Massive charity gigs are there for the taking for lesser-known acts. Famous names need to just be present, offering some brand recognition to shift tickets, but those on the up can use the exposure to burnish their fan base.

As Teenage Cancer Trust ambassador Romesh Ranganathan joked in his headlining set: ‘This is not my best shit, you have to see me on tour for that. These are some half-assed ideas…’ But for others a chance to win over new fans, which Scott Bennett, Finlay Christie and, to a slightly lesser extent, Jack Skipper achieved.

Micky Flanagan was host, though not in the traditional sense: he only cae on to open each half and briefly wrap up, the rest of the acts being introduced by voiceover.

While he suggested he was rusty after six months away from stand-up, he seemed as on-form as ever, relentlessly hammering at his topics with ever-more elaborate act-outs. I’ve never seen Stacey Solomon's BBC makeover show Sort Your Life Out, but I feel I have, now Flanagan has sent it up so mercilessly.

Similarly, his imagining how  Robert De Niro announced he wanted a baby at 79 was preposterously long, with the comedian clearly having fun with awful Yosemite Sam accents and mad dashes from one end of the wide stage to the other to play the different roles. 

Flanagan may joke about ageing, but at 62, he’s still got plenty of energy, as evidenced by his zesty impression of going to Guys And Dolls, mocking the theatricality of it all. He also dropped the first C-bomb of the night, which always feels naughty in the Royal Albert Hall, but paved the way for the later onslaught of the word when Ranganathan spoke of his beef with Laurence Fox, a man who fits the profanity so well.

Flanagan’s first set was followed by the ruthlessly efficient Bennett – a fat-free routine with every line a punchline. Accessible themes such as playing up his Northernness, especially in a posh venue like this, or the travails of getting old and the petty irritations of a long-term relationship, offer an easy way in for the audience – but as he gets increasingly high-pitched with infuriation, the material gets more inventive too. 

He may play low-status, with no money and unable to command the respect of his family, but he’s a class act.

Skipper followed a similar path of telling how his kids don’t respect his hangover, while affecting a nostalgia for the more laissez-faire attitudes to parenting in the 1990s.

A commanding performer, the former carpet-fitter plays up the ‘lads, lads, lads’ ethos of Brits aboard or stag-dos that humiliate the groom. But he’s self-aware, both celebrating working-class culture and ridiculing it. After all, what can be more part of that culture than ripping the piss? 

Zoe Lyons became the fourth comic to grumble about ageing, talking us through wardrobe choices that favour comfort over fashion, her body not being quite what it was and a midlife crisis that had her buy a convertible sports car.

Compared to the tautness of the preceding acts, Lyons – 100 per cent a Brighton girl: gay, green and an advocate for wild swimming – was a lot more conversational, with a corresponding drop in laugh rate. But most routines had a strong gag at their core, even ones on well-trodden paths like the routine about her dignity-denying colonoscopy, de rigueur for any fiftysomething comedian, but done very well here. 

However, everybody has surely noticed by now that whistles on aircrafts’ lifejackets are pretty useless in attracting attention if witnesses didn’t notice the plane crash. Certainly plenty of other comedians have, and this closing segment seemed hacky. 

Finally for the first half, Josh Widdicombe served up a shaggy-dog tale about his number plate being cloned, with his incredulity, anxiety and pitch of delivery rising with every step of a routine that’s essentially a sequence of sarcastic comments he probably wished he’d thought of at the time. And speaking of sarcasm, his takedown of the medium of radio was bang on.

Something a little special after the interval, as Aiden Cowie got to play this magnificent venue. He’s a young Scottish comedian who turned to stand-up after surviving a brutal cancer treatment that cost him his right eye, so it's an emotional moment for him to take to the stage in front of an assembly of others who, like him, had been supported by the Teenage Cancer Trust.

Finlay Christie’s online fame may not have parlayed to the older, probably less comedy-savvy audience in Kensington tonight – but his stand-up certainly connected with them. Playing up his relative youth - he’s 25 - he joked about being subjected to national stereotypes he didn’t understand after being mistaken for Finnish and ‘engaging with elderly culture’. Or, what other people might call ’watching the news’.

His pacing is excellent, and he’s hugely skilled at playing with the silences, knowing just how long to leave the audience hanging before delivering a punchline.

Fresh from her surgery to remove a cancerous mole,  Katherine Ryan dedicated her set to roasting men in general and her husband Bobby in particular – though even her three-year-old son doesn’t get off the hook, showing signs of toxic masculinity already.

Her performance is an empathy-free zone, and there’s a little emotional disconnect as she rattles through her complaints, but stingingly sharp lines hit home.

Ranganathan headlined, sporting a moustache that he confessed makes him resemble a ‘retired squash player’. More surprisingly, he’s got into having his fingernails painting. 

(Slightly irritatingly for the rest of us, there was some sort of running gag across the night to get every comedian to say the word ‘toenail’, as it elicited a huge cheer from one box whenever it was mentioned. Hopefully it raised good money)

Despite his quips about phoning it in, the comic’s material about fatherhood, P Diddy’s parties, the ‘I fucked your mum’ culture of blokeish banter – and yes, that run-in with Fox – hit the spot, while his commitment to the charity is beyond reproach. He’s even going to run the London Marathon for them – and you can back him here.