A sold-out house greeted the Footlights committee with cheers and applause as they lined up on the stage of the ADC. They told a joke or two. They got a laugh or two. They warmed up both halves of the audience. But we knew this was just the opener for the people we were here to see. We wanted the fresh meat, the bringers of a brave new world of comedy: the Virgins.

On they came, and they didn't disappoint. The sketches ranged from a quizzically surreal encounter with fruitcake and biscuits (Lizzy and David brought some energetic physical comedy to this), to the word-play of Joy, Holly and Tom with their musings about who really props up the entire school system. Tom had some great ad-libs to the audience to explain the set-up in his imagined office, and his asides to us really raised the laughter to wonderfully silly levels.

Ania and David brought us an increasing spiral of absurdity with their version of ‘Odds On’, complete with olives, hidden Martini bottles, and a quick dip in the Cam – Ania was literally dripping onto the people in the front row. The only one in the audience not left laughing was the guy who didn’t end up being taken home by David to fulfil Ania’s exciting and explicit dare.

Taking the explicit a step further was Louise, with her anatomical kebabs on webcam (even the red-haired guy in front of me was howling at her description of the “little orange peeled carrot”). I admired how she just didn’t hold back. She knew what reaction she wanted, and she went for it. She’d clearly worked on her script.

But top marks in script writing for the evening must go to Aimee, who gave us an insight into what Theresa May would sound like if her speech writers relied on nothing but direct quotes from the cheesiest pop of the last 30 years. Just when you thought she had exhausted the lyrics of every song you’ve ever heard, she threw another few dozen at us, crafted into an inspirational political speech (I had to marvel at how long these three minutes must have taken to produce). 

But the stand-outs from the evening were the individual performances by Leo and Kate: I have seen entire Edinburgh shows which contained less material (and fewer laughs) than each of these managed to deliver in their few minutes on stage.  Leo’s self-deprecating stand-up routine connected fabulously with the audience: his material was punch after punch of genuinely funny gags about himself, his family, his insecurities and (as he managed to point out) all of ours as well. Kate demonstrated why she is a performance poet rather than a rapper: and when her rapping is that hilarious it says something for how exciting her poetry is. She plays with words, and has an edgy and confident delivery, and (much like Leo), she didn’t seem to be mimicking anything she had seen. That’s really what I liked most about these two: they had taken something of themselves, run with it and made it their own. They then got the pay off in the laughter.

Being the Virgin Smoker, there was a certain roughness around the edges. Sketches went beyond their natural ending point, turning on the microphone proved an issue, and some pieces were under-rehearsed. But for the start of a comedy season for beginners, this was an incredibly fun evening, with a really high laugh-per-minute count.

There is definitely more comedy on the way for us, I think. With more rehearsal and editing this bunch have a chance to really shine, and I look forward to the entertainment to come