Final act of the first half was Joe Hobbs, who astonishingly, was even taller than Maisie Adam and Jack Harris. At six foot nine inches Hobbs is even taller than Greg Davies. He had a natural, easy conversational manner onstage and in fact his best story was probably a true one told as it happened. Hobbs speaks Korean and overheard a Korean couple talking about him on the London Underground. When he answered back with a witty reply (which I assume he thought of at the time and not later) they were lost for words. It helped him to win the Breakthrough Comedy Award.

After the interval Stephen Trumble was another comic who slotted into the "I'm mad me" category, but this time it felt right. There was a hint of Robin Williams' uncaged lunacy along with Sam Kinison's screaming as Trumble ran around the stage and up and down the aisles. It helped too that he had genuine jokes and stories, alongside gags about sex and looking like a hobbit. His frank routine about coming off anti-depressants was an honest insight into modern medical treatments for mental illness. It was probably his energy as much as his wit that wowed the crowd but it won him the People's Champion Award.

It's never easy following a high energy act but Louise Atkinson did her best with chatty, gossipy stories about her life which had a strong flavour of Victoria Wood about them. She had a nice eye for detail in her riff about how she tried to look sexy and ended up with make-up that looked like it had been put on by a pissed Picasso, but needed a few more laughs to keep her momentum up.

Finally Barney Iley was another big act who on any other night might have been the tallest, but on this occasion just felt like a budget version of Ivo Graham, with his opening self-deprecating gambit about how his name was short for the rather too middle class Barnabas. Like most new acts Iley was not short of confidence but was short on original content as he pondered on trying to be a grown-up at the age of 26 and how he was struggling to learn how to do the washing up. There were a few flashes of potential in his thoughts on crazy golf and zoos, but on a strong night he ended up unplaced. It would have been a tall order for him to win something against such high class opposition.

****

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