Josie Long has slowly built her stand-up reputation as the antidote to most of the successful comics treading the boards. Hopeful, when others are despondent; optimistic when most are bathing their audience in cynicism. And, for want of a much better description, she seems like a nice person. She makes her own handwritten programmes, is an avid Twitterer and has always talked in the past about her desire to make things better.

So, when she warns in her programme that this show is actually quite political, you wonder how she’ll be able to give her usual upbeat take on things when she’s talking about a government she despises. With ease, is the conclusion you rapidly come to. There may be a lot of condemnation of the coalition’s plans, but it’s backed by a call to get involved and an urge to make things improve. Although this doesn’t sound terribly funny, Long makes it so. She makes you laugh consistently throughout her 90 minutes and with much more efficiency than she has done in the past. Though she has always been funny, it was her warm-hearted persona that was once the main attraction, but now her writing has sharpened up and there are a lot more neatly crafted gags in her set.

The political stuff is also only about a third of the set. There’s also a lengthy discussion of the joys of breakfast, her love of NHS founder Nye Bevan and a brief section on her ldelight in space and science. A mixture of the banal and serious, it’s all woven together superbly that makes an hour and a half seem like 20 minutes. Whether Long feels compelled to become more political is entirely up to her, she can certainly take on politics and still be very funny — which is all that really matters.