Art for art's sake

sk any comic what is the most exciting thing about the current Irish comedy scene. Ignore the initial flood of self-serving quasi-political claptrap that gushes forth. Catch the more considered later flow and pan it and you will see two shiny nuggets resting in the bottom of your comedy prospector’s panning vessel. The two precious items are the words “Art” and “Halfbottom”.

A lot of times when I play an Irish club I’m bumping into the same old names and faces. Some of these guys started out at the same time as me: Danny la Rue, Maude Gonne, Tony Galvin... the list goes on, as long and spurious as a proposed airport rail link.
But every now and then in the hybrid of lucky dip and hell-mouth that is “The Open Spot”, even the most jaded comedy palate detects an unexpectedly funny taste. Right now that taste has most likely come from licking something from Art Halfbottom’s short order stand-up kitchen.
Art is a young man in his mid-twenties. Clearly this gives him an edge. Old men in their mid twenties seldom hack it beyond a few lucky gigs when all their friends are in the audience. It is almost always the chaps whose age matches their age who progress. He is an attractive enough specimen of a man, tall enough to have authority, short enough not to intimidate me.
Art lives in Dublin but has impeccable comedy breeding papers, being out of a Navan domestic by a fitter from Carrickmacross. He combines typically Celtic storytelling with more modern and TV-friendly punch lines – almost “punch-bites” in fact. The best example of this is the already legendary “My mad rustic friend killed his own foot accidentally when he was pissed. Wanker!” routine. (And I hope that Art will forgive me quoting that routine in full, as I have just done, in the interests of the public record).
Halfbottom is a veritable mirth smart bomb. He makes keen observations on modern life. Had you noticed, for example, that in recent years we’d adopted a new currency? No messing! I know – it’s mad isn’t it? Art ups the ante then with bittersweet poignant vignettes of the minefield of modern love. Before I heard Halfbottom, I had never really been aware that lack of commitment is exclusively a male preserve whereas only women experience more than one emotional state. He’s hot, so it’s true!
Halfbottom is what rock and roll would be if it were all about being a chap saying stuff and there wasn’t such an obsession with music, rhythm, art, outsider cool etc. Catch him now before he becomes huge and ultimately explodes. If it weren’t for his gross overeating, I wouldn’t be on at you so much – but seriously you don’t actually have that much time at all.
Finally, I hope my colleagues when offered the chance to comment on the Irish comedy scene here don’t waste it by blowing their own tired bugle, but instead adopt my bigness and take the opportunity to boost the career of the potential competition. The business is just too competitive and it’s fake and unappealing. We should fete a young guy like Halfbottom (despite his dire lack of funny musical stuff and flash animations combined in a show called “Dermot Carmody’s Electric Gazette” and his stubborn refusal to be a thin Protestant).b

Dermot Carmody performs his multimedia comedy cabaret “Dermot Carmody’s Electric Gazette” July 19 & 20 in Galway at the Radisson. He will be appearing on Sunday the 18th also in Galway Arts Festival as part of Barry Murphy’s Comedy Circus. He is currently co-writing a new daytime radio soap for RTE Radio One with Catherine Maher, “The Write Stuff”. The first series runs for 30 episodes and begins transmission on RTE Radio one in mid July.