CAT IN THE ACT

Thursday 28th May
The train journey to Kilkenny for the fourth Murphy's Cat Laughs Festival was as eventful as you'd expect any train journey to be - boring and cold, with the mandatory five minute stop for no reason whatsoever somewhere between Carlow and Bagnelstown. I bumped into Irish comedians Dara O Briain and Eddie Bannon at Heuston Station, as well as Eddie's good lady wife, Flee, and a nice Australian comedy producer friend of their's, Mary. Although there were five of us, we didn't feel famous enough to wolf down ices, tongue sandwiches and lashings and lashings of ginger beer so we settled on a family size box of smarties instead and passed the journey with a typically profound conversation about the unfeasibly large amount of gravel that can be seen alongside the railway tracks between Dublin and Kilkenny.
Upon arriving in Kilkenny we checked into our various lodgings, whereupon I bounded down to the Press Office to collect my official press pack, which this year came in a plastic folder and contained the obligatory Cat Laughs t-shirt, the even more obligatory vouchers entitling the bearer to 10 pints of sumptuous, creamy Mmmmurphy's Irish Stout (Glendenning, you slut! - Ed.), a #5 call card and an informative press release from the festival sponsors which divulged, among other interesting nuggets of trivia, that "Kilkenny is undoubtedly the perfect setting for festivities this Bank Holiday Weekend as over 30,000 people are expected to vote with their feet and travel to the sunny South East for the first real taste of the summer. The Murphy's Cat Laughs has been described by many as one of the top three comedy festivals in the world and has this year been dubbed "The coolest festival in Ireland" by the Irish Independent."
Despite the absence of any ringing endorsements culled from Hot Press, I refuse to be riled by this blatant snub and retire instead to Cleere's pub where I meet a friend of mine, Dermot, who lives in Kilkenny. Having made short work of the beer vouchers, we adjourn to the hostelry's theatre to see last fortnight's interviewee, Rich Hall, get the festival under way. As ever, the man is brilliant, although his trademark banter with the audience is rendered bankrupt when it becomes apparent that everyone in the first three rows is either very shy or very mute.
Rich's best gag is about how surprised he was to hear about the kid in Arkansas who had killed his parents before going to school and turning the gun on his classmates. "I'm tellin' you man, I was really shocked," he expounded. "I'd never realised that they actually had schools in Arkansas!"

Friday 29th May
As my room is bereft of "Do Not Disturb" signs, I am roused from my slumber at some ungodly hour by a strange woman who wants to change my sheets. Sadly, she has no nursing background and is unable to do it while I'm still lying in the bed so I get up and go downstairs for breakfast only to be told that I can't have any. The reasons are twofold:
a) Breakfast isn't served after 10am.
b) It's lunchtime.
I bump into fellow hack Ian O'Doherty and further pintage ensues, this time at the Emigrant Hotel. Glam Tart-in-chief Paul Wonderful joins us and I become embroiled in my second intellectual discussion (the merits of Millennium over The X-Files) in as many days.
On the way to Paul Merton's show, I bump into Johnny Vegas who has himself been checking out Cleere's, his venue for the festival's duration. I castigate him for his refusal to do the Hot Press Mad Hatter's Box in either of the last two issues, citing that if it was good enough for Bertie Ahern and Noel Gallagher, it should be good enough for a fat curly-haired clay-merchant from St Helens. Needless to say, he hasn't a clue what I'm talking about (I'd put the request in to one of his handlers), but states that it's his policy not to do questionnaires as they're always "dead fookin' boring.'What's your favourite colour?', I mean what the fuck kind of funny answer can you do for that?'." Although his argument is decidedly convincing, nice lad that he is, he promises to do it before the weekend is out.
Despite the fact that it's his first stand-up show in aeons, Paul Merton is well received. "Comedy is truth and truth is comedy," is the Merton motto and there's no shortage of either as he broaches such personal topics as his stay in a psychiatric hospital several years ago. Without being side-splitting, Merton's act is poignant and always engaging. It's clearly laughter he's after, not pity. At the end he looks visibly relieved when the packed auditorium roars for more. Unfortunately, he confesses that he doesn't have anymore, but obviously retires to his hotel to rack his brains as I'm told that for the rest of his shows during the weekend, his encore consisted of a machine gun burst of old gags.
The Vegas show is a sell-out, and despite forgetting large chunks of his set, Johnny runs over time and is an overwhelming success. Unfortunately for the girl who is coaxed onstage to assist him at his potters wheel, however, his trademark smock has been traded in for an apron and she leaves the show dripping with wet clay. Then again, maybe it was excitement. He's a sexy boy, our Johnny.
This year, for the first time, the late night Festival Club (for comedians, journalists and various other hangers on) has been moved out of town to the Hotel Kilkenny, presumably to discourage undesirables (comedians, journalists and various other hangers-on) from attending. Nevertheless, I attend and continue carousing until the early hours. It's a tough existence this business they call show.

