On starting at Cambridge last term, I quickly got the hang of what College Smokers are about. They follow a standard pattern: a couple of acts will be hilarious, a couple amusing, and a couple excruciatingly awkward.

The Footlights Smoker is something completely different. Every other Tuesday, all the stand-out comedians from the dingy studios and bars of the college smoker circuit take the stage at the ADC and produce a show that makes the rest of the Cambridge comedy scene feel somewhat inadequate. No doubt the sell-out audience creates an atmosphere that guards against the potential for the awkward pauses and forced sympathetic laughter of smaller smokers; but even if this show were performed to an audience of one, the unrelenting stream of comedy would keep the laughter coming.

Despite being in such good comic company, Ben Ashenden was the standout performer. He reduced the whole audience, as well as his two fellows on stage, to fits of giggles in seeking a valuation for his grandmother on the Antiques Roadshow – his physicality and befuddlement were unbearably funny. He will be at the ADC all week in The Pin, which, on this form, will definitely be worth watching.

The range of sketches was impressive, from the current relevance of an undercover policeman infiltrating a useless environmentalist action group, to how a perfectly pleasant picnic can be ruined by a mixture of chocolate cake and gluttony. The stand-up too was of a high quality, with some promising female talent and Ahir Shar (whose name Microsoft Word does indeed urge me to spell as Hair Shag) rounding off the evening on a high.

However, as is to be expected of any sketch show, especially when all the writing is fresh, there was the occasional hitch. One set made a fair point about lazy lyrics in songs but failed to make it in a way that was at all funny, while the Groundhog Day sketch spread a decent joke too thinly over a five minute slot.

Still, the hits easily outweighed the misses in number and quality, making for some riotous entertainment. It is easy to see why the Footlights sell out the ADC time and again and often a week in advance. The Footlights Smoker is the pinnacle of the Cambridge comedy scene – my tickets are booked for the rest of term.