With £10,001 on the line, the British Comedian Of The Year final is certainly a high stakes gig. At the end of the night, the audience favourite gets the biggest prize in comedy – (‘no prizes for guessing what the second biggest prize is’, compere Paul Revill quips). But a purse like that also attracts pro-level comics… this is not one just for the newbies.

Harriet Dyer was drawn to open the Comedy Store gig – probably not a place she’d be given had someone been programming the running order, given her very peculiar style is no gentle icebreaker to ease an audience into the night, but a manic plunge into her erratic brain and the weird situations it gets her into. ‘This is what mental illness looks like,’ she cheerily admits. But at least comedy is one place where she can monetise that.

She’s uniquely weird but with a child-like naivety – emphasised by her Cornish accent, it has to be said.  – which makes her hugely empathetic. The scrapes her odd behaviour lands her in, usually when driving, are driven by a compulsion to be naughtily inappropriate just for her own giddy entertainment. Despite being far from the mainstream, Dyer’s guileless authenticity won over the crowd.

In 1980s-style shell suit top, Joey Page has cultivated a look that lowers expectations, acknowledging as much by telling us that he’s ‘better than you think I’m going to be’ among a string of gags about his unconventional appearance that all hit the mark. The foundation of his set is that he’s a working-class geezer who now finds himself living among the hipsters of Shoreditch, with mutual suspicion surrounding that situation.

His material lies in the class-climbing territory that Micky Flanagan mines so well, and while Page doesn’t share the same  clarity of vision as the older comic, he contributes a vivid portrayal of the pub sexists he grew up with and disdain for the middle-classes he’s learned to disguise. The observational routines are matched with some  silliness about a Temu order – with a rather cheap payoff – and a bite-sized impression of The One Show, because… well, why not?

Since we’ve had a famous Mike Reid and a famous Mike Read, Mike Reed will have his work cut out making the top of the Google searches for his own name. And I’m not sure he yet has the material to get him there.

He’s a natural performer, fuelled by grumpiness about the everyday shittiness of his life in Merthyr Tydfil that anyone from a boring town will identify with. He’s a teacher who hates his kids, in a 15-year marriage that’s in a rut, and with a lazy eye that often puts him on the back foot. But while it’s all very relatable, the punchlines tend to be on the predictable, generic side.

No such criticism of Michael Fabbri, who proves himself an inventive writer at every turn with memorable phrase-making and a knack for leaving the audience to do just enough work to complete the gags themselves, very rewardingly. He’s smart, but low-status – haunted by the self-awareness of just how creepy he seems when in a water park on his own, for example.

His descriptions of each scenario – from an odd German man on the bus to an old-faithful routine playing out an internet argument that reveals a new joke line-by-splendid line – place you in the heart of the absurdity to great effect. With gags packed tight together, Fabbri was one of the best in show tonight.

From his precise writing to the more personality-led comedy of Tal Davies, who’s nonetheless just as self-deprecating about the world-weary vibes her appearance exudes. In reality, however her sarcasm about life is couched in an outgoing chattiness. Callbacks to crowd work Revill had done earlier in the gig add to that casual conversational feel.

She initially seems like she could be the female, Brummie answer to John Bishop, more about Good Vibes and banter than the jokes, but then produces some solid writing to back that up.

No one can say they’re bored of hearing jokes about North Macedonia, which definitely gives Vlad Ilich an edge. He has tongue-in-cheek punchlines about being an immigrant sure to wind up the hardcore Reform voters, and first-hand tales of going through the citizenship process and trying to integrate – however ill-fated his efforts to understand the more peculiar nuances of British life that it takes a foreigner to point out.

There’s a bit of geopolitics behind some of his jokes, and a sardonic edge to those about what life was like behind the Iron Curtain. His punchy, pacy delivery delivers the constant stream of gags with industrious efficiency, too. All of which won him the audience vote – and the equivalent of 702,499 Macedonian denar.

Stephen Owen spent 30 years as a homicide detective and has had a serious medical scare. All good fodder for stand-up… or so you might think. Instead he barely touches on this in favour of showing off his skills as an impressionist. And that he starts with an impersonation of Top Cat – last made in 1962 – shows he’s not doing a lot to update the craft.

To be fair he does mix a few newer-ish names like Dara O Briain and the aforementioned Micky Flanagan among the standards such as David Attenborough and Russell Crowe as Gladiator – with a sure  talent for capturing their verbal likenesses. But the jokes aren’t nearly as good as the mimicry and the whole act seems pretty dated. While Alfie Moore might have cornered the cop-turned-comic market, you'd think Owen has something unique to contribute from real life.

Mary Bourke starts with an anecdote about Liz Truss that – appropriately enough – underperforms, which she follows with a politically charged invective about privatisation that definitely puts politics before comedy.

Perhaps she needs this to find her bitterness, as it then leads into a gloriously vicious rant about the gilet-wearing middle classes and their dreary, unsexy jobs in HR. She takes a gripe and really runs with it, wringing every laugh out of her increasingly ridiculous flight of fantasy. A very experienced pro, she also took the ejection of some distractingly chatty audience members very much in her stride.

Finally Tom Ward, who defied any late-gig weariness among the audience to unleash a strong set that mixed Seinfeld-level observation comedy about the vagaries of middle-age with more idiosyncratic skits, such as building a song around the Ring doorbell alert or imagining a fake cosmetic ad.  

There’s even some politics in discussing how you just have to look at any Newcastle fan to see how effective Saudi sportswashing is proving to be – but delivered with a lightness of touch. 

Announcing that Ward had taken second place, Revill revealed that the vote was tight. It might be hard for the runner-up to know just how close he came to the jackpot – but he will surely have won a lot of extra fans with such a strong routine, skilfully balancing the relatable and the odd.