He calls his show Different Class – an immediate hostage to fortune – but there’s no doubt that Ed Byrne has class. Whether he uses it to the best of his considerable abilities is the question.

The stand-up world grows ever huger, it seems, by the week and Oxford is lucky that most of the prime practitioners pass through and show us their wares. Byrne has trodden a classic path: he was Perrier-nominated at the Edinburgh Fringe nine years ago and has been picked up by the obvious TV shows (Have I Got News For You, Never Mind The Buzzcocks and so on). He is very Irish, very exuberant and talks very quickly. He ranged busily across the lonely space of the New Theatre stage.

He is also a somewhat posy performer, with a self-satisfied air about him that makes it difficult to feel really involved with what he is ranting about. Byrne can bang on energetically about the difference between being actually posh or suffering the ghastliness of being nouveau riche, about how working-class parents get their babies’ ears pierced as soon as possible; but the script is glib. It is funny and he works hard, but you feel a mite short-changed.

There were clever moments: I liked the concept of his generic term ‘a mood of Goths’, but need someone closer to the current social vibe to explain to me why a gathering of Emos (otherwise ‘chavs’ or young people from Essex) should be described as an ‘Isobar’ – and that got a big laugh on the night.

Ed Byrne struts his stuff loudly and confidently and wants us to share with him his carefully honed social perceptions and, of course, laugh at them with him. At one point, he announced that he was “just a very picky person”. I had to agree, noting immediately the cleverness of that specific adjective which allows him to go down any comedic avenue he chooses – whether or not it always bears fruit.

Ed Byrne’s Different Class is out on DVD on Monday. More details on www.edbyrne.com