he who laughs last, missed the punchline

Myself and the missus took a short sojourn away from the children to go and laugh at funny people down in Kilkenny. It was Cat Laughs time again and for the third year in a row we managed to get down for it. We only went down for the Sunday this year and there were a few sad faces around the town from the prior nights comedy and associated activities. The first vision that greeted me on arrival at the hotel was a very hungover looking Bren Berry. He was clutching some football gear and allegedly going to play a game of football. Most people won't know who Bren Berry is, so i'll tell you. He's not a comedian but is the ex-guitarist with the band Revelino. These days he's managing the Vicar St venue so he's probably all pally with the comedic fraternity. Most people won't remember Revelino but suffice to say they were a moderately successful Dublin band in the mid-nineties. Couldn't tell you what they're up to now.

As it turns out Bren was heading to the annual Ireland vs Rest of the World soccer match. I popped up to it myself to check out lots of fat tubby Irish comics play a bunch of other comics, most of whom looked like they'd never played soccer before. The one notable exception was British comic, Russell Howard who looks like he plays a bit of Sunday league football. Anyway the match wasn't that good. I think Ireland won.

We had three shows to go to and the first one had four comics on the bill. Doing the Mc stuff for the first gig was Neil Delamere. First up was a Canadian, Tim Nutt, who managed to do a fairly decent routine in the sweaty venue. Second up was the UK comedienne, Josie Long, who I thought was pretty good. A lot of her jokes seemed to go over the heads of most of the audience. I imagine that it would be better to go and see her in a smaller venue where the intimacy would suit her madness. Here she is banging on about her five favourite books on YouTube. The last comedian was the afore-mentioned Russell Howard who it turns out is not only good at football but he's pretty funny too. You might have seen him on that Mock the Week programme cos I've just remembered that that's where I've seen him before.

Next show up was compered by Kildare comedian, Jarlath Regan, who has some show coming out on TV3 soon. It's going to be interesting to see what sort of comedic output comes from over by the Naas Road. Jarlath appears to be a nice enough chap and coped well with the beered-up culchie mad fuckers who were sitiing in the front row . The first up this time was a young Australian bloke called Josh Thomas who mostly banged on about his fucked up family and childhood and his gay brother. At times he made me laugh but at other times he just seemed to be a bit ragged and losing his train of thought. Here he is about a year ago performing four minutes of the routine that I saw yesterday. Next up was an English bloke called Robin Ince who was fairly highbrow for the lads in the front row. Here he is doing some material from two years ago that he also did yesterday. I'm quickly finding out that I shouldn't watch the Paramount Comedy Channel as it means I've inevitably seen most of their show before I see them live. Last on the bill was Navan madman Tommy Tiernan. I usually think he's shite but he was all a tizzy about some news headline that had appeared in some tabloid paper. It turns out that the day before he'd made some reference about Madeleine McCann and some aul biddy got upset and rang Joe Duffy. He told the same joke again and to be honest it was all a bit of a storm in a teacup. Tommy Tiernan, best summed up as a bit of a mad fucker who can be funny sometimes.

Last gig featured a slimmed down bill of three comedians. MC bloke was Karl Spain who sweated on me and spat at me a couple of times. I'd arrived late and had to sit at the front beside some mad South African girl who kept commenting on the jokes for the entire gig. She was a fucking pain in the hole. First up was US comedian, Reginald D Hunter, who was pretty good. I'd seen him last year and enjoyed him more back then. Here he is doing his thing. The other comedian was bloke from the UK called Lee Mack. I've seen him a couple of times on the tellybox but he was pretty funny in real life. Here he is doing a Live at The Apollo gig last December.

The festival club last night was exactly the same as last year and the year before. The same dodgy band played and invited a few comedians to showcase their musical talents. Des Bishop did his Jump Around party piece but much more interesting was Rich Hall singing the same verse of Fulsom Prison Blues over and over again. I'd seen enough.