Welcome to the House of Fun...in Ballymun

It’s another seven years until the regeneration of Ballymun is scheduled to be completed, but three comedians are doing their bit to improve life in the area right now.

For the past 18 months Eric Lalor, Willie White and Dean Scurry have been running the House of Fun Comedy Club in the Axis Arts Centre, and it’s going from strength to strength.
Already they’ve put on sell-out shows from the likes of PJ Gallagher, Ardal O’Hanlon, and the man who started it all, Des Bishop. The three featured on the Ballymun episode of Bishop’s Joy in the Hood series, which tried to find stand-up talent in disadvantaged areas like South Hill in Limerick and Derry’s Bogside.
Each episode of the series ended with a live show, and it was this performance that made the lads realise that a comedy club was exactly what Ballymun needed. “At the start it wasn’t that hard because there was such a buzz in Ballymun after the live show,” says Lalor, who had never done stand-up before the series. “We had the house full and we could’ve sold it out five or six times to be honest.” Tickets for the first House of Fun line-up sold out just as quickly, and since then there’s been performances every month.
Lalor admits that running the club helped build the comedians’ profile, but says that wasn’t the main motivation. “Primarily the reason was to get a comedy club in Ballymun. Because the area has had a lot of negativity over the years, it was nice for people to see it in a positive light,” he says, “and there’s nothing more positive than having a good laugh.”
The area has been buzzing in the run-up to the shows, and Lalor puts some of their success down to the community spirit which he says is incredibly strong. “You’ve obviously got your 5% of scumbags but you get that in Dalkey and Blackrock as well. The general population are good, honest, hard working, out for a laugh kind of people – and that’s who we’re here to serve, that’s who we want recognised as Ballymuners and not the fucking idiots that give it a bad name.”
The reputation of the area might be changing with the redevelopment though, even if it seems to be dragging on forever. “It’s like we’re living on the biggest building site in Dublin at the moment, and it’s going to be like that for the next few years as well,” says Eric. “But I think the general feeling in Ballymun is that this is positive, just to take down that horrible grey backdrop is a plus… when all the facilities are in, obviously you’ll see a different place, but you’ll see a place where people are proud to live.”
He sees the comedy club as a part of this transformation of Ballymun, and thinks that attracting the big names is helping to change opinions of the suburb. Eric bypasses the usual booking methods in order to get the comedians he wants. “I’ve been doing comedy all over the country for the past year and a half, and I’ve just met these guys along the way. And when I meet them I have a chat with them and I get their number and tell them what we’re doing in Ballymun, and they say to give them a shout… I go directly to the source.”
And comedians like Ardal O’Hanlon have been only too keen to support the club in any way they can. “When I was talking to Ardal about doing the gig, he was agreeing to do it and he said, ‘The only thing I’ll ask Eric is that you don’t push up the ticket prices for the gig,’ and we explained that we never have and that we don’t intend to for the foreseeable future.”
Not that the big names get an easy ride. “In Ballymun it’s a working class audience, but it’s a knowledgeable audience as well. They don’t suffer fools gladly, and you really have to be on the top of your game to impress them. They’re not just going to laugh and applaud you because you’re someone off the TV,” says Lalor. That’s a sentiment echoed by the likes of Karl Spain, who played there a few months back.
“It was a fantastic gig and the crowd were great,” says Spain. “The lads do a great job. The list of names they’ve had is testament to the Irish comedy scene, that everyone will give you a dig-out, people do help each other out.”
“Eric and Willie have done exceptionally well,” continues Spain, “that’s actually one of the bad things about playing Ballymun is that the lads are getting so good it’s a tough job to follow them onstage.”

Photo by Naomi McArdle