It was a visceral test for performer and audience alike.

Twenty comedians who covet the title of “Funniest Person in the Valley,” and the $500 prize that goes with it, took a shot at it Sunday at the L.A. Cabaret, a comedy house tucked away in a shopping center in Encino.

It was the second of five Sunday night contests sponsored by Valley Magazine that will lead to the selection of the winner on Sept. 1.

And it was a visceral test for performer and audience alike.

The L.A. Cabaret is a black-walled place with a dozen square tables under red tablecloths beside a bar. In the back it has a large Las Vegas-style lounge with a stage and seating for a couple hundred.

By starting time, 9 p.m., about 10 people sat in the the dull light cast by candles in red jars. Pencils and ballots were at their elbows.

Jeff Wayne, the master of ceremonies, stepped up to the stage wearing a bowling shirt with vertical stripes of green, orange and white.

“You find out that people come in slowly on a Sunday because they’re just getting out of evening church,” he said. “There’s some real fine talent here tonight. Don’t get me wrong. There’s also some . . . “

To say something derogatory, Wayne usually used a scatological term. He used it a few times to describe the acts. He was usually right on.

First up was Stan Spacher.

His best jokes were on himself:

“I got an agent and came down and submitted an episode of Divorce Court,” Spacher said. “My agent told me the script was so bad they decided to settle out of court.” No one laughed.

In Pic ‘N’ Save, Spacher said, he found “a doll house with a second mortgage. And the GI Joe figure? He was a draft dodger. A smoking jacket had a nagging cough.

“If you like any of these, just breathe,” he pleaded.

T. K. from Philadelphia wasn’t so genteel. He told a long story about diarrhea. It didn’t even produce a laugh of embarrassment.

“Boy, this place is crackling tonight, isn’t it, ladies and gentlemen,” Wayne said as T. K. walked away. Wayne tried a joke of his own.

“I just want to take a little poll to find out how many people are alcoholics in this room?” he asked.

No one spoke up.

“That’s a shame. Because I am an alcoholic and I’m proud of it, ladies and gentlemen,” Wayne said. “They say that 40% of all automobile accidents are caused by alcoholics. But what does that mean? Sixty percent are caused by sober people. If I have a wreck, at least I have a reason.”

That sent a ripple of laughs across the room. By then a couple dozen tables were filled.

Next up, Jett Rink, also from Philadelphia, introduced race and sex.

Rink said he lived downtown.

“It’s weird downtown ‘cause, you know, when I get ready to leave the place, I have to listen to the racial forecast,” he said. “You don’t want to get caught in a downpour of Vietnamese without that machete. It can be an ugly sight.” Whatever that meant, it didn’t strike the audience as very funny.

Rink had a deep, powerful voice. But he seemed to let his punch lines slip away too easily. Perhaps that’s why only a few people tittered when he said:

“Kentucky Fried Chicken has got this new thing out now called the Scientology Bucket. Fifty-four pieces of chicken wearing ill-fitting clothes with no personalities.”

Half a dozen more comics came and went, leaving behind only an echo of a laugh.

“There were so many white people out there I couldn’t tell if it was a Klan rally or a hockey game,” Manny Mann, who is black, said of a gig in Selma. “They introduced me as Boy Boy.”

The first female comic was Denise Monroe.

“We haven’t seen her for quite a while,” Wayne said. “I want you to know it’s been quite a relief for me.”

Monroe said her parents used to pressure her at the dinner table by saying: “Hundreds of thousands of people have been destroyed for your benefit. Now eat up.”

Silence.

“That was a new joke.” she said. “I won’t do that any more. Sorry.”

The hour was pressing 11 p.m. when Jerry Bednow found the winning touch.

He wore a turban and clipped his words like a man from New Delhi. He joked about the starving people of Bangladesh and the discomfort of immigrants in America.

“They finally opened a McDonald’s in Bangladesh,” he said. “The specialty was the Egg McNothing.”

They laughed.

He said he once had chest pains:

“Uh, oh,” he said. “You know the first thing you think of when you get chest pains. Leprosy.”

They laughed louder.

“I live in L.A. now,” he said. “I thought I should learn the language. I enrolled in Spanish class. . . . I bought a bumper sticker. I was very proud. I installed it myself and everything. Well, some friends helped me . . . but I did most of it. But nobody is honking. My friends told me maybe I should stick it on the back bumper instead.

“I got caught driving the wrong way on a one-way street. I like doing that. So much less traffic. But I’ll tell you something. The other drivers on that street, they really love Jesus. They really love me, too. They kept telling me I was No. 1. And they all knew my mother.”

The audience was really laughing then.

So the funniest person in the Valley on Sunday, ladies and gentlemen, was from Bangladesh. Or so he said.