Man behind relaunch of comedy club hopes to run multiple venues, he tells Barry O'Halloran

It may be a good laugh if you're in the audience, but comedy is no joke. In fact, it's turning into big business. Last Christmas, seven of the top 10 selling DVDs in the Republic were comedy, with stand up in particular being popular.

Over the past 12 months, the likes of Tommy Tiernan and Des Bishop sold out Vicar Street in Dublin and Cork Opera House respectively. And not just one show, but 60 nights in Tiernan's case and 20 nights in Bishop's, giving them a combined audience of well over 80,000.

Tickets for these events sell for €20-€25, suggesting a combined total turnover of anything from €1.6 million to €2 million from their shows. That's before DVD sales and any other revenue. It's clear that the cake shared by artists, venues, recording companies and promoters is growing.

Peter O'Mahony, the man behind the relaunched Laughter Lounge venue in Dublin, says he cannot put a figure on the entire worth of the comedy business. But it's healthy enough to have prompted him and several other people with a reputation for making shrewd investments to put €6 million into the venture.

O'Mahony is the main backer. In 1997 he set up the original venue, which closed down just over three years ago. His co-investors are: promoter Denis Desmond, owner of MCD and shareholder with Clear Channel in the UK's Mean Fiddler; nightclub and restaurant-owner Robbie Fox; Galway publican, Kevin Healy; and Ger Purcell of the Purcell Meats business.

The lounge is housed in the basement in Ward Anderson's old cinema premises on Eden Quay. This was knocked down and rebuilt as a mixed commercial and retail development called Astor House.

The developers kept O'Mahony on board because planners demanded that the new structure house some form of cultural activity. The venue was renovated at a cost of €4 million and the bill to fit it out came to €2 million.

The new venue has state of the art equipment, including a fixed television camera and editing facilities. It houses 320 people, an increase on the 280 of the original venue. A steel girder rather than pillars supports the ceiling, giving unobstructed views.

Its backers are not going to stop at Dublin. O'Mahony predicts that, by the end of the summer, they will have lined up a venue in Belfast, with Cork and Limerick to follow. They are already using a premises in Galway one night a week.

Tommy Tiernan, Bill Bailey, Dara O'Briain and Phil Jupitus trod the boards at the original venue. Links with the Comedy Store in London helped to bring in big attractions. It also specialised in exposing new talent and bringing in acts from the US and elsewhere.

Unlike a lot of managers in this country, O'Mahony did not come to business via the usual route of private school, university and an obligatory period in a high-profile accounting firm.

When he left school in the 1980s, comedy was not something from which he believed he would be making a living. One thing of which he was sure was that he wanted to run his own business.

After a period selling office equipment, he came up with an idea for a board game, Insider Dealing. This was the monopoly concept grafted on to stock market trading, with chance cards replaced by cards with "information" affecting the value of the fictional stocks. Players were allotted £100,000, and the first to get to £1 million won.

He raised £100,000 from a firm of commodity brokers in the UK. "I was young and I didn't understand the meaning of the word 'no'," he says. "We sold it worldwide and it ended up as the biggest selling board game in FAO Schwarz, the big toyshop on 5th Avenue in New York, in 1989."

After four years, he got bored with games, so to speak, cashed in, and distributed the returns to his investors. Following a stint in the print business, he and his wife returned home in the 1990s, seeking a better lifestyle for their family, and looking for opportunities in the burgeoning property market.

He got a lease on the old cinema basement and decided it would be the perfect place to mirror a comedy venue he frequented in London called Up the Creek, which was run by Malcolm Hardy. Using contacts there he was able to tap into a network of acts looking for work.

It was 1997 and his timing could not have been better. "That year Dylan Moran won the Perrier [ the Edinburgh Festival's main comedy award] and when I saw the old cinema, I thought what a perfect thing to put in there," he says.

It was not long making an impact and, by subsequently hooking up with Comedy Store, it was able to bring in well-known names but could pay them "club" rates, which are cheaper than those charged for big venues.

However, in 2003, it had to close as its home was being bulldozed. It took up residence in Spirit nightclub, but O'Mahony felt that this did not work and it ended after six months.

He kept the wolf from the door by setting up other businesses - rental delivery service Busy Bee DVD and a corporate gift solutions business, 4Gifts - and by working on his wife's school book distribution operation, Blackboard Books.

Displaying a rare knack for marketing, he kept the Laughter Lounge brand alive through its website. "We kept updating it," he says. "We'd put a photograph of a builder leaning on a shovel, say. What we were saying was we'll be back in business as soon as he fills in that hole."

It also continued to arrange corporate gigs, and has been wooing that business since its relaunch. However, the lounge is not focused solely on this. Its efforts to retain customers through the website appear to have paid off and many of them are returning.

"We're booked up for the next four weeks," O'Mahony says. The Laughter Lounge has been running at capacity every night since it opened, and its away stint in Galway has been similarly successful.

He adds, however, that every night the lounge holds back 30 tickets for sale at the box office to anyone who comes to the door.

In terms of the acts, it is committed to bringing back those who proved the most popular in the original lounge. Patrons could vote for them on the venue's website via its "hot or not" option.

Obtaining the acts themselves is not hard. O'Mahony points out that international artists who perform at the Comedy Lounge in London realise that it makes sense to do a further four nights in Ireland (three in Dublin, one in Galway).

That logic will also apply when it is running multiple venues. "What we'll have is the same show in Dublin one week, Cork the next and so on," he says. "It means that we are giving them four nights work a week that they otherwise would not have, and we can throw in a break in west Cork or the west of Ireland as well."

At its current level, it could turn over €10 million in its first full year. That will be profitable in operational terms, but it also has to pay down the cost of redevelopment.

Comedy may be funny old business, but it's certainly no joke.