I was glad to see a full house at the North Wall last week for Jo Caulfield. She’s not in the front line of stand-ups, nor an acquired taste with a faithful following. She succeeds off the back of Edinburgh Fringe appearances and regular Radio 4 series (It’s That Jo Caulfield). She has also done the TV prerequisites of appearing with Michael McIntyre, the Buzzcocks and Mock The Week.”

Jo is a woman of a certain age (OK, mid-40s) and does comedy areas that have to work for her and her broadly similarly-aged audience in a middle-class way. Thus inter-female relationships: “All women here have a slutty friend. If you can’t think who it is, it’s you.” Or sexual angst: “My parents met when they were at school. I know it sounds romantic, but she was six and he was the caretaker.” Or mobile phones: “My dad has taken 27 pictures of his ear.”

Caulfield is wafer-thin, and appeared in jeans and a cowboy shirt – “This venue makes me feel weirdly like I’m doing a prison gig: it’s Johnny Cash in San Quentin . . . younger people, just widen your terms of reference!” In a confident, bubbly fashion, she lectured us on alcohol (the ways in which she abuses it) and her friends (with punch lines that surprise): “Debbie has two beautiful children . . . and one f***ing ugly one!”

She was excellent on husband watching: “I feel our flat is a laboratory. I sit there checking and wondering ‘What the f*** is he doing?’ He’s sellotaping the TV remote control to the Radio Times!” And witty on T-shirts logos – for someone her age: “Wake Me When We Get To Paddington.”

What Jo doesn’t need to do is jokes about the credit crunch, TV programmes like The Apprentice and Dragon’s Den, venue (“Is Summertown posh?”) and small ads from the local newspaper. She’s better than that – those are elderly crutches for modern stand up success. “That was a very good show, without the restraint of Radio 4”, said my neighbour as a tight 80-minute set finished. I agreed.