You are hilarious… You should be on stage.”

How many of you have heard those words as you drunkenly butcher some obscure Monty Python sketch in front of your equally inebriated work colleagues at some works do and thought… I could you know, I could be a comedian, in fact, I’m going to become the funniest man in the world?
Quite a few no doubt, I mean a nation that drinks as much as we do has to be full of people up for a laugh.
Now, how many of you feel the same way when you’ve sobered up and the boss wants to know why your naked bottom is the new company logo on their website?
Very few of you, because, as countless taxi drivers have told me on the way home from gigs, you have to be mad to do that job.
I disagree.
While some form of mental illness may be an advantage it is not a prerequisite. There is one thing you have to be however, you have to be tough.
When you step up on to a stage in a comedy club you are saying to the audience, “I’m funny and I’m going to make you laugh”.
If you don’t live up to that expectation they are liable to eat you alive.
I was lucky the first three times I went up on stage. I was spectacularly unfunny but at least the only sound I could hear was the audience patiently blinking.
The fourth time my luck ran out.
I walked off the stage eight minutes into a 20-minute set feeling as though I’d been danced on by eight skinheads in football boots.
There is nothing quite like the expression on a comedy audience member’s face when he is looking at a failed comedian. It’s a mixture of pity and hate with certain smugness because they would never be stupid enough to make such a fool of themselves.
Well, I have been making a fool of myself for the last four years and I’ve finally stopped hearing the blinking.
So much so that I’m going for it…in three months I am leaving my permanent pensionable government job to try to make it as a full time comedian. I do read the papers however so I have just taken a year’s career break (remember I said madness wasn’t a prerequisite).
There are comedy clubs all over Dublin and not just in the city centre but as far out as Malahide and Rathfarnam. Six nights of the week there is a stage somewhere in Dublin where truly funny people are performing original, raw, unique comedy, which can only be experienced live.
While Dublin may have the lion’s share of comedy clubs it does not have the monopoly. Cork, Waterford and Limerick among others also have live comedy, and if anyone needs a laugh it’s us Limerick people.
The comedy scene is growing again in Ireland albeit slowly and what it needs is your support, Gentle Reader. As for you folks who still think you’re funny the morning after… try it, you’ve nothing to lose but you self-esteem.
If you want a chance to judge for yourself whether or not I’m going to make it I will be performing in The Sugar Club on Sunday August 17 (9pm) in a fantastic line up including Joe Rooney and the incredibly original Reuben.
Be gentle.