Comedy stars line out for hit festival

It is a measure of how successful the Bulmers Galway Comedy Festival has become over the space of just a few years that 12 of the 52 shows on offer at a variety of city venues had sold out before the seven-day festival began on Tuesday.

The mixture of international and Irish acts has proved a huge hit with comedy fans all across the country, with many deciding to hit for Galway for the October Bank Holiday weekend just to take in the comedy shows at a variety of venues.

Shows by Kevin Bridges at the Radisson SAS Hotel, David O’Doherty at the Town Hall Theatre, and two of the three nights of the Faulty Towers Dining Experience at the Salthill Hotel had sold out prior to this weekend.

The dining experience – in which customers are served a shambolic meal by a manic hotel owner – was such a huge hit with Galway comedy fans 12 months ago that the organisers decided to move it to a bigger venue for three nights this weekend. There are just a few tickets left for the Sunday night show at this stage.

Galway, in its eight year, has now taken over from the Cat Laughs Festival in Kilkenny to become Ireland’s biggest comedy festival and the switch from Easter to the October Bank Holiday weekend a few years ago has seen the event carve out a niche of its own.

Comedians talk about it with bated breath during the Edinburgh Fringe in August and, according to its Artistic Director Kevin Healy, the huge success of the biggest Bulmers Galway Comedy Festival to date, 12 months ago, did him no harm in booking acts for this week’s bash.

The programme features the strongest line-up yet of international and Irish comedians at venues which include the Róisín Dubh, Seapoint Ballroom, and the Black Box Theatre.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.