Saturday 30th June
I am awoken from a coma by a ringing phone at 11:50am. It's Liam Mackey, contributing editor of Hot Press and co-host (along with Paddy Murray) of The Murray ... Mackey Show, which begins at noon on Saturdays on Today FM. He's just calling to remind me that I'd volunteered to do a piece on the festival for the show and I'd be the first item on after the news. He asks me what I'll be talking about and I croak down the phone that there might be a problem in that I'm not confident that I'll be able to talk at all, without having to rush to the bathroom to chunder my guts up. "Ah you'll be fine, just check your notes and come up with something interesting to say," is the chirpy response.
I grab a notebook and scribble down my notes from the previous two evenings. A couple of minutes later I'm on live national radio and somehow pull off the astonishing feat of stringing together a series of vaguely coherent sentences based around the words "Merton", "Vegas", "Clay", "Catharsis" and "Festival Club". Mackey slags me off for being hungover and bets me that I can't remember a single Paul Merton gag. I assure him he's right. Within seconds, John Cleere, proprieter of Cleere's rings the show and tells them one instead. I've forgotten that one as well, now, although I'm fairly certain it's something to do with the Aga Khan and cookers.
Tonight, Geordie comedian Ross Noble has a torrid time of it in Bollards pub. Because a sizable chunk of his material sees him extol the virtues of sex with midgets, a couple of his colleagues decide they should inform him that a vertically challenged man has been seen entering the venue. Having written Ross a note, they pass it to the compere who promptly decides that by giving Noble the note he would be compromising his artistic integrity and so, the comic is forced to wing it. The relevant section of Noble's show is greeted by embarrassed silence from a clearly mortified crowd, a silence that is punctuated only by raucous peals of laughter from, you've guessed it, the midget.
Elsewhere, Dylan Moran enters Rich Hall (don't be disgusting, it's a local venue named in the Montana comic's honour, because he's the only performer to have played at all four Cat Laughs - B.G.) and despite seeming slightly subdued, delivers the goods with typical effortlessness. The spawny git.
Later, in the Festival Club, Donna McPhail, another interviewee from the last issue of HP, insists on buying me a pint. When I point out that I already have two in front of me and indicate that there is actually beer seeping out of my eyes and ears, she apologises. "I've got just the tonic for you, Barry!" she chirps before disappearing to the bar and returning with a glass of clear liquid. I knock it back, as instructed, and while I'm not sure what exactly it was, I'd swear it wasn't tonic.

Sunday 31st May
I bypass the annual soccer match between the Irish Comedy XI and The Rest Of The World Comedy XI out of concern that, because there are only 13 Irish comics (12, excluding the decidedly unathletic Dylan Moran) performing at the Festival, I might be press-ganged into togging out. Deciding that I do need some physical exercise, though, I retire to Bollards, ascend a high stool and watch Cork dispatch Limerick in the first round of the Munster Hurling Championship. Because I'm on a health kick, I drink two pints of coke.
Dermot and I head for Langtons, where Dave Attell, Kathleen Madigan and Bill Bailey are due to perform. Barry Murphy, the compere, warms up one half of the audience by getting them to chant "Michael Flatley's shoes!" in a profoundly silly manner and then warms the other half by getting them to laugh at the others for being complete fucking eejits. Andre Agassi lookalike Dave Attell, one of the revelations of the festival, gets off to a ropey start, but pulls his show out of the fire by descending to a level of smut which prompts a number of female audience members to leave the room in disgust.
Kathleen Madigan played a blinder too, with some particularly clever material about fishing, from a fish's perspective, being the same as an alien abduction from a human perspective: "I mean, when you're on the river bank, the fish don't know you're up there. So if you catch one and then throw it back, what's he going to tell his friends?
'I'm tellin' ya, I was just swimming along, I ate this maggot and the next thing I'm being yanked out of the water into the light by this really weird looking creature. I'm tellin' ya, it's true. Ya gotta believe me, look at this hole in my mouth!'"
I miss Bill Bailey, because it clashes with the Gerry Sadowitz Magic Show, a quite astonishing display of sorcery from the anarchic Glaswegian which is reviewed elsewhere in this issue.
Tonight, the atmosphere in the Festival Club is most convivial, like a wedding except with no relations, bride or groom, but infinitely more daft uncles. Within minutes of entering, I'm accosted by a very tired and emotional Johnny Vegas: "You and 'Ot Press 'ave always been very fuckin' good to me Barry and now it's time for Johnny Vegas to repay the favour. Give me your questionnaire and I promise I'll fill it out for ya! It'll be the best questionnaire ever because I promise I'll put me 'eart and soul into it, just like I'm goin' to put my 'eart and soul into what I'm about to do now, for 'Ot Press, for Kilkenny and for everyone here tonight because this 'as been one of the greatest weekends of my life!"
With that, he grabs the microphone from a bemused Barry "Dean Martin" Murphy and launches into a raucous Frank Sinatra medley which threatens to last all night . . . and eventually does. Proceedings are wrapped up with an alarmingly harmonious
rendition of - I shit you not - 'O Holy Night', a surreal dawn
chorus which demonstrates that comedians, as well as
politicians north and south of the border, like their sauce.

Monday 1st June
Having lost the will to live and painfully aware that deadlines
wait for no man, I decide that while this party isn't entirely
over, I'm going home anyway. My conscientiousness means
that I miss the final show of the Festival, Goodnight Cats,
which by all accounts, was a cracker.
I can tell you, however, that the last word of this year's Cat Laughs went to Dom Irrera, the caustic, foul-mouthed Italian American with the big, big (black) heart. It goes as follows:
A kid is sitting in a park eating a big bag of candy when this
man comes up to him and says "Hey, kid, you shouldn't eat
so much candy at your age. It'll take years off your life." So
the kid looks at the stranger and says, "Actually, my Grandpa lived to be 99 years old."
"But I bet he didn't eat as much candy as you do?" replied
the stranger.
"No," answers the kid. "But he minded his own fucking
business."
Nice. So that's it then for another year, and as for Johnny Vegas' Mad Hatter . . . well, don't hold your breath, I'm told
it's in the post. n