I met Maureen Langan at The Best of Irish show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She was performing a piece from her show Daughter of a Garbage Man. Maureen grew up with an Irish immigrant mother, garbage man father, and five siblings in Lake Hiawatha, New Jersey, where there is no lake. She has performed as a stand-up all over the US, Canada, and the UK. Maureen was a finalist in the San Francisco Comedy Competition, the first woman since Ellen DeGeneres to place in the top three. She is an award-winning broadcast journalist who has hosted her own national TV and radio shows. Darren Walsh came to see my Edinburgh show and said he liked it which I found hard to believe until he told me his father was from Mayo and his mother was from Crumlin. I went to see his show S'pun the following night and loved it. As the title suggests Darren is committed to punning although he also uses props and animation. Having worked as an illustrator, animator and short-film maker, life-long Monty Python nerd and official giant, Darren Walsh decided to try his hand at Stand-up in 2010, using props and strange sound effects he’d made in his bedroom. Singing in an Arnold Schwarzenegger voice and playing on a miniature keyboard (or Arnieoke), he would fill the gaps in between songs with a 1-liner here and there. This opened the floodgates and 6 years on Darren has written 3192 more.
