Seeing local comedian Jay Lafferty own the familiar surroundings of The Stand at 5pm on an opening Fringe weekend is the grounding a mostly Scottish audience didn’t know they needed. Starting this set with the familiar Scotrail announcement is another tick in the box for the home team, as is setting one whole hour around the communal nightmare of that last train home (which many of us will catch later; good luck with that lads). 

Apparently, Lafferty saddled herself with the common comedian’s habit of submitting a show title before writing the actual show. Ooft! was supposed to be about the big stories that stop you in your tracks. Instead, she leans into the tiny details of life, which are all grist to her keenly observational mill. Whether it’s the ‘go big or go home’ women that populate the train carriages, the class WhatsApp group, the tedious white guy with a guitar (never a jacket, always a hat), or just her own wee boy dropping ‘The Boundaries Song’ during a tickle fight, her laughs come from those wee moments of truth we all share, no matter where we come from.

Her crowd work is good-natured and, even if there’s nothing startlingly new about the differences between generations, it’s lovely to hear from a comedian who doesn’t have a bad word to say about any of them. Note to Boomers and Xers: there’s no need to shrink down into your chair while a section based around Claire Rayner’s classic sex-education tool The Body Book reminds Gen Z they’re lucky we figured out how to have them at all. 

Lafferty’s gentle geniality means it’s easy to understate her comedy smarts. There isn’t a single flat minute in this show and if the topics feel familiar, that’s part of the joy: her always slightly left-of-field take on the stuff we all know is the whole point. She’s the kind of comedian who makes you realise your funny best pal actually isn’t that funny after all. In a world that’s going to hell in a handbasket, it’s good to be reminded that our little bit of it is full of weird parents and angry drivers and clever bairns and nippy mothers-in-law, all fellow travellers on the last trains of life. It’s a smart message and a timely reminder from a comedian whose patient years spent learning her trade are clear to see. Ooft!: this is a great show.

Jay Lafferty: Ooft!, The Stand, until 25 August, 5pm.