"It's just a bit of a laugh on a Sunday afternoon," said Richard Cook, who with Lyn Cahill, his co-director at Kilkenny's Bickerstaffe Theatre Company, came up with the idea for the "Ritas", the Really Irish Theatre Awards.
With a little help from Murphy's brewery, an anarchic "alternative" version of The Irish Times/ESB awards took place earlier, within staggering distance of the RDS in Jury's Hotel. Here every actor, writer, director and stage manager in Dublin seemed to be eating cocktail sausages and drinking stout at £1 a pint in the ballroom.
The nominees popped up on ping-pong balls in a Lotto-style game of chance, and they were picked out - in between expletives and with help from a halfnaked lady wielding a vacuum cleaner - by comic Owen O'Neill.
He advised the company to get "rat-arsed" and go over the road later on to demand awards for everyone. "Let's hear it for the Jury's chandeliers," he urged the bawling thespians. Several of the nominees were disqualified because they turned out to be that well-known actor "Ian Valid".
The winner of the first award, for the Really Best Director, Martin Murphy of the TEAM theatre in education company, said the event recognised "something important in the arts community today, the maintenance of standards. It means that I was the best, and the rest of you were f...ing nowhere."
There was an award for the Really Best Review of a Play, won by Jocelyn Clarke of the Sunday Tribune, who was brought up to explain what he meant by "solipsism" and to be ragged about his praise for a production's "sinuous and lambent lighting".
There was even an award for lifetime achievement, chosen by picking a ticket out of a hat and won by Jilly Clarke, the Abbey Theatre publicist and administrator of the Loose Cannon theatre company.
There was one real cash award, a £1,000 cheque to Dave Nolan, the Abbey's sound manager, for his help to struggling companies all over Ireland. He was not there to receive it, and a frantic message had to be broadcast via a mobile phone to his answering machine.
Other "Really Best" awards went to Blaithin Sheerin for best costume design; Angie Waller for best stage manager; Moggie Douglas for best stage design; Michael Scott for best lighting design; Tanya Carlisle for best production, administration and management; The Nun's Wood by Pat Kinevane for best new play; Prime Cut for best company; Peter O'Meara for best actor; Annie Ryan for best actress and The Colleen Bawn for best production.
There were also awards for the actors Tom Murphy and Tony Flynn, the actresses Britta Smith and Emma McIvor, and the play Toupees and Snare Drums by Gina Moxley.