World class acts such as Bill Bailey and Dylan Moran anchored the Cat Laughs, and a comedy masterclass from Lewis Black, Dom Irrera and Mike Wilmot also tickled Brian Boyd.

At last year's Just For Laughs comedy festival in Montreal, Tommy Tiernan (right) played at one of the televised Gala shows in front of 2,000 audience people.

At the end of his set, he received a very rare (by Montreal standards) standing ovation. Such was the impression he made on the organisers, he has been invited back this year to present his own one-man show.

To put this in context, only one comedian a year is asked to present their own show. Previous comics who have been asked include Bill Hicks, Eddie Izzard and US comedy superstar Chris Rock. Tiernan will be using his Montreal exposure to launch a full US campaign. After that, he'll probably set up his own airline.

So these three women walk into a pub. They go up to the bar and the first one says, "Hurrah, we've colonised a male joke form"; the second one says, "Look at my magnificent tits"; and the third one says, "This is all well and good but there's still no escaping the fact that this joke is being told by a man".

Bill Bailey's deconstruction of hoary old gag formats at the Smithwick's Cat Laughs festival in Kilkenny was one of the highlights - among many more - in one of the funniest shows ever staged in the (gasp) 11 years the festival has been running.

There is something so beautifully pure about Bailey's work. Given an Edinburgh-style one-hour slot at this festival, even though he was performing at the same time as a crucial World Cup qualifier, he crammed the spacious Langton's venue. Superlatives aren't enough - hearing Stairway to Heaven being played on the banjo was funny beyond words.

This "heavy rock into hillbilly" section of the show was also educational. Bailey asked the audience to shout out well-known songs which he would then "banjo-ise".

It was only as he got 30 seconds into Blue Oyster Cult's Don't Fear the Reaper that he, and we, realised the banjo version was far superior to the original one. The Blue Oyster Cult have been made aware of this stunning discovery and will most probably be going down the hillbilly route on their next album. The show finished with exclusive extracts from Kraftwerk's little known "Cockney" album - his krautrock version of The Hokey Cokey was sublime.

You can rattle on all you like about the different nationalities represented at Cat Laughs, all the different styles and different approaches on offer, but what you really need is a Grade A world-class act to anchor the proceedings - and Kilkenny got it in Bailey. And isn't it odd how truly talented comedians, just like truly talented musicians, are strangely normal and affable people - it's the average ones who are the bitter, neurotic messes.

Bailey's Black Books co-star, Dylan Moran, is another man with world-class ability. Presenting a work-in-progress in his show, Moran can mine new seams effortlessly. It's difficult to riff off banal subjects such as air travel and museums, but Moran has the alchemist's touch, finding something exhilarating in the commonplace. His closing routine - which links up cancer, Aids and Botox - was simply stunning.

The small army of US comics had mixed fortunes - with more than a few of them labouring under the illusion that Irish audiences had an intimate knowledge of the minutiae of their culture. Patton Oswalt, perhaps the best of the bunch, came off the stage of the Watergate Theatre to be handed a list by Irish comic Ed Byrne.

"He was such a good comic that I just felt he needed a quick translation service," said Byrne. "I explained to him that we don't have 'milk duds' and 'corn dogs' in Irish cinemas and that no one knows who the Dave Matthews band are. It's something I'm very sensitive to, as when I toured the US, I had a big chunk of my routine ruined because audiences simply did not understand a reference I was using."

Los Angeles comic Maria Bamford had no problems on the cultural references front. Her delightfully skewed and eccentric material transcended such concerns. Part of Bamford's appeal is her Barbie-Doll-with-a-hangover image. She lulls you into a false sense of security with her ditzy persona before delivering some killer lines.

Tough-talking New Yorker Andy Kindler eschewed the stand-up format for a seminar style address on the state of the comedy industry. He began by explaining how both Robin Williams and the TV programme Will and Grace were "essentially a pile of crap".

This was all very stirring, iconoclastic stuff as he went on to further dismantle the comedic reputations of Larry David, Jay Leno and Whoopi Goldberg. What let Kindler down somewhat were his constant references to Hollywood trade papers and recherché entertainment reference points. Still, he had enough wit to turn his failure to read the audience into a self-deprecating virtue.

Some of the more "adventurous" type comics were so busy being adventurous they forgot to be funny, so it was somewhat of a relief to come across an old school comedic masterclass in a show that featured three North American comics: Lewis Black, Dom Irrera and Mike Wilmot. All three have honed their acts on the club circuit and it showed in the pace and economy of their material.

Wilmot in particular specialises in the cruder end of things, but such is his professionalism that he can put a sleek veneer on even the basest of subjects. It's a very thin line he walks sometimes, but he gets the balancing act just about right.

On the Irish front, such is Tommy Tiernan's pre-eminent status that he has moved on to his own Zen plateau where others can only point up at him and wonder if he'll ever come down and play fair with the rest of the workaday comics (see panel).

Ardal O'Hanlon is back with some biting new material and will be touring full-time shortly after appearing in an upcoming BBC sitcom called The Stockholm Syndrome, written by Ben Elton. And while there has been a lull in serious new Irish contenders coming through, both Limerick's Karl Spain and Offaly's Neil Delamere impressed many at this festival with sharp and snappy sets.

The most improved comic, however, has to be Kilbarrack's Andrew Maxwell, who has ditched a bit of his cheeky-chappiness to come up with a more resonant type of act. It's some indication of his progression that his forthcoming Edinburgh Fringe show is already being talked up by many.

Irish-American Des Bishop was another festival hit. Following on from his television programme about working minimum wage jobs, he is currently shooting a show that features him conducting comedy workshops in disadvantaged urban areas. The series will be broadcast by RTÉ in September. "There's been a fantastic response to it so far," he says. "Two comics emerged from the Ballymun workshops and they are down at Cat Laughs doing shows this year and showing real promise. I'm going to be missing Edinburgh this year because I'll be busy doing workshops in east Belfast." That's dedication for you.