The Best Of The Fest nights are hugely popular at the Brighton Comedy Festival, promising to showcase the ‘best comedic talent from the festival and beyond.’

With two Best Of The Fest nights lined up - the next on Thursday, October 23 - the festival, in its 13th year now, clearly feels it has a lot to shout about.

Even so, their line-up for the Best Of The Fest on Saturday was hardly the most stellar.

Apart from the glorious Kerry Godliman, star of Channel Four's Derek and BBC One's Our Girl, the night did not include any of the really big names performing their own shows in the comedy fortnight.

Compere for the night was the charming Irishman Andrew Maxwell. He had some fun audience interaction including a carpenter called Geoff with a fun skit on whether he was Geoff with G or a J. There were glimpses of a sharper, more vicious Maxwell which he dampened down but I suspect can be very funny when he is allowed more freedom.

Other highlights were the angry and cynical rantings of Canadian Glenn Wool and Nish Kumar discussing his trip to the Isle of Wight or for him, the Isle of White.

While it was a good-natured and fun evening, the other acts failed to sparkle.

The evening lacked bite and passion with far too many of the male comedians broadcasting from the rarefied world of comedy-ville. Quite frankly, who cares about the woes of travelling to endless gigs, how no-one meets them at the train station or how that gag worked better in another town?

It was the only woman on the bill who grabbed the audience by the bootstraps and left them roaring for more.

Kerry Godliman, burst on-stage like the woman-in-a-hurry she is and blasted modern life from ‘planned engineering works’ wondering about if spontaneous engineering works ever took place, to the need for a silk wash on her new washing machine and the arch nonsense of the high fashion world.

She was funny, relevant and fresh and we loved her for it.