Y2K was the year of the Woman From Clontarf. That fabled phone-show caller from Apris Match s Three Joe Duffys sketch caused stomach-altering bouts of laughter chez Hoot Press, injecting a wonderfully surreal slice of caricature into RTE s Euro 2000 coverage. Quite what the poor man himself made of the whole thing, one can only guess but I m sure Messrs. Cooper, Cook and Murphy won t be watching the Queen s speech in Duffy s gaff this Christmas.

And it wasn t just Apris Match, since 2000 was the year when much of RTE s comedy output started to get good reviews. Until now, the national broadcaster has generally been scorned for its contribution in this department with a level of ire usually reserved for Nazi war criminals and Dublin taxi drivers.
However, Straight To Video, Karl MacDermott s quirky series of mock-home movies, was hailed for its presumption of a sophisticated, comedy-wise audience while Michael McElhatton s Paths To Freedom, a mockumentary on two ex-convicts from different sides of the Irish class divide, was lauded as a well-wrought satire on the Ireland of the 21st century, with its golf-playing ponces and Ghettoblasted-gobshites. There was also the continuing perversity of Podge & Rodge, whose colourful tales of rural sexual depravity were a howl.
RTE also got around to putting the best of our comedians on telly with The Lounge, which gave the bulk of Ireland s best comedians their chance of not-quite-fifteen minutes of fame. Deirdre O Kane proved an effective host and there s no doubt that putting domestic stand-up comedy in the shop window like this can only have positive repercussions.
However, it wasn t all plain sailing: Don t Feed The Gondolas is nowhere near as funny as it thinks it is and continued to flounder, with Sean Moncrief and Dara O Briain leaving the sinking ship, to be replaced by Kevin McAleer (who had been presumed living in a Buddhist monastery in Mongolia) and New Yorker, Des Bishop. Bishop had an eventful year to say the least, relocating to Cork before undergoing treatment for testicular cancer, a story which made front page news in the Evening Herald and which the comedian good-naturedly joked about on Gondolas only days after his operation.
The political satire of Bull Island was criticised for being far too soft on its targets when the
tribunals taking place in Dublin Castle
suggested that many of the participants in public life in this country should be taken out and shot, not gently poked fun at. However, we did get a thorough review of the tribunals at HQ at The Hall of Fame, Will We Get A Receipt For This? Will We F**k! , which wryly deconstructed the brain-frying minutiae of the tortuous proceedings to comic effect.
HQ also hosted Irish Comedy Week, with Dylan Moran putting us under his spell while under the influence, in what was his second appearance there of the year. It was a decidedly good year for the ragged-haired misanthropist, who co-wrote and starred in his own sitcom for Channel 4, Black Books, while simultaneously appearing in the BBC comedy drama, How Do You Want Me? Black Books was an intermittently inspired half-hour of comedy that was pitched somewhere between Seinfeld and Father Ted, with the do-nothing good-for-nothings of the former and the surreal story-lines of the latter blending to pleasing effect, with the show s other writer, Graham Linehan, popping up in a memorable cameo as a put-upon customer in a fast food joint who has to specify the exact number of chips he requires. And Bill Bailey as the idiot sidekick, Manny, was positively Dougal-esque.
Across the water, Victor Meldrew finally put both feet in the grave in the last ever episode of the superb BBC sitcom the scene where he s listening, alone, to the middle-aged cabaret duo doing cheesy karaoke versions of Scuse Me While I Kiss The Sky and Highway 61 Revisited was hysterical. But perhaps the best comedy to be had on the telly was The Royle Family, and in particular Caroline Aherne s attempts to leave everyone else but herself left holding the baby. Having written, directed and starred in the series, Aherne deserves all the awards that will no doubt come her way.
Back home, the best of the new up-and-coming comedians were showcased on the RTE New Comedy Awards and the joint-winners, Dublin s James Gouldsbury and Limerick s Karl Spain, look set to become mainstays on the Irish comedy scene (pending Spain s return from college in Wolverhampton). Meanwhile, last year s best newcomer, David O Doherty, took his new show, The Boy Who Saved Comedy, to Edinburgh where it was warmly received, unlike other more established Irish comedians (no point in calling out their names here) who came out of the festival with their tails between their legs.
What else? Those professional culchies, D Unbelievables, had a residency at Vicar St that saw them play to every man, woman and farmyard animal in the country. In a similar vein, Joe Rooney popped up on TG4 s Ri Ra to spread some light relief as Fergus Scully, the New Age crusty/culchie farmer while Owen O Neill got a pasting from critics for his Oirish paddy-whackery series for the BBC, The Fitz, which was seen as more Oirish than the Oirish themselves.
Ed Byrne and Tommy Tiernan gave a much better account of Irish comedy to British audiences, the former undertaking a mammoth and by all accounts extremely successful tour of the UK and the latter taking over from Ardal O Hanlon as host of The Stand-Up Show on BBC. Meanwhile, Pauline McLynn raced up the bestseller lists with her comic detective novel, Something For The Weekend.
There weren t as many live comedy festivals this year as before due mainly to the decision by Murphy s stout to cut back on their sponsorship of such events but they still backed the Cat Laughs in Kilkenny, which was another unqualified success.
Looking forward to 2001, there is the possibility of new comedy clubs in both The Shelter (beside Vicar St) and HQ (that is, if The Nualas s run in the Middle Abbey St. venue ever ends!).