Time: 9pm
Capacity: 250 seats filled to capacity, with a few people loitering around the edges.
The theme: Board games, pranking, text messages, letters from the bank … the 2006 if.comedy nominee doesn't exactly redraw the map of observational comedy. But then O'Doherty does have such an amiably absurd way of going about things, especially when he accompanies himself in song on a rudimentary Yamaha keyboard, it doesn't matter in the slightest.
High point: It may sound like an insult to say that it came before O'Doherty even arrived on the stage, but the way he introduced himself with a brilliantly shambolic ramble about mispronouncing the word "epitome" among other things, lifted the droopy Irishman up to a level from which he did not sink all evening. From his opening impressions of the police social club venue in which we sat ("like a Christian person is having a 21st-birthday party") to the closing song about all the things he has hated so far this year, O'Doherty just skipped from winner to winner without giving the ecstatic crowd a chance to cool down. When a standup gig goes this well, you do get a sense of how religions are started.
Weak spot: One of the songs, maybe? It is a struggle to find something, to be honest, so the fact that his lyrics about Plato and Da Vinci were unspectacular is about as close as we are going to get. This was just an hour of observational standup with no depth, if you think that matters. But then it was about as good as an hour of observational standup with no depth can be.
Audience participation: A handful of contributions for an improvised song, and roars of "DOD!!" from a dangerously excited fan to my right. Otherwise just laughter, painful and prolonged.
Comic equation: Ardal O'Hanlon to the power of Eddie Izzard.
Mark out of 10: 9
Put this on your poster: The eppy-tome of light-hearted standup!
