Office workers sunbathing in Stephen’s Green, packs of marauding Spanish students with their great skin and bad manners, and the stench of taxi drivers’ body odour reaching new heights. It can only be summer in Ireland.

For the stand up comic this means a time of long days and sultry nights eating ice cream and wondering if you will be asked to play Kilkenny and Edinburgh. Hectic, stressful times I’m sure you’ll agree, (apologies to pilots, brain surgeons and Luas ticket inspectors) but there is a far greater challenge facing us. The tourist invasion.
I know that you are thinking that more tourists means bigger audiences and therefore more money for down at heel comedians. This is true and God bless foreigners and their free spending ways. However this influx also brings with it its own challenges.
During the winter, jokes about Centra and wondering if Shrek and Mary Harney are in fact one and the same person will keep Irish audiences happy for hours but in summer its a different matter. You have to change your act drastically if you want to get your laughs and consequently get paid.
A new Saturday night comedy club has been opened in the IFI, Temple Bar by impresario Dara Kiernan and I had the honour of emceeing the opening night. As it is a new club and Dara is such a nice guy I wanted it to go really well. So, loaded down with my best Luas and Bertie material I set off with high hopes and a song in my heart.
You can imagine my horror upon asking that staple emcee question “So how many tourists do we have in?” to be greeted by a wall of noise that would not have been out of place at the recent Oxegen festival.
Sadly I realised that no one was going to appreciate my impression of a Donegal Garda arresting the Pope on trumped up terrorist charges or Mary Harney in a lapdancing club singing, “Me so Harney, me love you long time”. (Before I continue I must apologise to anyone who now has a stripping Tainiste seared into their brain).
But it got me thinking: there has to be one joke, one subject that is truly international, something that will get everyone laughing from Albania to Yemen, (there is one letter that doesn’t work on my keyboard, can anyone guess which one?).
Do the French like jokes about food and sex?
Do Americans find fat jokes offensive?
Do the English enjoy being reminded of the famine?
Is there a common denominator? Is there one subject we can all relate to, believe in and most of all, find funny?
Well folks after much thought and soul searching I have found that there is one thing we all agree on and one thing we can always laugh about.
I can say it to any audience in the world and get a laugh and a cheer. Do you want to hear it?
Okay, here it is;
George W. Bush is a c..t.

Steve Cummins will be performing in the IFI over the coming week sand you can hear him and his alter ego Tarquin Sinclair on98FM’s Late Night Talk every Tuesday