FROM A WHISKER TO A SCREAM

Despite the cruel fact that the Cats have been officially robbed of their hometown's 'city' status, at least Kilkenny was the capital of all things comical over the Whit weekend. Over thirty-eight comics performed with eight making their European debuts, reinforcing Kilkenny s reputation for a performance centred aesthetic that is lost in the hype manufacturing media circus of Edinburgh.
The other keystone to making the Cats such a laugh is that Ireland's medieval city is booming with oodles of good quality hotels (no less than four opened in the last year), and countless old style pubs. Also, all venues are within walking distance, making attendance of several shows on the one night a pleasure rather than a chore.

Of the hardy regulars, Dom Irrera has been a Cat Laughs favourite since 1996 with a celebrity fan base that includes Oprah, Letterman and Jay Leno. While his razor sharp streetwise wit contained many moments of comic genius, some of the material teetered dangerously on the brink of being racist and sexist. The inclusion of some material loosely based on child abuse and paedophilia at the end of his set at The Ormonde could be construed as being highly offensive. Sure, good stand up should be challenging, but this was very close to being just sick and highly ignorant of the potential sensitivities of audience members.
However, it must be said that Dom Irrera simply sparkled at Kilkenny Exposed alongside Owen O'Neill, Dara O'Briain and that other hardy Kilkenny annual Rich Hall (no venues named after him this year!). The comic quartet did little more than read out stories from the Kilkenny People and punctuate them with pithy remarks, but it made for hilarious stuff that you can't imagine working anywhere else. It just shows that you simply can't beat the provisional press for a hilariously accurate blow by blow insight into the mad, mad, mad world in which we all live.
For many the main attraction of Cat Laughs 2000 was the live debut of the Aprhs Match team of Gary Cooke, Risteard Cooper and Barry Murphy bringing Eamon Dunphy, Bill O'Herlilly, Frank Stapleton, Kevin Myers and many more onscreen favourites alive onstage.
The live setting and slick Fast Show style of presentation meant that the trio could be a little more risqui and hard-hitting in their satire than RTE might allow, with excellent piss takes of Shane Ross and Chris DeBurgh being particularly good examples. However, the real pihce de resistance and curtain-closer for the Apres Match squad was an uproarious rendition of the All Saints pop classic 'Never Ever', as performed by Eamon, Frank and Kevin.
It might well be worth having a little flutter on this becoming this year's Christmas number one.
Other Kilkenny crackers included everybody's favourite Irish Aussie, Jimeoin, who did a pretty good job over the entire weekend of blowing away comedians who registered several decibels higher, but just couldn't touch the quality of his personable flights of fanciful observation.
His affable and accessible stage presence makes him just the kind of person you'd love to go for a pint with packing his material with those delicious little tales of drunkenness and doubt that haunt us all.
Whatever about comedy being the new rock n' roll, unlike rock audience comedy audiences demand a constant stream of freshly written material; Cat Laughs fans certainly don't give performers to whom they forked out their hard-earned dough the benefit of the doubt. For that reason, apparently, Newcastle's Ross Noble got a very hard time off a very pissed up crowd on Saturday night in The New Inn.
Faring far better was the return of Ardal O'Hanlon, who has received his fair share of criticism for a lack of fresh material in recent shows. However, O'Hanlon didn't let anyone down this time round with a bumper set of new material.
But as for the weekend's best performance, no prizes for guessing that it came from the mad, bad and dangerous to know hyperactive ginger nut Jason Byrne, who is no stranger to blowing away the rest of the field. Byrne's madcap delivery and new dimensions on the word surreal make for as happily anarchic a night as you could possibly wish for. Byrne's trump card over the rest of the pack is that he doesn't have to resort to constant writing, as his show is a free-wheeling "look ma no hands!" journey into the heart of improvised lunacy.
Of course for every hit there are one or two lead balloons, and despite encouraging acclaim for an amazing performance at the Cat Laughs in 1997, Canadian comic Harland Willaims did little to live up to his sterling contributions to shows as prestigious as Letterman and Conan O'Brien. Phill Jupitus was the most disappointing performer of the weekend, with lacklustre material that had very narrow appeal to non-Londoners.
Minor misgivings about some of the overpaid cheap gag merchants aside, the beauty of the Cat Laughs compared to, say, your average music festival, is that opinions of performances vary far more widely than your typical gig post-mortem, with one person's Billy Connolly being another's Bernard Manning. It is what makes live stand-up comedy both a very communal and a highly personal celebration of life, love and laughter.
Whatever way you look at it, the fact that Kilkenny has provided such a successful annual focus for the cat's cream of the comic crop is an astonishing achievement in such a short period of time.
Roll on the Cat Laughs 2001!