When David nearly met Eddie

It's taken a while for David O'Doherty to be nominated for Edinburgh's top comedy award. But he reckons that arts competitions are 'fundamentally ridiculous' anyway, writes Brian Boyd

David O'Doherty spent a total of seven minutes at the if.comeddies (formerly the Perrier) award ceremony in Edinburgh. He had been one of five acts from this year's Fringe to be nominated for the award - which was won by the Canadian comic Phil Nichol - but the party just wasn't his thing.

"Comedy, for me, is getting your material together in a cold flat in November," he says. "It's not a glitzy champagne reception in a nightclub where you find yourself sitting beside someone wearing £500 Prada glasses."

The affable 31-year-old Dubliner is not your typical comic. He is patently prouder of his 1990 East Leinster U-14 triple jump bronze medal than he is of his Edinburgh success. Nevertheless, his "Eddie" nomination has considerably raised his profile in the UK - even if he bemoans the fact that this only means he is now getting approached by rapacious comedy agents offering their "representation" services.

"I really didn't expect the nomination this year," he says. "The only clue I had was that there seemed to be a lot of people writing in notebooks during my shows. I was used to a certain type of audience over the three-week run, but after the nomination I was getting a different type of audience - people who go to a show because a newspaper tells them to."

His show, My Name Is David O'Doherty, was a beautiful mix of acute observation and startling invention. With his trusty Casio keyboard, he sang about the etiquette of phone text messaging and talked, hilariously, about how different a Vagina Monologues production would be if the cast were all sniggering 12-year-old boys.

It's been a funny old Edinburgh Fringe experience for O'Doherty. In his very first outing at the festival in 1999, he won the prestigious Channel 4 "So You Think You're Funny" competition (aka the "baby Perrier"), and over the following years has slowly built up a steady fanbase on the Fringe.

"It's strange, though, from an Irish point of view, because both Dylan Moran and Tommy Tiernan also won SYTYF when they first started off but both went on to win the Perrier proper within two years," he says. "It's been different for me - a slower build."

It's funny to consider that O'Doherty beat Jimmy Carr to win SYTYF back in 1999 and that one of his chums from those early years was current comedy superstar Russell Brand.

"Jimmy just went a different way - he knew what he wanted. The Russell Brand thing is hilarious for me because I was in the same venue as him this year - my show was on right after his. This person I started out doing gigs with is now getting hundreds of screaming 14-year-old girls at his shows. But if you take away all the tabloid stuff surrounding him at the moment, he is still a really, really good comic."

In a stunning piece of trivia, O'Doherty's venue this year was the same room used by Graham Norton when he got his Perrier nomination, and the same room used last year to stage Mark Doherty's (who is David's brother) award-winning play, Trad.

ALTHOUGH WELCOMING, if cautious, of his award nomination - which will see him perform in London's West End in October - O'Doherty has a sincerely held belief that "any competition in the arts is fundamentally ridiculous".

He speaks witheringly of the fact that while there is so much unsung and truly original and creative talent on the Fringe, the all-consuming coverage surrounding the awards tends to obscure the real purpose of the festival.

"When the nominations are announced, it's like only those five acts exist," he says.

"You also suddenly find yourself in demand - demand, that is, from radio stations wanting to do interviews with you. Why on earth would you want to put yourself in between Shakira and Sandi Thom? Also, I've seen the other side of the awards over the years - the brilliant shows that were completely ignored, such as The Flight Of The Conchords a few years ago, simply because they didn't hire a PR company. I've also toured extensively with Rich Hall and Tommy Tiernan - both Perrier winners - so you get an idea from them what the whole thing really means."

O'Doherty is often described by use of the horrible term "cerebral", which in stand-up terms means that there's a bit more to him than shagging-and-drinking routines.

He has said before that he thinks Irish stand-up comedy was "probably invented by Brendan Behan doing 20 minutes for Anthony Cronin back in the Catacombs" and his influences would range from the orthodox (Python, Peter Cook) to the lesser-known writers such as the humorous newspaper columnist "Beachcomber".

"What started it all for me was when my brother bought me a ticket to go and see Kevin McAleer," he says. "I just couldn't believe how good he was, and it was a huge pleasure for me at this year's festival to do a gig with him. For some reason I've been doing loads of extra shows this year. Just last week I broke my own record by doing five gigs in one day."

HIS MAIN EXTRA-CURRICULAR show was a series of midnight gigs as part of the newly formed , deliberately pompously titled Honourable Men Of Art troupe, in which he is joined by others who take a more considered approach to comedy, such as Daniel Kitson and Demetri Martin. The latter is probably, pound for pound, the best one-liner writer working in comedy today.

"A lot of the late-night shows at the festival are just an opportunity for audiences to shout at the comics, so we wanted to try something different," says O'Doherty.

"First of all, everyone was seated - we could have got more people in by using the standing space but we didn't. None of us are the hard-drinking, druggy type - in fact we're actually known as the 'Chocolate Milk Kids' because of our fondness for milk shakes."

He has good reason to believe that comedy is now moving into an area away from the ubiquitous lads' material. "It's like the move music made from early rock 'n' roll to the more interesting, offbeat, psychedelic stuff in the late 1960s."

He's got a busy few months ahead of him. Apart from his if.comeddies commitments, the already published children's author is writing a book called One Hundred Facts About Pandas and he'll have a play on in the Project Arts Centre shortly. Then there's a US tour in October (with Demetri Martin) where he'll be playing 1,200-seater venues. For now, though, there's only one thing on his mind: "I've just seen this beautiful second-hand Hornby railway set in a shop around the corner . . ."

David O'Doherty plays the Comedy Tent at the Electric Picnic, Stradbally, Co Laois tomorrow. He supports Lewis Black on Mon and Tues at the Olympia Theatre, as part of the Bulmers Comedy Festival