It is easy to talk about all the acts who won awards at the Edinburgh Festival and went on to great things, but there are also the acts that got away. Acts that the Comedy Awards judges inexplicably overlooked. Most famously there was Michael McIntyre, who only scraped a Best Newcomer nomination.

This year there were two acts that should have featured prominently in the Foster's prize-givings and got nowt. Both were women. Luisa Omielan, who deserved to be on the main list and Angela Barnes, who deserved a Best Newcomer nod for her full length debut, You Can’t Take It With You. 

Having been on the Awards Panel a few times I can hazard a guess why the Maidstone-born 37-year-old missed out. Barnes' show feels like a mix of mainstream gags and club routines bolted together and occasionally the joins show. But what the panel seemed to have overlooked in their search for deeper truths is that it is an extremely funny hour, full to the brim with laughs and that has got to count for something surely?

I was going to repeat some of the eminently quotable quips here but that would spoil the fun of hearing them for the first time. There are plenty of smutty Sarah Millicanesque gags, for instance. Barnes’ late father ran a sex shop in Great Yarmouth and she shows us the pictures to prove it. Then again, the picture of him doing the Telegraph crossword while hardcore porn plays on a loop in the background is hardly necessary. As she points out, why would a comedian make up something like that. 

Dad was also a swinger and a fan of caravans and Status Quo and Barnes could have easily built the whole show around him. Instead she uses his funeral as a jumping off point to discuss what she would like to have buried in her coffin when the time comes. Despite the show’s title Barnes sets out to prove that you can take it with you. rummaging in a suitcase and pulling out her own items that she might like in her coffin. Rest assured that this is no gloomfest. Each item has a colourful comic story to go with it. 

It is the well-honed routines that have a club set feel that prompt the biggest laughs. Yes, there are gags on familiar subjects such as how we might have done sexting in the pre-mobile age and internet dating travails (go for geeks girls, she suggests, they are less demanding), but Barnes has the confidence and skill-set to sell the less original material.

Elsewhere she paints a beautifully evocative picture of Sunday afternoons in the 1980s when  everything was closed and there was absolutely nothing to do. Well, almost nothing. Barnes has one hobby that she can always turn to but you’ll have to buy a ticket to find out what that is. She also has some great lines about family holidays - why would one go camping in the same county she asks – “it’s not a holiday if they’ve got the same accents”. 

For judges that like a narrative arc Barnes provides that with an anecdote towards the end about her biggest gig to date – sandwiched between Jessie J and Tom Jones in Hyde Park in front of 35,000 fans. The gig did not go well, but it was worth doing for another reason apart from playing to such a big crowd and her explanation neatly brings things full circle. I’d enjoyed the show up to the end but the finale, which involved a lot of preparation, really made it feel special.

I know awards aren’t everything and Barnes is obviously going to be a TV regular anyway, but I really can’t see how this missed out. If you like a flutter place your bets now on the panel making amends in 2015.

Angela Barnes is at Soho Theatre until Oct 11. Details here.

Read an interview with Angela Barnes here.