Clonmelopalooza Rocks.
Another lesson in how to do things right from O’Keeffes in Clonmel as the inaugral Clonmel Comedy Festival proved to be a huge success. At this stage however I think they’re just showing off.
There were five shows over three days at the mini festival in Clonmel. This might not seem like a lot but I call it a bloody good start and is pretty impressive when you consider that Clonmel is only just getting used to having comedy once a month a concept a lot of other towns around the country have struggled to come to terms with.
Dave O’Doherty and Maeve Higgins got things underway on Thursday night to a rapturous response. On Friday Neil Delamere confirmed his popularity by putting on 2 shows. Saturday saw the highlight of the weekend with myself and Jason Byrne performing a show together. Well the first half of the show was the highlight it went rapidly downhill after that.
As if that wasn’t enough, the climax of the festival was a show featuring the wonderful Colm O’Regan, John Lynn and Jarlath Regan. The show was called Young, Gifted & Green but really they should have taken a cue from Bono’s introduction to U2’s cover version of Helter Skelter and called the show ‘This is a name of a show that Karen Koren stole from Dawn Sedgewick, we’re stealing it back.’
The good thing about putting on a successful comedy festival or club is that nobody in the locale can steal your idea… They can try … but they usually fail. There will be publicans and venue owners in Clonmel taking note of what was achieved in O’Keeffes and decide they’ll have themselves a bit of that. Rest assured they will make a hippo’s hole of it.
The comedy night at O’Keeffes of Clonmel will continue to run on the 3rd Sunday of every month in 2008 and after the success of last weekend I have no doubt the festival will become a regular event.
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