You're asking for trouble when all your show involves is opening up the floor to questions from the audience and all you have to fall back on is your speed of thought and improvised wit. Armando Iannucci, newspaper columnist and presenter of television's Friday Night Armistice, admirably sailed through his trial by audience in an engaging and humour-laden manner. Quint essentially urbane and con temporary in his concerns, he belongs to that fine tradition of satirical comment, an area which has been sullied in recent years by the glib, New Labour-loving dross of Ben Elton and Rory Bremner, among others.
Kicking off by deconstructing his own performance and other genres of comedy - all very post-modern - he soon trained his sights on the marketing/PR lie that is "Cool Britannia" and how Tony Blair was being more than a bit pathetic by trying to cultivate a "hip and happening" image. Such ludicrous behaviour would lead us to believe, according to Iannucci, that commercial success stories like Titanic could now be rightfully claimed as "great Brit tragedies" and not Hollywood guff.
Despite the ever present danger of slipping into dinner-party smart-aleckness, Iann ucci proved himself to be an astute commentator.
Local wise, Dubliner Ed Byrne was all-encompassing with a jaunty set which touched all the bases, while Navan man Tommy Tiernan almost stole the whole festival with a blindingly good set which concluded with an extended set-piece about learning Latin at school. Fellow Navan citizen Dylan Moran was as reluctantly splendid as ever.
Character comedian John Shuttleworth (Graham Fell owes) emerged on stage dressed in satanic garb for a show called "The Beast of John Shuttleworth" - it soon emerged that this was supposed to be a "Best of John Shuttleworth" show, but, because of a typing error, the hapless John had gone and got himself all dolled up in devil ware. True amateur that he is, he stayed with the "Beast of" persona and regaled all with tragic tales of suburban showbiz failure. Tragi-comedy doesn't come any better.
Elsewhere, performing poet John Hegley proved to be the missing link between iambic pentameters and punch lines as he brought a lyrical dimension to the proceedings.
Finally, the man of the moment, if not the year, Johnny Vegas, was thunderously received by an expectant audience as he proved why he is the best comic to emerge in the last five years. Part character comedy, part autobiography, Vegas is a raw and honest voice whose frighteningly intimate tales take you into uncharted comedy territory. Genius doesn't come around too often, and who would have thought, this time around, that it would come complete with an ill-fitting suit, a bad home perm and a potter's wheel.
