Comedian, voice over, corporate sponsorship, sit com, video development deal, cameo role in crappy Irish film, novelist, chat show host, director, actor, panellist, columnist. "Have I Got Old Gags For You?", Blankety Blank, "Whose Career Is It Anyway?" On tour, pub, club, theatre, arena. Buy in, sell out. Kilkenny, Edinburgh, Montreal, Melbourne, Adelaide, anybloodywhere. Weddings, parties, bar mitzvahs, anybloodything.
Back, way back, in the dingy room above the dingy pub, when the posters outside read "Alternative Cabaret", it was frequently bad and frequently brutal. But you knew who meant it and who didn't.
Twenty years on and the makeover's complete. You have a manager (what, to carry your microphone?) and you register for VAT. One stand-up, two steps down. Still, for all those who sit on the couch beside Des O'Connor waiting for him to feed you lines off his oversized autocue, there remains a rump which still knows the crucial difference between Peter Cook and David Frost (and if you have to ask . . . )
Johnny Vegas is one, half living legend, half Coronation Street extra gone to seed, he wouldn't know what a career development plan was if he choked on it while throwing up in a mug. Ian Cognito is another. His righteous anger and railings against the commodification of a once-radical culture won't see him feeding inanities to Chris Evans in the near future.
Both Vegas and Cognito brought it back to basics at this year's Murphy's Cat Laughs Comedy Festival. Yes, that's right we're very, very tired of hearing twee little routines about the difference between men and women, and cats and dogs, and endless permutations on the drink 'n' shagging theme. Which is why another star of this year's show was Ross Noble, a precociously talented Geordie who has more talent in any of his split ends than all those muppets. With a line-up this year that touched base with most every style and genre in the book, and with an ace new Canadian (Jeremy Hotz) in the pack, the consensus at the close of play was that the "hit!" of this year's fest was the ebut show by the Apres Match team.
Quickly glossing over the fact that the best comedy RTE has produced in years has come out of its sports department, the team of Barry Murphy, Gary Cooke and Risteard Cooper delivered some excellent sets over the weekend. More than a live version of their television work, they pushed at the parameters a bit more on the stage and never chased the quick and easy Mike Yarwood-type gag when something a bit more obtuse presented more of a challenge.
Sometimes it was difficult to keep on top of the narrative. One minute they were making references to Willie Morgan and Colin Bell (a bit too recherche, methinks) the next to Irish playwrights. When they hit it, the writing and execution were excellent - the best bits being reminiscent of the surreal tendencies of Mr Trellis (Murphy's ex-grouping).
Coming from an acting background, Cooke and Cooper brought the full whack of dramatic knowledge to their work - it was in the way Cooke worked wonders with his facial expressions and Cooper teased every possible physical nuance out of his characters. When it didn't work (as in "Jim Beglin" talking about Beckett) you could just sit it out for the next sketch.
The show's finale which featured "Eamon Dunphy", "Kevin Myers" and "Frank Stapleton" harmonising on the All Saints song Never Ever was as bold as it was clever. You should do yourself a favour by going along to see them in Vicar Street, Dublin later in the summer when they'll be doing an extended run.
Elsewhere, Ardal O'Hanlon unveiled some very strong new material which made you remember why he vaulted from the Comedy Cellar to Nationwide UK tours all those years ago. It's unfair to quote some of the lines (because the comedians don't like it, unless they get paid bucketloads of money to do it on television that is) but some of O'Hanlon's new stuff was the crispest he's ever done. Sex and chocolate featured heavily - which is always a good sign.
Still on home turf, Jason Byrne shook, rattled and rolled, and Dara O'Briain punch-lined the living daylights out of his audiences. After his "My Gambling Hell" expose in one of the Sunday papers, Ed Byrne nonchalantly took to the stage of the Watergate Theatre. He was busy breaking in new material for this year's Edinburgh Festival, at which he'll be performing to 15,000 people over five nights - "that's the same as selling out two nights at Wembley Arena" he helpfully pointed out. Pretty remarkable given his lack of TV profile and if nothing else it should help him recoup the $900 he lost in Las Vegas which provoked the "gambling hell" story.
Canadian Harland Williams, who was a massive success at the festival three years ago, ran into the Portishead syndrome this year. Like the Bristol trip-hoppers, he lost the surprise factor the second time around but still did enough to convince that his is a fresh and startling voice - abstract comedy at its best.
Graham Fellows (aka John Shuttleworth) brought his new comedy character to town in the shape of Brian Appleton. A rock musicologist from Birmingham, Appleton is a Zelig-like figure who has (in his own head, at least) been at the centre of every major musical movement of the past four decades, but remains sadly uncredited for his work. An inspired creation, the writing here touches the giddy heights of an Alan Bennett or a Morrissey and here's hoping that one day Appleton will wreak his awful revenge on a music industry that has air-brushed him out of its history books. Spinal Tap, watch your back.
