I feel as though, writing a review for a Smoker, you have to try and make it funny somehow. Unfortunately, I don’t do 'funny' that well, so please bear with me. Despite this desperate lack of humour, I really like to laugh. First term slapped me hard in the face. Utterly exhausted and dejected, I had been looking forward to watching funny people do their thing. I reviewed the very first Footlights Smoker of term, and then the last Smoker of term. Some of the ‘edges’ I had mentioned had been ‘smoothed out’, some hadn’t. But once again I enjoyed it, this time more than the first.

Maybe I was a bit more lenient about the first smoker of term, because it was a new committee that were getting to grips with all of their new power. But even if that had been the case, I definitely noticed an improvement in many the acts this time round. Not only this, but there were more of them, which I appreciated, and did I detect a vaguely festive theme. Big up the Love Actually parody, the punchline “Let me talk to you about Jesus” was hilarious.

I think the Smoker as a whole started really well, but gradually dwindled towards the end. Not significantly, but had it been rearranged slightly the show would have been just that bit more impressive. The opening sketch was about Owen the hungry ‘lad-erpillar’ and his worries about becoming a pink butterfly. My favourite line of the act was when his caterpillar friend in double denim (which I greatly approved of), told him that “no colour is inherently gendered.”

The second sketch was one of my favourites, it featured two guys and an Ouija board, with which they were communicating with a horny spirit – “I don’t know how this is happening, it’s a regular keyboard…but aubergine emoji” had the whole audience laughing – such a strange and yet entirely absurd concept. It was the perfect balance of familiar and extreme. Another act which deserves huge amounts of recognition was Leo Reich’s stand up piece. I think it was honestly one of my favourite things I have seen at a Smoker. It was candid and equally outrageous, with a load of brilliant one-liners. When describing his sister’s Bat Mitzvah, he said that “she became a Jew and a woman… two appalling decisions from her.” Treading the line between laughter and offence, he navigated it well, saying, “I can say all of this because I am… a racist”. This line was timed and delivered to perfection, making young Leo a favourite of mine.

I wish I could tell you about all of the sketches, but that would take too long. The atmosphere of the Footlights Smoker is also something that is hard to describe to another person; it’s something that you need to experience for yourself. I think there were around 20 sketches altogether; inevitably, some of them were bound to fall a bit flat. The sketch about an interrailing trip had a lot of potential that it didn’t quite recognise. There was a sketch about being ‘smind’ (smell blind) which I enjoyed but, unfortunately, it lost momentum towards the end, and another with some people doing a Tudor-esque dance that was entirely lost on me (and I think most of the audience) until it was later explained. Having said that, maybe I’m just a bit slow.

Equally, the ‘mime artist’ sketch was brilliant and Samuel Pepys’ ‘gooch’, was hilarious. I had seen it at Milk Teeth and loved it, but I think it was even better at the Smoker. Ultimately, it was a great show, and an improvement on the last one that I reviewed. Four stars for you! Thanks for making me laugh