I wasn’t going to review Jason Byrne. I felt that I’d seen it all and said it all when he ended Kilkenny’s Cat Laughs gig with a jockey on his back earlier this year. But within a minute of him charging onstage I had my pen out again. Once more Byrne went where few comedians dare to go. 

When others spot kids in their audience they tone down their act. Not Byrne. He got five impossibly fresh-faced young boys to climb up onstage and join him. He then spent most of his set joshing with the kids, picking on them for being posh or being Protestant. They gave as good as they got too, with perfectly time “dunnos” in response to the simplest of enquiries.

And when fellow Irishman Bob Geldof turned out to be singing on a faraway stage that was a cue for more spontaneity, At one point I thought Byrne was going to organise an invasion of the music area, but instead he just got one of then parents to be carried Don Quixote-style around the audience looking for parents of the other children onstage.  

How do you end a routine like this? Easy. Get the kids to try to push you to the end of the stage. It’s a thin line between stand-up and child abuse and I don't think Byrne crossed it but it was close at times.

After the kids had gone it was almost impossible to sustain the momentum but Byrne gave it a go, building up a furious sweat with his trademark routines about his infuriating relationship with his wife. Let’s hope a major chain store wasn’t present to hear about him nicking a carpet. Although if they know what he did on it once he got it home they won’t want it back anyway.

Picture by Bruce Dessau