After a short break Edd Hedges bounced on. Hedges is only 19 and has already won So You Think You’re Funny? in Edinburgh and grown a better beard than me, so he is well on the way to comedy success. His set packed a lot in, from discussing his facial hair to living in Saffron Walden. There was plenty of confidence and every line counted - it either got a laugh or was leading to a laugh. He just seemed slightly less striking then when I first saw him. Maybe because some of the gags were similar, maybe because he had an air of a young Josh Widdicombe about him. He was certainly an audience favourite but did not make the judges’ top three. 

Archie Maddocks is another comedy competition regular and is surely destined to rise through the ranks in the next few years. Much of his fast-paced set was about how Trinidadians are super-confident. Maddocks is half-Trinidadian but totally confident, firing out stories at a furious pace. His air travel routine was a million miles from the usual security check-in material heard a thousand times. If he can keep coming up with gems like that the sky is the limit.

I was particularly keen to see Tom Ward as I’d only heard him last time round, when I listened to the BBC Radio New Comedy Award final on the radio. Some of Ward’s spontaneous banter was the same this time, which slightly took the shine off his set, but I still think he’s one of the most impressive, distinctive newish acts around. His jokes go off at unexpected tangents and he has a really good voice. I don’t know if it is partly because I last encountered him without visuals, but I think he’d work particularly well on the radio or podcasts. Imagine early Chris Morris without the subversive, political streak. 

After another break the seventh act was Amir Khoshsokhan, who was also in the recent BBC Radio final with Ward. Khoshsokhan had not fared so well there, but here he seemed to go down a lot better. Like Laura McClenaghan he was another performer whose initial awkwardness concealed a confident persona and was not afraid to take it slow. As he told his shaggy dog story about asking his girlfriend permission to go out he got funnier and funnier as  the detail became increasingly banal. It was an act that mixed the clever with the accessible – another line that worked well was about trying out role play with unexpected consequences, while his references to Tupac took the humour off in another enjoyable direction. Khoshsokhan duly won, although I gather that the decision was close.

Last spot went to Ben Clover, who managed to energise the audience with a lively start. He got them more involved than most of the acts did and managed to unearth a nugget of comedy gold when he found an American tourist in the crowd. Too much of his material lacked an X factor, but that’s me speaking as a critic not a punter. His routine about the difference between cats and dogs went down really well, but a law was passed in 1998 banning critics from enjoying routines about the difference between cats and dogs. He did have a bold ending to his set, playfully toying with the audience’s patience, but it was not enough to earn him a place in a night that suggested that, contrary to what was recently said by Roland Muldoon who runs the NATYS, grass roots live comedy is pretty healthy.