He's not launching missiles against Cuba, he tells us. He's "merely launching a comedy festival". Johnny Vegas, star of the hit BBC comedy, Happiness, plays a blinder as the official launcher of this year's Murphy's Cat Laughs Comedy Festival. He coasts along in overdrive. The bombardment on our ears never lets up. We stand as if shell-shocked, doubling over in stitches. "In Kilkenny it means that it's not Edinburgh, it means that we're not competing, it means that we get the chance to do comedy. It means respect and enjoyment . . . And that's what I want because I'm 29. I'm just reaching my peak. I'm not ready to do sit-com."
Suddenly the comedian's sister, Catharine Pennington, who is not in the room, not even in the country, rings him to check if he's booked a restaurant for their mother's party. Vegas takes the call, answers her questions and stays with us all the time. The former potter from the northwest of England will perform Pot Shots in Kilkenny's National Craft Gallery, giving a master class in pottery while making us laugh - simultaneously and at the same time.
Others at the party hosted by Murphys in 4 Dame Lane include the actor Lawlor Roddy, comedian and former lab technician Brendan Burke and publicist Gearoid McIntyre, who says Tyne Daly (of Cagney and Lacey fame) flew in this week to rehearse for the BertoltBrecht play, Mother Courage and her Children, opening at the Olympia in early June. The singer, Juliet Turner, has written four new songs for the play, he says.
At this year's festival, which runs over the June bank holiday from Thursday, May 31st, the surprise element is still the best part. Apart from the big Irish and international names, according to Richard Cook, festival director, "it's the Americans who are coming that people don't know - that's the pay off".