Cat Laughs

The Cat Laughs Comedy Festival is a comedy festival held over the first weekend in June each year in Kilkenny, County Kilkenny, Republic of Ireland. It was founded in 1994.[1]

History

Cat Laughs was envisioned in 1994 by Lynn Cahill who ran Bickerstaffe theatre company in Kilkenny. As a means to expand the companies programme, she considered with her business partner that Kilkenny was great for a festival. After originally planning a choral festival called "Cat Sings", her business partner Richard Cook suggested a comedy festival instead.[1] For the first two editions, no Irish comedian closed the festival due to the audience preferring British comics.[1] The first edition was sponsored by Smithwick's before being sponsored by Murphy's Irish Stout until 2015 when Smithwick's returned.[2] It is traditionally held over the weekend of Pentecost.[3] Each comedian is previewed at other shows by the festival directors before being invited to perform at Cat Laughs.[1]

Several comedians from the UK and Ireland have attended including; Dara Ó Briain, Ed Byrne and Eddie Izzard.[4][5] The festival became referred to by RTE as the "Best Little Comedy Festival in the world".[6] The festival has also been used as a way to launch the careers of comedians from outside the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.[7]

A tradition developed over the years that as a part of the festival, the Irish comedians would play a football match against comedians from the rest of the world for the Cat Cup.[4]

References
  1. "My big week". Irish Times. Retrieved 10 March 2020.
  2. "Stellar line-up plays for Laughs". Irish Times. 7 May 2005. Retrieved 10 March 2020.
  3. "Smithwick's Cat Laughs Comedy Festival". Irish Independent. Retrieved 10 March 2020.
  4. "Comedy festival cats out of the bag". Irish Independent. Retrieved 10 March 2020.
  5. "Kilkenny Cat Laughs 2019 announced". Buzz. Retrieved 10 March 2020.
  6. "Cat Laughs celebrates 25 years with all-star comedy line up". RTE. 20 March 2019. Retrieved 10 March 2020.
  7. "I was a psycho always blaming other people- comedian Bill Burr". Irish Independent. Retrieved 10 March 2020.
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