JIMEOIN (Olympia Theatre, Dublin)

JIMEOIN (Olympia Theatre, Dublin)

"That's the best ever I heard, the best ever I heard . . . I only knew him to say hello to . . . I was hammered. And I mean hammered . . ." Jimeoin, like Kevin MacAleer, feeds well off his roots. "He's from South Derry alright," a friend of mine confidently informed me. "Yeh wouldn't mistake that accent." It's an Ulster accent, alright. And it sounds like it was moulded more by townlands, small farms, hills and rivers, than by city streets and housing estates. It's a soft drawl that floats out like a mild day.

Jimeoin carries with him the richness of the local. He may have settled in Australia but what makes his humour is what made his youth. What makes him too is his (a)cute eye and ear for the ridiculous in the ordinary. His is a good humour, a healthy tonic. He does slag off the Australians a bit, and his attitude towards "Northern Ireland" is a little ambiguous, but by and large he finds his jokes in common experience.

We all love the hot-water bottle when we get into bed. We cuddle it and hug it. Then when we wake up in the middle of the night, we tell it to "fuck off!" as we kick it out. It's the way he tells them, of course, and the way he tells them is very, very well.

80% of the stories Jimeoin tells have at some point happened to all of us. Like putting your foot in a boiling hot bath; like the can-opener that "does a lap of honour" around the can without opening a bit of it; like the little toe whose only purpose in life seems to be to start fights with the legs of beds.

When he takes up his guitar he is not quite so effective. (Although I've heard immeasurably worse songwriters than him.) However, his songwriting does shows his more directly personal and sensitive side. His song about Irish illegals in Australia has a line which goes something like: "In the space of 200 years they've gone from shipping us out to flying us back."

His few jokes that strayed into the political arena were outdated and merely employed for laugh value. Like the one where someone in Belfast has a gun put in their back and is asked if they're Protestant or Catholic. When they say they're a Jew, the reply is. "Well I'm the luckiest Palestinian in Belfast." I wonder how Yasser Arafat would take that one in these days of détente?

Jimeoin ridiculed Neighbours along the way, calling it a laxative. Most comedy I've seen in the last year or so - including Jimeoin - I would fit into the laxative category. You get two hours when you can shower with laughter and wash all your troubles away, while leaving your mind hanging out to dry. Of course there's nothing wrong with that, nothing at all… except when the kettle starts calling the pot black.

• Gerry McGovern