Culture
21 Oct 13

West Intentions

Team Hot Press doesn’t quite know where to start with this year’s Bulmers Galway Comedy Festival, such is the sheer quality of the line-up. But we’ll try! This year’s event runs from Tuesday October 22 – Monday October 28 and boasts a whopping 50 of comedy’s most razor-sharp stand-up specialists from both home and abroad.

Taking place across 13 of Galway’s finest venues, the festival boasts a diverse range of talent, from top British TV names (Sean Lock, Phill Jupitus, Russell Howard, Lee Mack, Omid Djalili), to cult heroes (Stewart Lee, Michael Winslow, Eddie Pepitone), to home favourites (Jason Byrne, David O’Doherty, The Nualas, Andrew Maxwell, Neil Delamere, Maeve Higgins), to rising stars (Foil, Arms & Hog, Fred Cooke) and so much more.
The week will also see a host of new shows hit Irish shores including the eagerly-anticipated Much A-Stew About Nothing, Stewart Lee’s latest creation. In typical mock-apathetic style, Lee has described his new show as a “mixed stew of unrelated ideas” in preparation for his 2014 TV series. Given that a running joke of 2012’s Carpet Remnant World involved a bemused Lee confessing that he was too busy with fatherhood to construct a decent set, we’re chomping at the bit to see how he plans to test his audience this time around.
Speaking to Hot Press ahead of his last Irish jaunt, Lee said Ireland had been a huge inspiration.
“I feel very privileged doing stand-up in Ireland,” he said. “When I was starting out, all the comics that I liked were Irish comics doing stories rather than gags. The best people at that were the Irish ones. So in a way it seems odd to me that I’d be remotely popular in Ireland, because I think they’ve got a shit foreign copy of their better thing. The extent to which Dave Allen brought that through in the ‘70s really just influenced me. Fifteen minutes without a gag…”
Killer stand-up accounts for just one part of the action-packed Galway schedule. Other highlights include the full gamut of improv, theatre, podcasts, poetry readings and music and sketch-based comedy. Expect particularly madcap antics from The Faulty Towers Dining Experience and off the cuff hijinks from Whose Line Is It Anyway?

BEST OF THE REST
Micky Flanagan headlines Belfast’s Odyssey Arena on October 11 and The O2, Dublin on October 12
David O’Doherty takes up a five-night residency in Whelan’s from October 11 - 15
Previewed above, Stewart Lee’s Much A-Stew About Nothing also stops off in Vicar St (October 20 + 21)
Eric Lalor headlines Dublin’s Laughter Lounge on three evenings from
October 24 - 26