EDDIE BANNON SMITHWICK'S CAT LAUGHSEddie Bannon used to be addicted to a football-manager game on the internet.
"It turns out that I wasn't sad or boring or had no life at all. It was actually all great training for this job," he says, referring to the management muscles he'll stretch this week as artistic director of the Smithwick's Cat Laughs Comedy Festival, which kicks off in Kilkenny on Thursday. Last year he shadowed Richard Cook, the festival's founder, to learn the ropes - and saw how much effort goes into making it all look effortless.
Nearly 90 comedians will gather at the event - Bannon went to New York earlier this year with a crew from the Cat Laughs to try to bypass the mainstream TV comics and seek out jobbing talent in the clubs. "What really surprised me is that we didn't have to explain what Kilkenny was or where it was. They had all heard of it. We are one of the top three festivals in the world. While it could cost you €10,000 to go and do Edinburgh, all the comedians are invited to Kilkenny, and the ethos of the festival is to make it easy for the comedian to get what we all want out of a show: a killer 25 minutes."
The Kilkenny audience is a discerning one, not given to easy laughter just because a face from the telly appears on stage. "There's a kind of ownership down here, because the audience has grown up with Irish comedians like Dara O'Briain and Deirdre O'Kane, who started out around the same time as the festival."
The machinery that runs the backstage parts of the festival is well-oiled by now, so his role has been "more of a creative thing. It's great to be able to sit in a room, have an idea and make it part of the festival." This year, for example, he hopes to reinvigorate improvisation evenings by mixing up comedians who have never worked together. "Unpredictability makes it much more interesting."
On previous year's experience the sun should shine all weekend. "Obviously God's a comedian, or at least he likes coming to Kilkenny."
In conversation with Catherine Cleary.