Everyone knows the cardinal rule of comedy gigs - unless you actually like the attention - is to sit somewhere you can't be seen.

Plonking yourself down in the front row is an open invitation for the host to rifle through your handbag and otherwise shine their comic light on your cowering self.

You don't have to worry about that at a Josie Long gig. She's so nice, she hands out presents she has made herself.

As the audience filed into the tiny Marlborough Theatre, she bounded up and down the aisle, making sure everyone had picked up a free badge, made with her own good hands.

On our seats sat a photocopied programme, lovingly (if not lavishly) illustrated with stick men and featuring a list of music playing in the background.

Making fun of the audience was not her style. She reassured us of this at the start, adding that she asks only that her audiences "beam encouragingly" at her during the gig.

A self-confessed dork (which is cooler than cool in my book), her delivery was awkward, scatty and self-deprecating, yet interspersed with comments of real intelligence.

She had a habit of rubbing her face nervously and looking sheepishly at us, while all the while maintaining a lovely big grin.

Her set did not follow the joke/punchline/joke routine but was more of a rambling lollop around her unique mental universe.

Throwing in catchphrases which referenced a broad cultural spectrum (examples included referring to a snowglobe, "what witchery is this?") and making use of crayon drawings and a variety of ridiculous voices, she talked us through some of her favourite things: goths in suits, craft activities, Boggle...

I have no doubt Josie - an Oxford graduate no less - will make it big.

She has already helped to write the new C4 teen drama Skins with Popworld's Simon Amstell.

I just hope next time she comes to Brighton she'll still find time to make us badges.