@ Festival Theatre Studio, on Sat 10 Oct 2015

As the Fringe disappears ever further into the rear view mirror, a Gilded Balloon roller banner is an odd but welcome sight on an Edinburgh stage. Here, to a smallish crowd, it means another trio of acts at GB’s monthly residency at the Festival Theatre.

And as if to prove all the frippery of the Fringe is behind us, compere Ray Bradshaw doesn’t even bother feigning he’s here for anything other than the nuts-and-bolts of the evening. He may even have said in a resigned tone, “I’m just going to ask you your name and what you do,” as he selected his first crowd member. Nowt flash from Bradshaw then, and on this night, it’s not really enough to get the room warmed up. First act, Jen Brister , is served an undercooked audience.

It may explain why her opening repartee is awkwardly delivered. Introductory stuff about her lesbianism has been heavily-prepped, and it doesn’t take account of this audience, played as it is for reactions that it doesn’t get. She moves on to some good, silly stuff about her Spanish mother and her struggle with epithetical “e”. Unfortunately, she ends up as one of the people she’s complaining about – parents who only talk about their kids – as she overdoes the tales of the twins she has just had, even if it does allow for a brilliant passage about loving a cat (almost literally) to death.

Next up, recovering emo Chris Macarthur-Boyd , who is less filled with the joy of human life. Joblessness, lovelessness – his self-confessed visual similarity to Ronnie Corbett doesn’t extend to the elder man’s anecdotal joviality. With material about being stuck in the parental home, gigs in smalltown Scotland, and millennial disillusionment, his comic outlook’s bleak, but hilariously so. Since he’s barely into his twenties, the prospects for his career are much brighter.

Kiwi Jarred Christmas is tonight’s headliner, and he’s only to be applauded for what seems an ad-libbed set. He seems as happy ditching his routine as he is ditching his jeans to show a lady on the front row how he’s “hanging”. In fact, after a little verbal sparring with a guy who looks like he’s worked out a bit (“What do you bench?” he asks with the fake confidence of a man who’s never seen the inside of the gym), he just throws it out to the floor. “Ask me some questions!” It might not result in the smoothest of sets, especially when the audience start running out of original questions, and just start asking him about his clothes, but somehow he works it round to a very funny climax about compering at a daytime club with a strip show. Still, listening to him debate his underwear, watching him indicate where the sweat stains on his shirt are, marvelling at the chutzpah of his banter, one amusing thought lingers: this man is a real life Peter Griffin.