Richard Cook, director of The Smithwick's Cat Laughs Festival, always likes to remind me of my first Cat Laughs gig. All smiles and buzzing quietly with customary affable energy, he relates it with relish as if it were a valuable part of Cat-lore – one of the plethora of little incidents which make up the soul of his creation. For me at the time it was something of a nightmare. I was based in London then in 1995 and arrived bedraggled after a ropey flight and a circuitous lift to Kilkenny to be greeted by an unpromising spectacle: The Dysart Hall.

The hall looked more like the venue for a scout meeting than a comedy gig with rows of plastic seats laid out on the aged wooden floor adding little theatrical allure. To cap it all there was no means for amplifying my electric guitar, then as now a vital piece of equipment for the on-stage Carmody. Runners were sent out to find one but it never materialised. In the event it worked out fine with the audience warming to my struggle against the odds. In Richard’s mind this one of my best gigs ever rather than the skin of the teeth survival I experienced it as.
His enthusiasm for this small piece of history is a clue to the breathless optimism which made the Cat Laughs a success right from the start. The format of the festival and its host, the City of Kilkenny, fell instantly and irrevocably in love and are still together today, heading into their second decade together. But could the instant success of the festival eventually cause it to lose its way or at least its impetus? When something doesn’t appear to be broke it’s a brave or foolish festival director who tries to fix it. Yet surely an annual event such as this must grow and develop to some extent to avoid a jaded response from punters who have seen it all before.
Cook acknowledges this may be true but is characteristically confident that the festival knows what it is and how to go about its business. The mainstay of the weekend,a series of mix and match bills of stand ups performing in a number of temporary comedy clubs around the city, will not change.
“We’re not a comedy festival," he explains. "We’re a stand up festival. People always ask ‘Why don’t you get that double act or that sketch show that stormed Edinburgh’ but we don’t do that”. Lots of people, for example have suggested to him that he book The Flight Of The Conchords (the acclaimed New Zealand musicalcomedy duo), but he resists the temptation in favour of the festivals traditional slew of stand up talent.
Oddly the exception to the stand up only rule is improvised comedy. Cook seems to feel this has a place because it is such a perfect counterpoint to stand up. “In stand up you’re completely on your own whereas improv is all about relying on other people on stage.” Even this exception however has long since been whittled down to the omnipresent Best Of Irish Improv, a show which has been in every festival and is basically The Dublin Comedy Improv with their Kilkenny shirts on. This contrasts with the earlier years of The Cat Laughs where there was a big influx of American improvisers,directly as a result of the involvement of Michael McCarthy. McCarthy, an alumnus of the famed revue and improv theatre Second City in Chicago,was the US representative in a triumvurate of outsiders who basically programmed the festival at at he start. “I didn’t really know comedy then,” explains Richard. He decided to put on the first festival in a rush of blood to the head engendered by the excitement of attending his first Edinburgh Fringe Festival a year earlier in 1994.
Being deeply embedded in the arts and theatre life of Kilkenny and specifically the Bickerstaffe Theatre company, and having managed large theatrical projects, he was confident of being able to stage the event and provide the administration and infrastructure. To provide knowledge about the talent to book, he turned to McCarthy and to Noel Faulkener (Galwegian owner of The Comedy Cafe in London and nowadays Comedy Cafe Management) and Peter Graeme, organiser of the venerable London comedy club Downstairs At The Kings Head in Crouch End.
The McCarthy connection in particular brought some interesting experiences in the early days. McCarthy was able to lay his hands on improvisers who were huge stars but who were persuaded more or less to come to Kilkenny for the craic. (And probably for a lot of money compared to some other costs, which is possibly why the pratice died out after a few years). Big names like Geroge Wendt, famous for his role as Norm in Cheers and Bill Murray acted as sort of figureheads or mascots for the first few years. This seems at odds with the philosophy of presenting a no frills stand up festival and it is possibly another reason for the shift away from that type of booking policy in latter years.
For the indigenous comedy community The Cat Laughs is a double edged sword. Particularly for newer comics it provides a tremendously exciting opportunity to share bills and late night drinks with some comedy exotica. The jump up from The Comedy Cellar in The International Bar in Dublin on a Wednsday to pondering the finer points of delivery and timing with Emo Phillips as you try to stand up in defiance of the laws of gravity, sleep and alcohol in Langton's at 2.30 in the morning is an exciting one. However the festival has a limited number of slots and not everyone gets on the bill all the time. This causes disappointment and downright resentment at times. Presence on the Cat Lauighs Bill is seen to some extent as a sign of industry approval. Not being on it – or “only” being included as part of the “Comedy Cats” line up of exclusively the “best of the Irish circuit” – can rankle with some. Another widespread neurosis is based on the assumption that unless you are handled by the Lisa Richards Comedy agency, in which Richard is heavily involved, your chances of appearing in the festival decrease markedly. Some seethe quietly, some contact Cook himself to point out his error and some stand on the streets of Kilkenny in the middle of the festival orchestrating passers by into a chorus of abusive anti-Cook slogans.
Richard Cook is aware of all this but shrugs it off as unavoidable. And of course, he doesn’t have to defend himself. He is the director of the festival and not under any legal obligation to book anyone he doesn’t feel like booking. He admits he might even be missing someone on home turf: “I don’t get around to see so much live comedy anymore.” There is an interesting development in the running of the festival this year which may in part address the lack of time on Richards hands to focus on it year round. Comedian and long-time Cat Laughs stalwart Eddie Bannon is this year deputy director of The Cat Laughs. “Eddie’s not performing this year, he’s just going to learn the ropes. He’ll have an expanding role over the next couple of years. I won’t be stepping down, but maybe stepping aside to some extent”.
This investment in the future should be hailed as a good thing. There were rumours that Cook would call it a day after the tenth festival last year. Indeed until a few months ago there wasn’t even a sponsor for the festival. Murphy’s ended their sponsorship last year and it was relatively late in the day when Smithwick's came on board for this one. So if there had been no sponsor would their have been no festival? “I think if we hadn’t got a sponsor I might have just gone a bit crazy with the programming.” What form this madness might have taken he doesn’t elaborate on. Perhaps a massive mime strand or a battle of German sketch troupes? We’ll probably never know.