UNUSUALLY FOR a man in his profession, the taxi driver who ferried me home on a recent Saturday night peddled a refreshingly astute line in philosophy. In the usual exchange of small talk that comes free with every journey, he d enquired where I d spent the evening and, when I answered that I d been in the Laughter Lounge, he nodded approvingly.
I like that place, he mused. I went one night and thought it d be shite, but it was great. I got a few pints in and the bird had something new to tell her friends about. Fantastic.
When I asked my driver if it had been funny, he looked perplexed.
Funny? he replied, looking for all the world as if the very reason for the venue s existence had bypassed him completely. Yeah, it was actually. It was fuckin hilarious. The bird nearly wet herself.
Despite initial widespread reservations about its feasibility as a long-term venture, the Laughter Lounge on Dublin s Eden Quay recently celebrated its first birthday at the end of its most successful month to date. That the month in question was January, that financially bleak time of year when Joe Public s appetite for extravagant nights out is decidedly diminished, makes the apparent success of the Venue all the more remarkable. It s owner, Peter O Mahony, is not surprised.
I m not surprised that we re still going but what I am surprised about is that it s very quickly got a following, he explains. We ve got about 500 members of the club and we probably got them within the first four or five months of the opening, which indicates that there was a core group of people who were after something like that. There are a lot of familiar faces coming in these days. I don t know how many weeks it s been since we first opened the doors I think it s 63 and there s one guy who s been in every single week. I think it s fair to say that he s a comedy buff.
O Mahony, a successful businessman who runs the club with his father Brian a gentleman with an encyclopaedic knowledge of stand-up comedy claims not to have been much of a comedy buff himself at the time. But all that changed when Peter came in contact with the inimitable Malcolm Hardy, author, comedian, ex-con and proprietor of the notorious Up The Creek comedy club in Greenwich, London.
I didn t know Malcolm at the time, but I knew his two partners at Up The Creek. So, about a week after I got offered the building, I met them for lunch, put two and two together and came up with seven. I thought a comedy club would be the perfect thing to put in the cinema. I had a fair idea of what was involved because I probably would have gone to Jongleurs or The Comedy Store every six or eight weeks or so with friends.
Malcolm gave us some very straightforward advice about the layout of the club: basically to put the stage as low as possible and spend as much money as we could afford on the sound system and the lights. They were two very simple but brilliant bits of advice that make our venue unique from other venues around town that aren t strictly for comedy. The Temple Bar Music Centre, for example, is a very good room but because the stage is so high it takes some of the intimacy out of a stand-up comedy show.
So, it was plain sailing from there on in, then?
Well, the one thing we found out fairly quickly is that there wasn t a market for a club of our size, so we had to set about creating it ourselves. One of the things that we were aware of when we started out was that in London a trip to the comedy club is a very established night out. It isn t an established thing to do in Dublin. Because of that, we spend more time doing direct mailing than putting advertising in newspapers and magazines. Now when people come along, we put a lot of energy into encouraging them to come back again . . . and to bring their friends.
Thus far, the quality of acts who have played in the Laughter Lounge in its opening year has been largely high. Each week, a mixture of international and Irish acts woo up to 1200 punters over three nights. A few, however, have struggled, with one unfortunate British import lasting all of four minutes before being booed off by a particularly bloodthirsty crowd.
We ll only ever throw somebody out for heckling if it s disruptive, Peter explains. If they re just going to be shouting bollocks all the time, that s just annoying. But we ll never throw anyone out for having a bit of banter with the comedian, even if the comedian is coming off worse. One thing that the English acts do say is that the quality of heckling is better than what they re used to and is also far more good-natured.
We do get a few corporate groups in where one or two individuals will decide that they want to disrupt the show, but we ve never had a whole company in that has ganged up and decided to wreck a performance.
The one thing we have definitely found is that with regard to the Irish comedians, with the exception of maybe Dylan [Moran] and Tommy [Tiernan], none of the Irish acts actually put bums on seats, but the audience actually prefer them to any of the international acts. So, a good Irish act would be more popular with the crowd than an English one. Of course there are exceptions, but they tend to be big names from television like Jo Brand or Lee Hurst or Whose Line Is It Anyway? That was a surprise because we always thought that to keep people excited about coming to the club, we d have to keep on bringing in these big names from the UK circuit. But now, people seem to be happy enough to come in and see a Best Of Irish show.
With the exception of Bill Bailey, the most popular draw at the Laughter Lounge to date has been The Stars Of Whose Line Is It Anyway? who have played on numerous occasions. Indeed, such is their popularity that they even took their show on a nationwide tour, playing to packed houses everywhere they went. As someone who finds comedy improv about as interesting and amusing as your average scoreless draw at Goodison Park, I find this disturbing.
Peter disagrees: I could never actually watch that on television because I always thought it was too contrived But I ve seen them over 20 times now and no two shows were even remotely similar.
Other favourites of Peter s include the aforementioned Bill Bailey, magician and comic Paul Zenon and last, but by no means least, the excellent Rich Hall.
Before I started the club Rich was my favourite comedian, Peter expounds. Now that I ve dealt with him a few times he s done nothing but enhance his reputation as far as I m concerned. He s a very funny, very nice guy.
Although the Laughter Lounge may not boast the uniquely friendly (to the point of alarming) atmosphere which permeates its Cork equivalent, City Limits, its future does seem assured.
We re going to stick with our three club nights every Thursday, Friday and Saturday, with a compere and three acts, Peter explains. But we re looking to do different things on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, like a bit of improv or talent shows for companies, where we would provide them with a compere and they could have employees singing or telling gags or whatever.
I d never see us being able to do seven nights a week but I would like us to do four instead of the three a week which we have been doing up until recently. As I said already, it s fast developing a reputation as a good night out.
And, em, a great place to take your bird. n