While RTE television’s treatment of home-grown comic talent has been nothing short of abysmal (excepting the brilliant Paths To Freedom), RTE radio has always fared slightly better. From the much-mised Scrap Saturday to The Vinyl Curtain, the latter pop quiz featuring the considerable dry wit of our own Stuart Clark, RTE radio have shown more willingness to give voice to the country’s out-there comedy performers than their televisual stablemates. On Saturday, April 28th at 11.02 am, Stand-Up Stories will present the first in a six-part series of one-man half-hour shows, the first being Hoot Press favourite Karl McDermot’s A Smaller Than Life Character. He sadly won’t be reviving his Tony Schilacci mobster, but instead presents a wryly comic tale of a writer attempting to sell a futuristic version of the Easter rising to his publisher. We join the protagonist on a bus journey and hear his rambling musings as he considers life, work and American culture. It is according to McDermott: “A story about personal space and the space between persons. It’s a play about families, growing up and straight boomerangs! It’s about Ireland; what we are doing, where we are going and how much it’s going to cost us when we get there.”

Eddie Bannon’s Big Fat Dog is broadcast on May 5th. Bannon had previously previewed this one man show in Dublin before travelling with it to Edinburgh. It’s a hysterical and oddly moving play about a hypochondriac young boy dealing with the impending death of a favourite dog, called Blackie. “That’s the dog, who’s called Blackie, not the young boy,” clarifys Bannon, helpfully. Expect references to semantics, sweets and seventies culture.

Kevin Gildea is a veteran of alternative Irish comedy, and his inclusion in the series is proof of his enduring popularity. Get Up, Kevin Gildea is broadcast on May 12th, and is a treastise on one man’s realationship with his bed. “All the important things in life happen in bed,” purports Gildea. “Conception, gestation, dreams, reading, pillow talk, armed robbery (?) and if you’re lucky, death.” In fact, the piece offers a wide ranging look at an Irishman’s attitude to life in general, and promises to capture the best of Gildea’s live performance.

Brendan Burke’s Love Story is broadcast on May 19th, and concerns an eighteen year old boy’s first experience of falling in love, while coping simultaneously with the vagaries of the Irish educational system. While fans of the follically challenged and bearded Burke might doubt his ability to get into the character of a young boy, rest assured his treatment of his subject is both touching and highly amusing.

Mark Doherty is one of the more unique, if you’ll forgive the bad English (mine, incidentally, not his), of the current crop of Irish stand-ups. Trading in a surreal and free-form style, he avoids the staples of beer and birds and presents an altogether more cerebral view. A Hundred And Something is broadcast on May 26th, and concerns a one-hundred year old man’s journey to visit his dying father. Expect some rueful reminiscences of Ireland and it’s past.

Sean Kavanagh is a man who’s better known as a writer than as a performer, having written for The End (RTE) and The Empire Strikes Back (BBC NI) among others, but his Mental, broadcast on June 5th evidences a strong performing talent as he dons the guise of an inmate of a mental hospital reflecting back on his life with delusional comfort.

Script editor Barry Murphy, himself no stranger to both live performance and broadcasting explained the reasoning behind the selection. “When we came up with the idea we wanted to use people who had experience of one-man theatrical shows. We wanted to offer a variety of styles and approaches, as well as differing subject matters and it gradually became a rights of passage thing.”

Was it a deliberate policy to include only male performers?

“We did approach a couple of women including Pom Boyd, but the women weren’t available at the time. Hopefully if we get a second series…”