Many of the audience for An Evening with Noel Fielding were still in nappies when the comic first plied his trade as one half of The Mighty Boosh with Julian Barrett, which started life on the Edinburgh Fringe in the late 1990s and quickly became a cult hit.

It's a conundrum for some in the industry how John Bishop, so beloved of the BBC, which has given him several vehicles to parlay his Liverpool-lad-made-good comedy, can still, as a multimillionaire, perform his smiley Everyman persona with such conviction and be met with such affection - as indeed he was at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham where I saw his Supersonic arena tour.

Well, here’s a first; I was taken to a comic’s dressing room to be checked out before I could review his show. There was a mix-up over tickets for Jim Davidson so the front-of-house manager asked him If he would give the OK to let me in. “He wants  to see you,” he said. After a few minutes of Davidson telling me he doesn’t read his reviews, how awful journalists are and how he now couldn’t do jokes about Guardian readers, lesbians and immigrants (he did all three), he took me to the bar and bought me a drink while we talked about both growing up in south London.

The last time I saw Lee Mack live, my companion and I were literally in pain because we were laughing so much. It's perhaps unfair to expect a repeat of such a wonderful, life-affirming experience - live comedy is an ephemeral art, after all - but the comic doesn't appear to be even trying to achieve the same effect on his audience in his latest show, Hit the Road Mack, and this time we both left disappointed.

It's inevitable that Paul Daniels would introduce his wife and onstage partner as “... the lovely Debbie McGee”, one of two phrases now synonymous with the magician and comic. (The other, “you'll like this, not a lot”, makes an appearance later in the evening.) However there's nothing predictable about this entertaining show of magic tricks and illusions - most of them devised by Daniels, and others associated with great names from the past that the comic, a keen student of the art of magic's history, has given a modern makeover.

Lee Evans is one of those comics people either love or can't stick, and the audience at the O2 Arena last night clearly fell into the former camp – not much point in them being there at 55 quid a pop otherwise. For the latter group, though, his new show, Monsters, would be further proof that the Billericay stand-up is all style and no substance.

Awards are strange things; they can recognise real achievement while at the same time overlook the really talented. Annoyingly, Luisa Omielan fell into the second category with her first two full shows - What Would Beyoncé Do? and its equally joyous follow-up, Am I Right Ladies?! - both of which should have been recognised in the Edinburgh Comedy Awards (in 2012 and this year respectively) but weren't.

“It takes a star to parody one,” wrote theartsdesk’s Edward Seckerson, nailing the essence of this immortal spoof-fest’s last incarnation at the Menier Chocolate Factory. Star quality was assured given the presence of Damian Humbley, peerless in Merrily We Roll Along and even the unjustly short-lived Lend Me a Tenor, who’s in this transfer.

Steen Raskopoulos has hit the ground running with his debut show; it was nominated for a Foster's Edinburgh Comedy Award (best newcomer) at the Fringe earlier this month, after he won Sydney Comedy Festival 2013 and Melbourne International Comedy Festival 2014’s best newcomer gongs.

John Kearns: Shtick, Voodoo Rooms ****

London comic John Kearns made history at the weekend, when he became the first comic to win the main prize at the Edinburgh Comedy Awards after winning best newcomer gong, which he did last year That's some achievement.