his BAFTA out with a grin so bright it dwarves the gleam coming from the gilted award. His mix of self-deprecation and (to be fair, backed-by-talent) smugness proves a winning combination. Despite the efforts of Long and Rouse earlier in the night, it seems mixing music and comedy on the same bill isn’t impossible.

Looked waxy and war-torn, Barat’s army surplus jacket carries a double-meaning tonight. With his head brutally shaven (at least compared to the indie poster-boy locks we’re used to), he seems like a skinny stick-legged war veteran tonight. There’s a new album on the way, and without the waves of hype and reputation this time round, in a sense, for the first time the DPT are facing challenges they can’t win simply by turning up. As they rattle through ‘The Gentry Cove’, they sound loose, and bassist Didz Hammond’s turn on lead vocals for ‘You Fucking Love It’ it feels scrappy.