THE FIRST TIME I saw Kevin McAleer. I nearly fell off my seat with the laughing. I was overcome with a vaguely hysterical incredulity that one man could manage to weave Garda Patrol, Kojak and cows on marijuana into a routine and deliver it, dead faced and with much stammering, to a captivated audience of hardened adults.
Some years on, the formula has changed little - and neither have some of the jokes. To some extent, this doesn't matter, since McAleer's rambling stories about the absurdities of the Fifties and Sixties in Ireland stand up to a repeat performance.
Certainly, too, some of the new material lives up to his previous work, like the McAleer version of James Bond, or "wee Jimmy Bond", as his mother used to call him.
Yet too much of McAleer's new show revolves exclusively around bashing Protestants, Unionists and the English. While this comes off to devastating effect in a poignant and hilarious tale of the young and lonely Kevin's delight at being surrounded by a British Army patrol which "kept him up for nights with the talking", it descends into the puerile and even destructive in his constant return to the easy laughs of the words "orange bastard" and "Ulster Says No".
The straight stand up in the show is mingled with short videos, made by McAleer himself and featuring the obsession of Star Trek's Dr Spock with Jack Charlton and the Queen singing an Irish jig as part of her Christmas Day speech. For me, these didn't work; but, judging by the whoops of laughter around me, I was an exception, and I'm quite willing to put this down to the vagaries of comedy rather than a failing on McAleer's part.
A mixed bag, then, but a show worth seeing, if only for, McAleer's view on Michael Collins. It is obvious, he states, that the film is complete IRA, propaganda - sure, weren't all the voices done by actors?
