Call a comic surreal and you hand him or her a licence to be as self-indulgent as they desire. Think of Vic Reeves, who long ago started believing that the mere proximity to one another of words like "bacon", "kazoo" and "Manama" was sufficiently hilarious to bring down the house. Ross Noble is, we are frequently told, a surreal comedian. His new show certainly contains enough references to "dwarves in sombreros" and "shaven suicide monkeys" to ensure that its title, Nonsensory Overload, comfortably adheres to the terms of the Trade Descriptions Act.

It will come as no surprise that a critic should instantly become a fan of a comic whose debut show at the Edinburgh Fringe (for which Alun Cochrane received a Perrier Award nomination) was a show titled My Favourite Words in My Best Stories. Anyone who loves words is a hit with me - we’re ploughing the same furrow after all, just in different ways.

It takes a very talented comic indeed to warm the main room at the Leicester Square Theatre, a venue that is situated beneath a Catholic church and which, vampire-like, can suck the life out of even the most buoyant of audiences. Fortunately, Jason Byrne has enough energy to wake the dead or, in this case, a few hundred damp souls who have come in from a rainy London town outside.

Nowadays, stand-ups who can fill the Enormodome grow on trees. But once upon a time, before comedy was the new rock’n’roll, that sort of thing didn’t happen. Then David Baddiel and Rob Newman played Wembley Arena. It feels like a long time ago. While Newman’s career wandered off the map, Baddiel became exceptionally celebrated as, in effect, Frank Skinner’s straight man. He last did stand-up in 2003, and that was a corporate gig to a roomful of bankers he deliberately offended. Last night he stepped back before an audience to – as he more than once insisted - try out some stuff.

Mindful that Dara Ó Briain ticked off one of my colleagues for revealing a punchline of his in his show, I can lumber without fear into reporting Rich Hall’s outing at the Wilde Theatre, Bracknell, as punchlines aren’t really what his comedy is all about. Morose as he looks on TV, on this very early date in an exhaustive 63-gig tour over the British Isles between now and December - I mean, Cambridge, Taunton, Dublin on consecutive days, or Hartlepool, Dundee, Durham (what is he travelling in? A helicopter?) - Hall had the audience on his side within seconds of starting.

With the charm-cum-cheek of a naughty schoolboy, Patrick Monahan is an instantly likeable presence whose latest show, I Walked, I Danced, Iran, is a lop-sided but very funny hour-and-a-bit of observational comedy. Monahan is a veteran of several Fringes and a regular on The Paul O’Grady Show on Channel 4.

When Sarah Millican won the If.comedy newcomer award two years ago, it was with one of the most accomplished shows I had ever seen at the Fringe - by newbie or veteran - and now the South Shields stand-up has made critics reach for the superlatives again with another hour of superbly crafted comedy.

Comic Greg Davies has made us wait for his solo debut - he’s in his early forties, appeared at the Fringe as part of sketch group We Are Klang for a few years and more latterly has been starring in The Inbetweeners on Channel 4 as Mr Gilbert. Before that he was a drama teacher in a secondary school for 13 years. But boy, was it worth the wait.

Rob Rouse is one of those hugely likeable comedians guaranteed to make you laugh and so it proves with The Great Escape, prompted by his family’s recent move to the Peak District, an expertly crafted autobiographical narrative with lots of fresh observational comedy thrown in for good measure.