Heavyweight Northern comic Johnny Vegas sufferred a disasterous show at the Brighton Comedy Festival on Thursday.  At the first of his two scheduled shows at Brighton's Dome Theatre, the standup's show descended into chaos causing dozens of confused members of the audience to walk-out of the performance.

One of the 50-or-so people who left the 1,400-strong audience early recounted: "It was really bizarre.  The first half-hour of the show was really funny.  But then about 40 minutes into the show Vegas got off the stage, and got a random woman from the audience to start licking his nipple. 

"He then lit up a cigarette, causing someone to shout 'You can't smoke in here'.  Vegas replied 'I'm on stage, so I can do what I want'.  He then invited the audience to join him.  The lights went up and about 20 poeple we walking around with lit cigarettes.

"Then he sat down amoungst the audience in the front row and said to the people 'you get on stage and entertain us'.  Some guy from the audience got up and started singing into the microphone.  People were just milling about at this point.  Vegas was sitting in the front row chatting to people in the audience, no-one else could hear what was going on.

"This dragged on and on and he started to lose the audience.  People were shouting at him and some guy said he was going to punch him.  It wasn't funny, it was just chaos."

Festival bosses have said that although many people walked out, they have received no formal complaints about last Thursdays show, and no-one from the audience (who had paid £17 for their tickets) had asked for their money back.