It s Paddy s Weekend in Galway and what better way to spend the national holiday than in a club named after the building where our very nationhood was claimed in 1916. Or maybe they named it the GPO as a tribute to the local mail service and the good folk stacking letters and weighing parcels therein. There are many questions but few answers, Grasshopper . . .
Tonight is Sunday night so that means the GPO s comedy club. It s a particularly strong bill on this occasion, with Ian Coppinger topping the bill and the audience s clapometer come the final curtain-call; an excellent Australian stand-up by the name of Trevor Crook who looks disconcertingly like Liverpool FC legend, Terry McDermott, and who delights us with his laid-back gleeful misogyny and a particularly memorable joke about a guy who breaks into a sperm bank; and regular MC and jewel in the GPO s crown, Perrier-winning, local-living Tommy Tiernan.
The venue is pleasantly stuffed: an upbeat mix of back-packing tourists, fresh-faced Irish stew-dents, and young working adults (at a wild guess, in the computer industry?).
The club is but a short walk from Eyre Square, the city s geographical focal point, on Eglinton Street, and if the town is feeling hungover from the previous two night s Paddy s weekend celebrations, it doesn t show.
The evening s proceedings are introduced by the GPO Comedy Club s manager and booker, Gerry Mallon, a genial Mayo man who is himself a veteran of the stand-up circuit and who often appears on the bill when circumstances dictate. Tonight, though, his on-stage role is but a cameo; it s off stage where he takes the lead role, securing top notch international comedians who come to Ireland especially to play his club and its Cork counterpart, City Limits the spirit of the club is that it is determinedly independent of Dublin, refusing to look to the capital for the inspiration for its line-ups.
"I used to get really fucking bitter and twisted about all the plaudits the Laughter Lounge in Dublin got when it first started," says Mallon, seated in the upstairs chill-out room before the show. "It was as if it had introduced comedy into the country. The same goes for the Kilkenny festival.
"In fact, there had been a scene in Cork and Galway for maybe two or three years already. But I m over it now cos I m older and wiser. So it doesn t bug me anymore. You see, most journalists didn t bother their arse to get past Lucan, so it was rarely publicised, but even before I started this club there had been a comedy club in Galway which was co-managed by Pearse Boyce. That lasted for about two years."
One of the things the GPO has going for it is that it is located in such a picturesque, lively city as Galway. It s no wonder the overseas visiting comedians flock here.
"The international comedians come over because they know they re gonna have a rollicking good weekend in Ireland," continues Mallon. "They know they re gonna be well-paid cos we do look after them; and they get grog and dancing girls and a mountain of cocaine!!!"
How does Mallon decide which, er, noses he s going to powder?
"I keep abreast of things over the Net. A lot of the time, I choose acts based on information I get from a couple of agencies in London whose judgement I trust. They won t send me a turkey. They bring guys over from the States or Australia or wherever and put them in the Comedy Store for a month so they ll have had them well-vetted by then.
"They re straight-shooters, these agents. They ll say to you, I don t think yer man s good , I think he s got a good 20 (minutes) , he s a shit closer , he s a good opener . . . whatever. Such openness is unusual in the agency world because every agent is usually just pushing their own act big time.
"But even the most average American comedian still is really slick and professional and knows how to work a room. They might not be particularly innovative but they won t die on their arse either. Then again, some of them just blow you away; they re clever and brilliant showmen."
Clever and brilliant are two adjectives that also spring to mind when watching Tommy Tiernan in action. His material is so new he sits studying his notes before the show like a student doing some last-ditch cramming for an exam. He passes the test, though, with a decidedly unflattering but very funny account of a domestic row with his wife all ruefully true, he tells me afterwards. The audience is given little reason to believe they are watching a man who is still recovering from a serious all-night bender the previous evening in London with the expat Irish comedy fraternity. His trip to the Big Smoke was occasioned by an appearance on the Bruce Forsythe show in front of over 2,000 people in the Palladium, which he says was a real thrill.
"Most Irish comics would think at some stage of moving to London but it s not necessary anymore," says the Navanite comedian after the show. "The circuit in London is tough. There s just as good a living to be eked out here and it s friendlier. It s a bit too workmanlike over there; it really is like clocking in and clocking out. You drive off to some place, you do a gig and then everybody goes home. It s not like here, where you sit around and smoke crack afterwards!!"
His role as the GPO s regular MC also helps Tiernan whose career as a stand-up began here with a few open spots to hone his act, acting as a sort of sounding-board for the routines that previously only existed in his head. He s been compering shows here now for a good 18 months.
"Tommy gets to thrash out new material in a good, friendly hometown hero atmosphere," says Mallon, "and the crowd here aren t a bit shy of telling him if he s going down avenues they don t like. So he has a good rapport."
Tommy will later concur. "It s good to have a place where you can just mess around and not be afraid of just dying on your arse," states Tiernan ". . . which is what happens here a bit. But that s the nature of the gig because it s new material and you can develop ideas.
"The danger is that you do stuff then that doesn t travel out of Galway because a lot of it you re thinking off the top of your head and so you re making these people laugh but it s not universal. It can sometimes be a kind of a quick-fix solution."
Does Tiernan find the Galwegians to be a horse of a different colour to audiences he encounters elsewhere?
"I play here so much now I kind of forget what the Galway audiences are like," he says. "They re kind of clever, I think. Certainly, they used to be quite tough . . . but they re not as tough now."
Gerry Mallon has also done his own analysis of his congregation, which he believes is a fluid, changeable entity which can alter, well, according to the weather!
"Because it s on every Sunday, 52 weeks a year, there are natural peaks and troughs. Initially, it was a quite student-based audience and so come exam time the attendance would dip.
"Also, we re at the mercy of the weather if it s snowing outside, people stay indoors; and if it s a hot sunny evening in summer, who the fuck s gonna want to spend it in a dark, smoky room when there s lovely countryside five minutes down the road?
"But since then, it s just got steadier and steadier. I d say the demographics and the age profile has spread out more and more so it s a good mix of people now.
"And because the club is on on a Sunday night, it means that everyone who comes to the GPO is here to see the comedy. Having made the effort, they re more up for listening."
And participating: there s an audience competition where the person who comes up with the most cheered punchline to a set question wins a prize. Tonight the question is: what do St. Patrick and Bono have in common? Tiernan reads out an assortment of answers from the stage. Most of them are unrepeatable; some are clearly libellous. One thing s for sure, though: it s been a big red letter day at the GPO.