The L&H society

A couple of notable exceptions aside, there aren’t too many females making serious waves on the Irish comedy circuit. However, 30-year-old Katherine Lynch and 28-year-old Sheila Hamilton are doing much to redress the gender imbalance with their highly imaginative – but not very imaginatively titled – The Lynch & Hamilton Show. Together for less than a year, the pair are already well on their way to comedic immortality, with their cult sketch show on the verge of mainstream success and critics dubbing them ‘the Irish French & Saunders’.

“How did the two of us meet?” laughs Sheila down the phone line, on the eve of their biggest show to date (last Friday at the Olympia, by the time you read this). “Em . . . I probably shouldn’t be telling you this but we met in a brothel. We both used to be prostitutes, but we decided we’d go into comedy because it’s near enough the same thing!”

She’s joking , of course. After all, that’s what comedians do . . .

“Nah, seriously, we used to run into each other performing in different venues and it was actually Katherine’s idea that we should work together. It was quite straightforward really. So we’ve been performing together in different clubs around Dublin, and we’ve had residencies in GUBU and S-Spot as well.”

A native of the Fair City, Hamilton trained at the Gaiety School of Acting before doing a stint at New York’s Broadway Dance Centre. Before moving into comedy she used to sing, fronting a ten-piece band called Spooky, and has also appeared in numerous TV shows, notably ABC’s One Life To Live.

A fellow graduate of the Gaiety School, her partner Katherine Lynch is from Mohill, Co. Leitrim. Although she has numerous TV appearances to her credit and was once the Alternative Miss Ireland, her main claim to fame is that she’s a grandniece of the poet Patrick Kavanagh. So does she feel guilty about the misery her literary relation inflicted on generations of Leaving Cert English students?

“No, I feel joy for putting them all through it because I stayed at home eating Mars Bars,” she giggles. “I flew into knowledge / without going to college – like my uncle used to say.”

While each is a talent in their own right, it’s together in their various guises that the pair really shine. Their characters include such oddities as County Leitrim’s pre-pubescent progeny Little Miss Muff, a foul-mouthed sugar-sensitive schoolgirl with a big dress and a large vocabulary, and her newest friend Whitney Pearse – a medallion-wearing toughie just relocated from Dublin’s inner-city “because all de yuppies want de flats.” Together they constantly battle against their archenemy, the prim Irish-dancing teacher’s pet Treasa McDonagh. And so forth…

Which is Katherine’s favourite character in the show?

“My favourite character in the show would be me,” she giggles. “Nah, my favourites would be Singin’ Bernie and Hosanna in the Hiace. These are two characters who go around the country spreading the word of Elvis Presley, the King of rock & roll.”

Lynch and Hamilton’s banter between their characters is symptomatic of their creator’s observant minds. Their stated aim is that their comedy succeeds in causing the audience to exclaim, “That’s so true!” while simultaneously making them split their sides with laughter.

“The show is very camp, lots of costumes, very visual,” Katherine explains. “We’ve a team of us who do make-up and clothes and sets and all that. So they’re always big shows. It’s not really like stand-up or anything like that. I suppose it’s a little like d’Unbelievables, because they use lots of props and costumes and stereotypical characters as well.”

What are Lynch & Hamilton’s plans for after the Olympia show?

“We’re planning a nationwide tour. We have quite a few shows booked already but we want to do about thirty venues over three months to make it worthwhile. We’ve also been talking to a number of UK television production companies about maybe doing our own show. But beyond that, we’re going to the Edinburgh festival, and the comedy festival in New York, and we’re playing GAY in London as well, which is a huge club.”

Do you have a big gay following?

“Yeah, we’ve a huge gay following – huge! – but the show still has mainstream appeal. Even the gay audience we do have bring their mothers and their aunties and their uncles and their grannies and the whole lot. So it’s a very mixed crowd. But French & Saunders also started off in a little gay bar in Soho and look where they went. Gay fans are very loyal – when they get you, they get you. And they’re a great audience to start with because if you’re not funny, they’ll be soon enough telling you!”

Do they think that it’s tougher for women to make it in comedy generally?

“I think comedy is harder for women than for men, but then there are geniuses like Victoria Wood and French & Saunders and a lot of other fantastic female artists,” says Sheila. “But we’re really not like female feminist comedy – we hate that. All that sort of angry female comedy is horrible – a lot of stand-ups do that, but we’re completely different. It’s camp and fun and it’s taking the piss out of ourselves – exaggerating all the truths that we all laugh at every day.”