With The International Bar's re-launched International Comedy Club celebrating its first birthday this month, the club's manager, booker, and resident MC, Des Bishop, has every reason to pop open the champers (or, if his sponsors are reading, pull a pint of Murphy's).
When the New Yorker took over the administration of the club, changing its name from the Mad Cow to its present title in the process, he was given a month's probationary period to get the udders working efficiently or else face the prospect of it being culled altogether, to be replaced by a generically modified music night. To his credit, Bishop got the milk flowing soon enough and now it's a common occurrence that people have to be turned away of a Thursday night.
"With the demise of other clubs in the city such as the Corduroy," says Bishop, sitting on a bench by the wall of the venue itself, "it became very important that the Thursday night here succeed. It was a bit slow at the start, I'll admit, but thankfully the people who run the International were patient with us. And with Murphy's on board now, it means that everyone gets paid!"
So what attracts people to come to the shows here?
"For a start, you've got the mix of comedians. You know you're going to get a balance of newcomers and regular, experienced acts. And you know that there's always the possibility of a really big name turning up to try out new material or sharpen up before a big show. We had Ardal O'Hanlon here doing a secret gig in January the place was absolutely stuffed. But the press weren't meant to know about that one!"
Bishop has become a mainstay of the Irish comedy scene since he moved here as a teenager from New York. As well as appearing in the forthcoming series of televised stand-up, The Lounge, filmed last month at the Eden Quay comedy venue, Bishop is set to appear in Network 2's wacky kids' quiz show, 2 Phat, where he will star in a series of cut-away sketches as part of a duo calling themselves the Urban Hip-Hop Warriors. The act is based on Bishop's stand-up routine, in which he plays a bolshy homeboy rapper who, by an accident of birth, happens to hail from Cork and he even has plans to develop a full show with an actual DJ as his partner which will, he hopes, eventually wind its way to Edinburgh.
white middle-class guilt
"I didn't intend for the hip-hop routine to become the focal point of my act but it seems that's the part that everyone remembers after seeing me. I've done some community work in the Fatima Mansions and the kids there all say to me 'Do the rap! Do the rap!' when they see me. Initially, it started off as something spontaneous to amuse my school-friends and then they would keep asking me to do it again so I started working on it and writing new material for it.
"For me, it fulfils a boyhood desire that I had of being a hip-hop star. I had always been into it when I was growing up in New York but back then it wasn't as fashionable as it is now and so I would get slagged for being into Public Enemy. People used to say that I just wanted to be black. And I did! I was weighed down by this white middle-class guilt I was really quite a privileged kid.
"I was listening to De La Soul, Eric B & Rakim . . . But of course, nowadays it's become part of the mainstream and you've got people like Puff Daddy selling it to a white audience and watering it down to the point where you just want to throw up."
Even if he didn't quite become the new Ice-T, Bishop did find himself within a high five's distance of the biggest stars in the business when he posed as the manager of an invented hip-hop star called Eazy B for Network 2's @ last tv. The scam was acted out on the night of the MTV Music Awards in Dublin, when Bishop, his artist, and a camera crew went hob-nobbing it around the city to all the post-awards parties in town, trying to bunk in to the strictly VIP bashes.
"That was really fun. Until 6 o'clock that evening, I didn't even know if the whole thing was going ahead but eventually I got the call from @lastTV and I was told to dress up in something that would make me look like a pop star's manager. So I threw some clothes together and voila!
"I was amazed at how easily we got past all the cops around The Point. We just looked the part, and no-one knows what half these guys look like anyway. We managed to get into the foyer of the Point itself and hung around for ten minutes or so before leaving we had got everything we needed on film at that stage.
"Then we went around the various clubs I remember this guy outside The PoD saying to me as he saw me get out of the limousine: 'I know who you are!' as though he was really in the know! Then when I went up to the door, I said 'This is Eazy B from New York' and the woman said, 'Oh yeah, Eazy B, he's on the list'!! We also went to Vicar St. where The Charlatans were playing and there wasn't much happening there celeb-wise so when everyone saw us there with the camera crew, they all crowded around us to get a look. If you turn a camera on someone, it's amazing how differently people perceive you. The whole purpose of the programme was to show up what a load of bullshit the whole thing is and I think we did that. That said, it was a lot of fun!"
Bishop recounts how he got to drink within earshot of the likes of Donna Air, Mariah Carey, and the Honeyz all of whom were blissfully unaware that they were in the rarefied company of the world's most fictitious hip-hop star. But who knows? Maybe one day, they'll be trying to bunk in on the guest-list of the real Des Bishop!