There was a time not so long ago when the Oxford Revue and the Cambridge Footlights each occupied almost a week of the Playhouse summer schedule.

No more. Shrinking slowly – even, oddly, as the appetite for stage comedy increased – the two outfits are now reduced to a shared performance on one night, albeit a sell-out one.

A thoroughly happy, mirth-filled occasion it proved to be, though at three hours perhaps a little long for some tastes. Such shows will always contain hits and misses; with tighter control we might have been spared some of the latter.

Compared with how things were, the evening seemed oddly politically-lite. There was no mention of D. Cameron or his principal political rivals. Nigel Farage figured a couple of times, but he’s an easy target – almost a comedy act in himself.

The audience was well served by compere Ivo Graham, a former Oxford student now making his name on the professional comedy circuit. His easy manner and ready wit proved him a natural for the task, finding an excellent source of laughs from such unlikely subjects as honey ice cream and the Playhouse’s recent Greek Play.

I also enjoyed the stand-up work of Oxford’s George McGoldrick (with Harry Potter hogging all the goodies on the Hogwarts express) and Alex Fox, presenting the whole of an upper-crust family with two very different twin sons.

Post-interval came the Oxford Revue team of Jack Chisnall, Georgia Bruce, David Meredith, Will Hislop and Barney Fishwick. Their cheery rapport and spot-on clowning delighted the fans. The ‘them and us’ divide found a perfect summation in the final sketch which riffed on First World War footie in the trenches and a squaddie ordered to retrieve the ball from no man’s land by a supercillious officer.

As for Footlights rivals, the best moment came in Oly Taylor and Simon Copley showing us Vladimir Putin becoming the victim of a translator’s manipulation of his speeches.