Brighton Comedy Garden
Preston Park

DOES comedy make sense outside? This correspondent has a romantic idea of stand-up as an intimate, subversive thing, best suited to a sweaty room and an inkling that the usual rules of society have been temporarily suspended.

Which, understandably, is a difficult conceit to maintain in a fenced off bit of a public park festooned with corporate sponsorship.

Ah well. This is a really well-run event, with kind and friendly staff and a more interesting booking approach than most gigs of this size.

Friday had a lineup towards the weirder end of the mainstream, and as we took to our seats in front of a festival stage, I wondered if the distance between performer and audience would prevent the usual interaction.

Nope. John Robins, our MC, has the bouncy enthusiasm of a disgraced former Blue Peter presenter. He is an excellent compere — gently mean to this Hovian crowd, like when he demands a hapless man collect his girlfriend from the bar queue.

“It’s weird to be able to see the audience, you’re all very handsome ... I usually perform to pigs.”

So begins Lou Sanders, faux full of herself, extremely honest about her love life, more stories than punchlines but in an extremely charming manner.

Only the bit about Covid — interestingly, all the comedians here tonight dedicated a section of their set to the pandemic — didn’t really land, as the performers’ understandable desire to process and make art out of a horrible two years collided with a sunny evening of people just wanting to have a good time.

Esther Manito is next, the Essex/Lebanese comic, her usual brilliant self from topics as diverse as online racism and being really hairy.

Her timing with a delayed punchline, ability to elicit hysterics even from a little noise or grunt, and extremely relatable family material put her in a field of her own (sorry — couldn’t resist).

How Tim Key has grown. We all have — lockdown will do that to you.

But what a masterful, confident performer he has become over the years. Key is at that point in his career where he could happily coast and still need a Scrooge McDuck style vault for all his earnings, but instead he’s still pushing hard, developing an intentionally horrible persona, and coming up with poems both absurd and profound.

One gorgeous sunset later, our field of discarded tins of G&T is ready for David O’Doherty and the cheap keyboard he got as a First Communion present.

He also has lockdown tales to tell — dark, well told vignettes that make us laugh but have a lingering sadness.

Funniest of all is O’Doherty’s song about a mouse, gruesome, vivid and surreal all at once.

With darkness — that old friend of comedians everywhere — finally upon us, we head off into the night, duly entertained, if a little melancholy.

All the acts above are performing at the Edinburgh Fringe throughout August, then touring