Eleanor Tiernan - Rogue

No point in mincing my words: this was excruciating. But in fairness to Irishwoman Eleanor Tiernan, she was dealt a bad hand. The sum total of her four-strong audience was me, a fellow comic in for moral support, a guy who had been given a free ticket and a bloke pulled in off the street with some last-minute flyering. I'd have counted the soundman in there, but he didn't even stick it out the full hour.

Sister of comedian Tommy Tiernan, who comes second only to U2 in terms of live ticket sales in Ireland by a native act, she’s gutsy to try and follow in her brother's sizeable footsteps. The Athlone stand-up’s delivery is passable but her material—a lot of it drawn from the done-to-death realm of how the Irish can be a bit backwards sometimes—is relentlessly poor. It’s the kind of stuff you probably wouldn’t even judge as the funniest things said on an average night out at the pub with your mates, let alone at an international comedy festival.

A lengthy section about Russell Brand’s Get Him To The Greek—a film which would struggle to survive the critical scrutiny of a two-year-old—bombed terribly, but Tiernan stuck to her script with near kamikaze determination. One audience member bizarrely interjected that he thought “Greek” was slang for doggy-style. This was surely comic manna from heaven to a stand-up dying on her arse, but instead of tearing into the guy Tiernan practically gave him a free pass. You’ve either got those comedy reflexes or you don’t.