Newry may be the butt of the jokes – but you should check out its comedy scene

When you tell someone you’re from Newry it often ends as you, or the city as the butt of the joke. Anyone from outside the area can easily joke that its inhabitants are all red diesel smuggling culchies, in a “city” with more churches than nightclubs.

But it’s ok, Newry folk have a sense of humour – and and now it has got it’s very first comedy night. Friday night’s event at Narrow Water Castle introduced by MC Conor McGinley and featuring some pretty big names like Collin Geddis, best known as Barry the Blender; Ciaran Bartlett, alongside Ruairi Woods, and Aaron McCann, two men with joke topics as varied as culchies and their sexual lust for Used Cars NI, mammies on Facebook, to scoring drugs in your local Omagh nightclub.

Newry has the bants

Not only did the line-up suggest an evening offering the Newry nightlife scene some much needed variation but the venue itself gave the illusion of something exotic, the gig being held in Narrow Water Castle, the sight of the recent Grandmaster Flash concert. With the stage at the front, and round tables set up across the candlelit room the place looked classy. It could easily be mistaken as a hip bar in any capital city (or a dodgy dungeon pub but knowing hipsterism that’s a vibe people want to get on).

Comedy stance 101

With the night’s promoter Beatcage’s set up once the show started the night really kicked off, the audience reacting well to the witty one liners offered up by the comedians, as well as their long winding stories, and back and forth banter with the audience, Geddis at one point stopped the show to confront a girl at the front table, claiming her laugh sounded like the: “Rape of ten seagulls”.

Hopefully this will pave the way for a comedy scene in Newry that hasn’t been seen before.

Here’s a throwback to Geddis’s I am Fighter days  for anyone feeling nostalgic.

Photos courtesy of Paul Loughran.