In at least two key respects Jo Caulfield is your classic stand-up: from an Irish background, she's a convent-educated lapsed Catholic and she lives in north London. She's also funny - if memory serves well, funnier than she was on her first visit to the Lakeside. Dressed, for some reason, in a cowboy shirt and looking a lot slimmer than she did last time, she held a full house apparently effortlessly for two hours including break.

Her comic persona, possibly her real-life one too, is that of the sharply observant, healthily critical, middle-class woman. But she makes down-to-earth pragmatism into an excellent act.

One of Caulfield's best gags early on was the one about her ninety-year-old gran, who gets confused between IKEA and Al-Qaeda; she was terrified when the men came to deliver the sofa. She also had a go at mothers who use "time-out" as the ultimate slap-down against their children.

In terms of taste there was a definite ratcheting-down after the interval; and an entirely non-coincidental increase in the laughter rate. And, without over-doing it, Caulfield made use of some audience participation. She was friendly and easy-going.

She also got some laughs out of today's Evening Post story about the inhabitants of Bingham in pre-historic times - it seems that Caulfield once lived in the town. Near the end she spotted the sister of someone she knew from there in the front row. This was an odd coincidence since something similar happened last time she was here; on that occasion it was friends of her parents.

Alan Geary