It must be difficult for any stand-up comedian to walk on-stage and find there are only seven people in the audience… two of whom are friends, so Matt Winning had a tough job ahead of him from the start .

The young Scot’s meandering style, punctuated with lots of ‘er’s and ‘um’s and ‘so’s – and an unscripted history lesson about Robert Mugabe – may not have provided the quickfire humour that an audience expects, but there are some gems nonetheless, and some poignancy too.

A comment about his father leaving home then returning five years later ‘with something missing – his soul’ is both funny and endearing, but an over-laboured anecdote about calling a friend Shirley ‘because of that scene in Airplane where he says don’t call me Shirley’ becomes quickly annoying, and many of his jokes fail to hit the mark.

Winning gets more into his stride when performing extracts from the Diary Of Robert Mugabe, and reading out reviews of bins.

The surreal final segment, in which he takes on the persona of a Dutch gameshow host in Guess The Pancake was entertaining, and his parting shot, firing a party popper directly into a dustbin as his father advised, had me giggling all the way to the bar.

Two stars