Everything Has Been Fixed

David O’Doherty at The Whale 24FEB18

rom Melbourne to Edinburgh, he’s acclaimed as one of Ireland’s finest ever comedians, and so, when David O’Doherty requested onstage last night that the Greystones Guide give him a cover story for the morning, well, who are we to deny the great man…?

“I want the headline to be ‘Everything Has Been Fixed’,” said the Casio-toting, wisecracking and award-winning comic, “with a crossword inside where one of the clues is, ‘Who fixed everything?’, and the answer will be, ‘David O’Doherty’.”

In truth, with a two-hour set so charming, casually insightful and so ridiculously funny that it blew out Greystones’ power, last night, it felt as though David O’Doherty had indeed fixed everything.

This happy miserabalist’s early stated desire to simply make the audience “feel alive” made it clear early on that O’Doherty is a lover not a fighter, finding the joy in the bleakest of everyday moments. His oft-stated belief that the world is going to hell in a hand basket works merely as a backdrop to wonderful riffs about heckling kids (“What’s the point of you…?”), how Mr. Tayto looks like a dirty old man, the Galaxy Note 7 being the world’s first truly smart phone, recognising the impending global gloom and quickly self-destructing, and why the heck do interior designers keep sticking hay bales in every feckin’ nook and cranny.

Throw in those trademark twisted songs – think Tom Lehrer on Smarties – and everyone went home happy. And feeling alive.