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Loads of Laughs in Kilkenny

By Irish America Staff
August / September 2003

August 1, 2003 by Leave a Comment

Kathleen Madigan.
Kathleen Madigan.

Irish Comedy Festival.

℘℘℘

“Don’t read Cosmopolitan for the advice. They told me that if I want to meet a man, I should go to the Laundromat. Yeah, like I wanna be 50 and dating a guy who can’t afford a dryer,” says 27-year-old comedian Kathleen Madigan, who is a headline act wherever she goes.

Recently Madigan, who grew up in St. Louis — Florrissant, to be exact, with a father from Kilkenny and a mother from Roscommon, mixed it up with the home grown variety of funny Irish at the Kilkenny “Murphy’s Cat Laughs Comedy Festival” over the weekend of May 29.

The festival was founded in 1995 by Richard Cook and Lynn Cahill, and annually attracts a smorgasbord of the world’s top stand-up comedians, writers and cartoonists from Ireland, the U.K. and the U.S.

“This year’s festival has the most exciting lineup I can remember,” said Cook. “Comedians have a long tradition of having a go at society’s sacred cows and in the current political and economic environment, it will be extremely interesting to see what slant they put on these issues.”

Madigan, a recipient of the American Comedy Awards “Best Female Club Comic,” started her career in St. Louis, at an open mike night. Within a few short years she became one of the country’s top touring comedians.♦

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