James Griffin: More laughs than you imagined

Get a good laugh out of the Comedy Festival. Photo / Thinkstock

It is that time of the year when mirth abounds, as the International Comedy Festival rolls into town and suddenly everybody's a comedian. Seriously, there are a bewildering number of comedy shows to choose from over the next month or so. It is lucky for you, then, that I am here to pick and choose the best of a very large bunch, isn't it?

Poetry of the Flatus is a couple of Welsh comedians who drink lots of beer as they perform their routine of jokes and songs not by talking and singing, but via microphones sewn into the seats of their trousers. It is, apparently, a work of genius - if a bit whiffy - and their version of Tom Jones' Delilah will most definitely have you asking the question "why, why why?" Because it is important to have a quote from an overseas newspaper when promoting your comedy show, the Ipswich Bugle called Poetry of the Flatus "comedy so visceral you can cut it with a knife".

There is an old showbiz saying: "You think actors are egotistical? Man, clearly you don't know any stand-up comedians." Leroy Hubbly is universally regarded as the world's most egotistical stand-up comedian, to the point where he will go out of his way to fill his set with jokes only he finds funny. In fact, if anyone laughs at one of Leroy's jokes, he will immediately feel insulted and cut it from the set. A great night for Leroy has him on stage, in hysterics, while the audience sits in absolute silence. Leroy's style of what comedy experts call "Reverse Interaction Comedy" has been a huge influence on many New Zealand comedians.

Ardal O'Ardal is a brilliantly dark Irish comedian whose deadpan, side-splitting tales of a childhood growing up in a family wrought with alcoholism, violence, poverty and child abuse will have you rolling in the aisles. He is not to be confused with Declan O'Declan, whose deadpan, pant-wetting tales of his treatment at the hands of Catholic priests will have you in stitches and your sides will ache for days. And neither of these should be confused with Danny O'Danny, who isn't Irish at all and lives in Christchurch and only ever emerges for Comedy Festivals, pretending to be an Irish comedian.

Clem Collins used to be famous on television a long time ago and is still riding that fame as far as it will take him - and further. The former sitcom star has battled drugs, alcohol and a remarkable lack of talent to end up on the comedy festival circuit, eking out a living. The New England Journal of Psychological Medicine described Clem's stand-up show as "part a cry for help, part a fascinating case study in many deep-seated psychological issues being acted out before your very eyes, part like watching a train wreck in slow motion, but with a lot of laughs along the way, not all of them intentional". Clem is one of the big international drawcards of the New Zealand International Comedy Festival, primarily because people keep going to his shows in the hope that this will be the night he will lose it once and for all.

The Man In A Really Big Cardboard Box takes mime to a whole new level, performing it inside a really big cardboard box so the audience cannot see him.

Although, on one level, this means that the audience spends an hour watching a large cardboard box move silently around the stage, it is generally agreed that this is an improvement on all other forms of mime.

Big Merv used to be plain old Glenn Watson, a hard-working, mid-level Australian comedian of the Rodney Rude/Kevin Bloody Wilson school of comedy. Then, one night in Toowoomba while drunk, he performed the same old routine he'd done a hundred times before except, this time, he put a big fake moustache on his face and pretended to be former Australian cricketer Merv Hughes. He killed and a legend was born, and he's still doing that routine and riding that moustache to this very day.

So many laughs to be had in such a short time, at so many venues; and I haven't even started on the Kiwi comedians. The short one; the tall one; the one who used to be a game show host (and still is); the two that people keep getting mixed up; the one who makes the funny noises. All of them, they'll be in there somewhere, doing funny stuff.

There are even a couple of women comedians, which is a good thing.

Stand-up comedy; it's here, it's not going away any time soon, so you might as well get out there and learn to live with it.