Rodney Marques mines his own life for inspiration for his set, which makes for an appealing confessional atmosphere, even if some of the routines didn’t quite come off.

His former job as a psychiatric nurse and his stepchildren prove good sources of material, and the acerbic dismissal of his father’s second wife is wonderfully raw.

His various and mean-spirited descriptions of orange-hued women in Manchester’s ‘footballer’s wives’ belt is also a joy, as is his analogy about a colleague fetching him the wrong brand of cigarette – though this would be better without spelling out the punchline, after the audience made the mental leap themselves.

The only segment that doesn’t really work was a tale of his drunken bad behaviour set to a sports commentary, which is too self-absorbed.

But otherwise the genuine bitterness makes for good, if sometimes uncomfortable, stand-up.