JOE ROONEY: Children’s comedy festival takes first steps

Psychology Today magazine claims the average four-year-old laughs 300 times a day, while a 40-year-old only does four times.

You would think it’s easy to play for laughs to a room full of children. Joe Rooney — one of the comics on the bill at this weekend’s Funny Fest, in Dublin’s Temple Bar, which is Ireland’s first comedy festival for children — says this isn’t the case.

“The first time I played a comedy gig for children was in Glasgow, one morning. There were three acts on, and I’ve never seen acts so nervous as they were going on to do a gig for kids. Kids are very honest. They’re not going to laugh at bits that aren’t funny. Some adult audiences might be a bit nice to you, and let you away with things, but kids aren’t going to do that. If they don’t like you, they won’t just sit there, they will say it. They might put their hand up first, and then say, ‘You’re not very funny’,” Rooney says.

Rooney distinguishes the types of comedy that suit Funny Fest audiences, who are aged from six upwards, from those that suit adult audiences. “You wouldn’t be doing any irony, but I wouldn’t patronise them either. You’d use music a bit more. It’s more physical, and there’s obviously some subject matter that you wouldn’t be touching on,” he says.

Rooney, who toured Moscow and St Petersburg recently with David McSavage, says Russians don’t like risqué material about adult themes, such as sex.

“They’re very prudish in Russia. They don’t like graphic stuff about sex. There was a fella on before me, and he was going well. Then, he did a bit about sex and it really died. When I went on, I was going really well and then I did my bit about sex and it went only OK.

“Afterwards, I was talking to these three girls and they said, ‘No, we don’t like the sex bits. The fellow before you was really young, a very handsome guy, and you can imagine him doing it, but with you it was OK’.”

He says: “It’s funny what doesn’t work. You know when you’re in a relationship and standards drop, you start weeing in front of each other. You shouldn’t do that when your wife’s brushing her teeth. Afterwards, someone told me that didn’t work, because in Russia the toilet is in a separate room to the bathroom, so you can’t wee in front of somebody.”

Rooney is familiar to television audiences for his role in Father Ted as Father Damo, the rogue who leads Dougal astray, and for several seasons in Killinaskully. He only recently took to the stage, however. Last year, he played alongside Omid Djalili in the stage adaptation of The Shawshank Redemption. The play ran at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Rooney’s part demanded a rather dramatic entrance onstage. “My character has to come onstage in my underwear, and that’s taken off, and he’s showered and fumigated, and then put into prison clothes. It was my first time on stage, doing a play, and I had to be in the nip for my first scene. It wasn’t actually that bad, doing it in the play. What was really nerve-racking was doing it — if you’ll forgive the pun — in dress rehearsal in front of 15 people in a gym in London.”

- Joe Rooney performs alongside Andrew Stanley and Totally Wired at the Funny Fest: Ireland’s first comedy festival for Children, 2pm, Sunday, August 24, The Ark, Temple Bar, Dublin. www.ark.ie.