Jason Byrne is doing a gig for the Invisible Dot at the Union Chapel in London on Saturday night alongside Adam Buxton. It is not too clear who is headlining, but I hope for Adam’s sake it is Jason. Buxton is brilliant, but the copper-haired Irish livewire is pretty much impossible to follow. 

This was double-confirmed last weekend when I saw Byrne twice at Kilkenny’s Sky Cat Laughs Festival. Unlike most festivals you get multiple club-type bills here so it is often the case that the same act crops up twice. And in most cases they pretty much do the same set.

Not Byrne though. On Saturday night he closed a show at Langtons flying by the seat of his pants. First of all he targeted a woman on her own a few rows back whose husband had gone awol, then he singled out a man at the front who wasn’t laughing. The second incident is fairly standard meat-and-drink for stand-ups but in Byrne’s inspired hands virtually the whole set was built around this poor sap. And despite mercilessly mocking him it never felt mean.

I wasn’t sure how much scripted material Byrne did, so I decided to see him again at the Ormonde Hotel on Sunday. It was around midnight. He was clearly knackered, the audience was clearly knackered. But it didn’t take long until he spied a small man and decided to take the rise out of him for having his polo shirt collar up like some latterday Fonzie. 

Byrne got him up onstage, pushed his collar down and told him to strut across like a model and then put his collar back up. He then said what we were all thinking: “I don’t know whether you are 10 or 40”. This manchild did look a little odd, but then it all became clear. He was a jockey. And so naturally, as you do, Byrne decided to ride him across the stage….

I see a lot of comedy and it can, I confess, sometimes feel a little samey, but not when Byrne is around. Actually now I think about it I remember him following Lee Evans at the O2 Gala the other year because even Evans admitted he couldn’t follow Byrne. Maybe the Irish crowd fired him up, but let’s hope for the same magic at the Union Chapel. Now can someone please find the right TV vehicle for Byrne (don’t mention Father Figure).

This was another classic Cat Laughs. Maybe there weren’t quite as many big acts as there were for last year’s 20th birthday celebrations but everyone was on great form. Ardal O’Hanlon, Jack Dee and David O’Doherty onstage were some of the high spots for me.

O’Hanlon also cropped up in one of the exclusive Sky preview screenings, playing the redundant milkman/dad in After Hours, a whimsical comedy drama co-starring Jaime Winstone and set in the world of internet indie radio. It is written by Molly Naylor and John Osborne and is very sweet.

There were also airings of three new comedies which will be part of an autumn physical comedy season. Johnny Vegas and Kevin Eldon star in the Eldon-penned suburban superhero spoof Brilliantman! (pictured), Kim Cattrall starred in Mike Wozniak’s wordless circus-y fairytale Ruby Robinson and the cream of Edinburgh’s recent clown surge – Dr Brown, Sam Simmons and John Kearns – were among the cast of silent crime caper Rotters.

Oh, and Jason Byrne pitched up again to interview the young stars of Moone Boy onstage, Martin Moone himself, David Rawle, and affable motormouth Ian O’Reilly, who plays his best friend Padraic. For once Byrne let someone else do most of the talking. Maybe he had been told to be on his best behaviour.