They do things a certain way in Edinburgh: if you're a good comic, people will come to see your show and you'll have nice things written about you in the paper. If you're very good, they'll recognise this and throw you a Newcomer's award, which is a coded way of saying "go away and mature your act, then come back and really wow us". If you're a great comic, you'll win the Perrier, be able to run a bath full of champagne and have TV producers, managers and agents lunch you to death.
Dubliner David O'Doherty is a very good comic. We've known this for a few years locally and Edinburgh found out last year when he won the important Newcomer award So You Think You're Funny on The Fringe. He beat off 500 other British/Irish acts and got a cheque for £1,500 for his troubles but perhaps more importantly he attracted the eye of many in the industry who have duly noted his name and pencilled him in for potential great things in the future.
The last two Irish acts to win SYTYF - Dylan Moran and Tommy Tiernan - went on to win the Perrier a few short years after. So how are you coping with the pressure, young Doherty?
"With Dylan and Tommy, there was a few years in between them winning the first and second one", he says, gulping down lemonade just before he leaves for Scotland. "I think I'm the first SYTYF winner to go back the following year with a full show. Most of them do a half-show or skip it altogether until they're ready, so there's no pressure on me to do anything this year. Anyway, I'm not going to compete for anything this year; I'm on an artistic pilgrimage.".
You're what? "That's not to be taken literally. You see, I'm not a real comic in the sense people understand the term. I don't really do the circuit and the material I do is not your typical comedy club stuff. I'd be looking more towards the route that Owen O'Neill is taking with his oneman shows". We're talking a bit more dramatic, a bit more cerebral than the usual litany of knob jokes, then? "Well, put it this way" he says, "the stuff that really influences me is books like At Swim Two Birds by Flann O'Brien and his Cruiskeen Lawn columns. I've quite an odd take on this, in that I believe that Irish stand-up was probably invented by Brendan Behan doing 20 minutes for Anthony Cronin back in the Catacombs."
Still just 24, O'Doherty's thoughtful and articulate routines distinguish him from the homogenous mass of acts who are fixated on more adolescent concerns. When he says his material isn't best appreciated by "pissed up people in a comedy club" you get some idea of why the term "cerebral" is regularly applied to his act. Raised on a diet of The Goons, Monthy Python and Peter Cook, he's just as likely to cite Damon Runyon, Beachcomber and P.G. Wodehouse as influences. Like many a young Irish comic, he became turned on and tuned in after seeing Mr. Trellis perform in Dublin's Comedy Cellar - "it was just unlike anything I had seen before."
After submitting sketches to RTE's short-lived The End programme, he first started doing comedy monologues on the pirate radio station, Jazz FM before throwing himself onto as many comedy stages as he could: "It was August 1998, every other Irish comic was in Edinburgh so I did about 30 gigs or something that month. That really helped the stagecraft."
In tandem with his comedy career, he's also a writer of children's books and his first book, Ronan Long Gets It Wrong is soon to be published by Mammoth publishing ("they're the same people who do Enid Blyton"). He began writing children's literature as a result of working abroad a lot and writing letters home to his nephew which detailed picaresque adventures. He also once had a job with An Post where he was responsible for writing back to all the children who had posted letters to Santa Claus. "I love doing the children's stuff" he says, "sometimes I can be on the stage of some club having a big guy with tatoos screaming at me, then I go home and write a story about a boy who wants a puppy."
Yet another talent overlooked by RTE, he was swiftly picked up by the BBC after winning another talent show arranged by the station in the Vicar Street venue a year and a half ago. That gave him the confidence to go to Edinburgh and compete in So You Think You're Funny?. "The very notion of a comedy competition is ridiculous" he says, "you're with all these people waiting to go on and everyone is wishing each other well and then you think `oh no, this is a competition'. It's really quite strange."
As a direct result of his success last year, he got his first television job, working for UK Digital where he did comedy routines in between presenting videos. "Because it was digital, not many people saw it, but the people who did it before me were The Fast Show characters and before them Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer.
His Edinburgh show this year, The Story Of The Boy Who Saved Comedy, combines his two main disciplines - "it's a kid story for grown ups". A one-man show, he plays the son of the man who writes all the jokes for Christmas crackers. He has to go on a journey to find some new jokes and all he has to guide him is the opening lines of three new jokes. Trying to find the punch-lines, he bumps into a series of characters who help him on his way.
"There's no irony in it at all, no pastiche or no parody" he says, "it's quite a poignant tale. Somewhere in it, though, there's maybe a message that there are no new jokes left, that comedy now has become a business and originality is sacrificed for a bunch of people using what is basically the same material. Poignancy, I hope, is going to be the new rock 'n' roll."
David O'Doherty's The Story Of The Boy Who Saved Comedy is at The Gilded Balloon Theatre, Edinburgh from August 6th-28th. It will also be at the Dublin Fringe Festival during September.
