A mallon for all seasons

Although Gerry Mallon, the driving force behind the forthcoming Galway Comedy Festival, has been working in comedy for more years than he cares to remember, he never harboured any youthful ambitions to become a professional stand-up.

“I suppose I was always the class maggot when I was a teenager,” he says, “but I never really thought of making a career out of it. I always enjoyed comedy, but I wasn’t one of those people building up big video or audio collections of comedians when I was growing up or anything.”
Originally from Mayo, but based in Galway for the last 25 years, Mallon began his working life as an oyster farmer.
“I used to be an oyster farmer in Oranmore, so getting into stand-up was kind of a natural career progression,” he laughs. “Nah, seriously, I had to get out of the oyster farming. The tractors were tiny!”
He first got involved in professional comedy in the early ‘90s. “I started way back in the day in a Galway venue called The Junction,” he recalls. “The city’s first comedy club was started there by Cillian Fennell and Pearse Boyce. I used to do the fliers for them and a bit of promotional work. And one day the MC didn’t show up and I said I’d do it. And it went so well that they fired the MC, and I got the gig. And it sort of went on from there.”
Eventually Fennell moved to Dublin to produce the Late Late Show, and Boyce started a production company, leaving the Comedy Club in Mallon’s hands.
“I took it over after they left, and the club migrated around Salthill and the city for a while. It was in the Warwick for a couple of years, then it moved to the late, lamented Castle. It was in the GPO for about five years and then it moved to Cuba.”
The Comedy Club still runs every Sunday night in Cuba, but the local scene has totally changed in recent years.
“Now there are three weekly comedy clubs in Galway, which is a bit weird. I think per head of capita, if you transfer that into Dublin terms, there’d be something like 58 comedy clubs.”
Why does he think that is?
“I suppose it’s because Galway has such a big student population that comedy is so popular. You know, people in Galway go to comedy gigs almost the same way other people in other counties go to see a movie or a band. It’s probably the most comedy-literate audience in the country.”
While Mallon still MC's the club and occasionally does bigger gigs, he’s not as interested in standing on the stage as he used to be.
“I’m kind of in that twilight zone/grey area,” he admits. “I still do stand-up occasionally and I always get a good buzz out of it. I used to go on the road with Tommy Tiernan a lot, but I’ve pulled back from that. I’d say I’m leaning more towards the promoter end of things now.
“I often do MC at the club, but Tommy’s actually been doing it for the last seven or eight weeks. He’s been working out new material for his next big show, and it’s a great place for him to try it out. It’s a good two-way street. I get to fill the room up and he gets to road-test his new material.”
What’s been his most disastrous experience as a promoter?
“I don’t really have one,” he shrugs. “People missing flights is an occasional hazard. You get the phone call on a Sunday afternoon and it’s an English number. Before I even answer I’m going, ‘Ah, here we go!’ Then you’ve got to skite around finding a replacement. So it’s kind of lucky that Tommy lives in Galway so I can call on him. But I’ve never really had any bad experiences. You get the occasional prissy, high-maintenance comic, but that’s about it.”
Of course, running a weekly club is one thing, but Mallon is also the main organiser of the second Galway Comedy Festival, which runs from April 5-9. “We had no problems last year so I’m obviously hoping this one will run just as smoothly,” he laughs. “There’s a lot of hacks in this business – people doing Ryanair jokes or the whole ‘my girlfriend just split up with me’ routine, but I’m not really interested in that. We’ve tried to book acts who’ve got something to say or a bit of an edge to them.”
The line-up includes such names as Des and Aidan Bishop, Kevin Gildea, Joe Rooney, Colin Murphy, Neil Delamare, John Donnellan, Andrew Maxwell, Shazia Mirza, Reginald D. Hunter and many others.
“It’s on over Easter weekend, which is traditionally a very quiet weekend in Galway, but we’re hoping to change that. We’ve got PJ Gallagher doing his Jake Stephens character in the Town Hall Theatre on Good Friday. And the big carrot there is that it’s the only pub open in town on Good Friday.
“Last year we had Karl Spain and Maeve Higgins on, and people were coming up to the Town Hall saying, ‘Can I’ve a ticket for the comedy show?’ And we’d two shows on so I was saying, ‘Which one?’ And they’d go, ‘I don’t give a shit – just give us a ticket!’ It was the only boozer open. Sad really – that Irish people can’t do a day without the booze. But hey, good for us!”
Speaking of booze, the festival is sponsored by Smithwicks, who also sponsor the annual Cat Laughs Festival in Kilkenny. However, Mallon insists that Galway isn’t trying to steal their mantle as Ireland’s biggest comedy fest.
“Obviously it’s never going to be as big as Kilkenny because that’s the really big one, but that’s not even our intention. Obviously we’re hoping it’ll grow bigger every year, but I really don’t want to have to work that hard!”
Full details are available on the website www.galwaycomedyfestival.com