Jo Caulfield, Chorley Little Theatre, 24 September 2011

Stand up comedienne Jo Caulfield will remember Chorley for two reasons. The audience rewriting one of her jokes - and the Hartwood Hall Hotel.

The Hartwood certainly made an impression on the TV and Radio 4 regular as she stopped off in Chorley for her 'Cruel to be Kind' tour. Imagining a boutique hotel set in rolling grounds and not a Beefeater, she drove round and round the roundabout on the A6 and thought: "This can't be it." She was underwhelmed. "No Sky TV. And only one plugpoint. So no TV if you want to put the kettle on."

Jack Daniels and coke in hand, she started her 90 minute set at the Chorley Little Theatre complaining that a younger comedian was lazy for suggesting vodka and Red Bull got alcohol into the bloodstream more quickly. "Why can't he get to the bar two hours earlier like the rest of us?"

In an evenly paced set that had the audience laughing out loud throughout, Jo revealed her love of TV reality shows and her dislike of self service supermarket checkouts and the way people in love talk to their new partners. The highlight of the set was her longer observational material, including the story of bumping into someone in HMV that she recognised very slightly, meeting his fiancée at dinner and then realising she didn't know the couple at all.

After the interval, Jo asked the audience for marks out of ten on some new gags. For the joke "Don't you hate it when people offer you food to show off the fact that they've been abroad?", they even contributed a better punchline, suggesting "Have a slice of Arctic Roll" should finish with "it's from Iceland" rather than Tesco. Ms Caulfield was suitably impressed. "You're brilliant, Chorley."

The set finished with her running through some of the audience's pet hates (men, dog waste, Mormons), a list she admitted was much more irreverent than those of other venues she'd played, who had concentrated on the global economic crisis. "You're very angry, Chorley."

Hopefully memories of Chorley and the gag that the Little Theatre audience rewrote will stay with her. From her caustic tweets the following day, memories of the Hartwood certainly will.