She’s already won a raft of new act titles –  including the prestigious So You Think You’re Funny at the Edinburgh Fringe – but Madeleine Brettingham again showed what a promising talent she is by scooping the Beat The Frog World series in Manchester.

Her persona is so clearly defined it could be in 8k: a female geezer, bought up by a shady, alcoholic single dad in no-frills pubs, now preferring to date the polar opposite, soft middle-class beta-males plodding around their Park Run. 

She’s got a suffer-no-fools attitude that own the stage, a formidable gag rate and a precision with language that conjures up the perfect images. It’s no surprise to learn she was a writer before she was a performer, but she’s at home in the spotlight too, bantering easily with the kindred-spirit blokes she finds in the front row.

If she was a hard act to follow opening the second half, Rob Nother (above) wasn’t in the least bit fazed. A regular MC in his native Dublin, the mulleted comic is a naturally confident performer with material that justifies that assuredness, from mocking  ‘Britain for the Brits’ racists from an unexpected angle to teasing LadBible for its forlorn attempt to be seen as a legitimate news organisation.

Such rock-solid material earned him second place in the vote from the audience at the Frog and Bucket, as well as the panel prize from a bunch of industry types, myself included.

Rewind to the start of the gig, and Joe Hodgson – a man who’s not afraid of a knock-knock gag – opened proceedings with a set packed full of dad jokes, delivered relatively straight without really playing into cheesiness of the puns. The appropriation of a common meme to initiate his crowd work was a neat affectation, and a routine about bowling proved enjoyably surreal. But elsewhere the dumb wordplay felt like a Twitter feed, and feels as if it would be hard to sustain beyond these five minutes.

Max Gill brought a bit of an edge to his set, some of it down to his relative inexperience. He doesn’t yet have the innate confidence that assures us that a straight white man talking about the likes of ‘gay language’ or the prevalence of the name ‘Mohammed’ will have a safe landing. Though, of course, it does, the uncertainty adds a fun frisson – and there are decent punchlines at the end of it all.

Speaking of gay stereotypes, it’s a persona Joe Gurski embraces, with an arch commentary on life that plays up the camp edge when it comes to his less toxic take on football chants. He laments the fact doesn’t have an painful coming-out story… instead his biggest injustice is why there’s no male equivalent of ‘cougar’ to define his relationships with younger men. It’s probably a victory of personality over content, but he’s entertaining company.

Ste Lomas is a bit of an old-school comic with his volley of largely sex-based one-liners – the sort of gags you might feel like you’ve heard down the pub before, even if you haven’t. It’s a slightly grim world view with plenty of jokes about heavy drinking, porn and paedophiles… though he makes no attempt to pretend any of this is real. He’s not going to be winning any awards for artistic endeavour, but will get the job done, especially as his confidence grows. A few nerves apparent in his fiddling with the mic cable subsided as he got the laughs from the room.

Having arrived in the UK from India eight years ago, Archit Goenka offers wry commentary on British life while spinning the tables on racism and white privilege with a sardonic wit that proves more disarming than a polemic would be. Some of his jokes on topics such as Brits not seasoning food might be slight familiar territory, but his low-key charm is very effective.

Laurie Brewster is another more muted performer, with modestly self-deprecating material about his serial-killer looks and lacklustre performance in bed. There are few puns and moments of silliness that come as a nice surprise given the generally downbeat demeanour, but not all the gags punch through that indifference of delivery.

Molly Rob opened by slagging off male comedians. They may be a deserving target but it struck a slightly odd note, given she hadn’t yet proved herself and the room had just been entertained by a decent batch of male comedians. A bit ‘inside-baseball’, too, perhaps. Such jibes at the patriarchy sit alongside more distinctive material about her non-visible disability – her narcolepsy certainly gives her a point of difference – and observations about her home town of Cockermouth having a rude name that are more rote. She has an appealing well-spoken-girl-with-an-edge demeanour but hasn’t yet found her comedic focus.

Finally, Bradford’s Louis Etienne exudes the vibe of being a safe pair of hands, with his control of the room demonstrated with some easy-going badinage with a couple of punters who shout out during his set. Material such as imaging a horror film set on a council estate feels formulaic in its writing  and there are no killer lines that will stay with you, but you’ll enjoy ever moment he’s on stage.

• All images © Andy Hollingworth Archive