Dreadful Nonsense

Myself and Mrs D paid a visit to the old Comedy Club, something we've not done for enormous ages, due to backs and boyfriends and pay cheques and all sorts of valid reasons. We decided that we would be attending come hell or high water, because we hadn't been on the new Friday nights yet, and had heard that crowd numbers were slightly down on Fridays, because word hasn't quite caught on that it's open for business. Less people is a GOOD thing in Shazzle land at the moment, still being quite tender and emotional following the old epidural, and not wanting to have too many people crowding around me, because crowds tend to associate with pushing, shoving and accidental knocking, and when that happens around me I become violently aggressive and usually kick people in shins, swear in faces and spit. And Mrs D doesn't like that.

So no matter who was in, we had resolved before walking in to the bar, we were going to stay there and damn well be entertained. (Can you sense what's coming next?)

And damn well entertained we weren't. Good God, but comedy in Dublin is in a sorry mess at the moment. Now, don't get me wrong, and please god if you're Des Bishop don't go quoting me on this and then screaming from the stage at Vicar Street about it all. (This is something he did at the last Vicar Street gig I saw him at - ranted on for about 5 minutes about some poor idiot critic who had the gall to question the future of Irish stand up. Like 99.9% of the audience give a shit what one critic has said, and what one comedian wants to say in return. Write a letter, Des.) There are some fabulous Irish stand ups working the Irish circuit right this moment in time. Barry Murphy is one of my top three favourite comedians of all time. Ian Coppinger, Eddie Bannon, Neil Delamare, Kevin Gildea, Anne Gildea, Sue Collins, David O'Doherty, Patrick McDonnell, and Des Bishop himself are comedians you could happily see regularly without ever getting bored. Dave McSavage, Joe Rooney and Tommy Nicholson are great the first time you see them. There are some brilliant new acts pushing through to challenge the current big boys on the scene, and all could be looking well...

... if there wasn't so much SHIT about at the same time. It's not just that the scene is so small that once you've attended regularly for a couple a months you've seen all there is to see. I'm a fan of repetition. I like to see acts slowly develop, I like to notice when lines have been tweaked, when the order of their set has been rearranged, when they're trying out new material or reintroducing old stuff. I even like it when they blatantly rip each other off.

But last night is a case in point: of the five acts on, we'd seen four before. And of those five, only one was in any way entertaining. Contestant number one was the compere, who we'd seen once before, and who was just as lack lustre this time as last. Even his hair had managed to annoy me by the time we left, and I'm not usually that irrational. Contestant number two I'd seen about five times in the last four years, and has been hideously awful at each and every performance. Last night I laughed so hysterically hard at how badly he was doing again that I started to weep. Contestant number three is a character act and is truly brilliant - the only real laughs of the night. If you get a chance to see it, Sue Collins as Carmel just gets better and better. Contestant number four was the new guy - very pretty to look at, which kept our attention for all of three minutes until we realised that his act didn't match up to the appeal of his face, and we lost interest. Contestant number five... ah, Contestant number five.

Number five was my favourite part of the night. During the fag break, when we didn't know who was headlining, me and Mrs D decided that we weren't sticking around if it was a certain person we'd spotted in the bar. Turns out it was. He has been so awful every time we've seen him before that we usually spent his set texting each other begging for euthanasia to end the pain, but unfortunately Mrs D had forgotten her phone, so we decided to leggit out the back fire door.

As we unsubtly got up to leave, Number five made some comment from the stage that I didn't catch, because I was too busy giggling at our naughty rudeness. Mrs D, with the kind of immaculate comic timing Number five would probably give his testicles for, issued him with the best heckle I've ever heard dealt out in a comedy club: she slammed the door so hard behind her it nearly came off the hinges.

We didn't stop laughing until we reached the next pub. Now that's fucking comedy.

This entry was posted on 17 July 2004 at 12:20 pm. 0 comments

Dreadful Nonsense

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