But now that we have embraced it, there are comedy nights in pubs all over our cities.

Comedians have more outlets on Irish television than ever before and fans now refer to Tommy, Ardal, Dylan and Des by their first names and expect you to know who they're talking about.

So where's it all coming from? Well, across the water comedy has an old testament and a new testament. In Britain the stars of working men's clubs . . . the Bernard Mannings and Jim Davidsons . . . now seemed sexist, racist and hackneyed as Ben Elton and Alexei Sayle rewrote the comedy rules. Comedy was as the cliche goes, was the new rock 'n' roll In Ireland it was slightly different. "To say there was a comedy renaissance in Ireland suggests there was a scene before, " says Andrew Maxwell. "There wasn't. There were always great cabaret acts and guys who did oneman shows like Niall Toibin, but there was never really a stand-up scene."

Ireland had the likes of Brendan Grace and Hal Roach, but when it came to alternative comedy the country had no outlets. Dermot Morgan, future star of Father Ted, wandered fruitlessly around the Irish wilderness trying to offer something different for the best part of two decades and, as late as the 1990s, cutting-edge radio satires like Scrap Saturday were cut off in their prime. If Irish alternative comedy has a creation myth, it's probably the genesis of the comedy trio Mr Trellis in the late '80s. Mr Trellis consisted of Ardal O'Hanlon, Apres Match's Barry Murphy and Kevin Gildea.

"Barry, Kevin and myself used to do these debates in college, " says O'Hanlon. "Basically we thought we were funny guys. We just wanted to make people laugh and the only platform for that was the debating society where you could get up and undermine whatever was going on. It very quickly turned into silliness and farce and we were very comfortable there.

At the same time we would have been watching The Young Ones and that featured the modern generation of British comics. For the first time ever comedy was ordinary people who shuffled onto stage looking and dressing like us."

They weren't alone. Small pockets of individualistic comics were establishing themselves around the country. In Belfast, Queens student Patrick Kielty was setting up his own comedy night with Jackie Hamilton. Elsewhere in Dublin, Joe Rooney and Paul Tylak were studying media production and producing sketch material. And in Limerick, Pat Shortt and John Kenny had begun performing as D'Unbelievables. A small close-knit scene was forming. According to O'Hanlon, Barry Murphy in particular played a mentoring role to up-and-coming comedians.

"Barry is a very strong character and would have influenced a lot of the newer people, " he says. "His idea of comedy eschewed anything political or po-faced or pretentious. It was all about purity and doing comedy for the sake of comedy, and about coming up with something original and new and different."

Dara O'Briain has noted that in the past Irish comedians told stories about "a man in the bar", but that the new crop of comedians that emerged in the '90s began to tell the story from the perspective of that man. Another wag might have added, 'And some of them told the story from the perspective of the bar.'

And the bar in question was probably the International on Dublin's Wicklow Street. If Mr Trellis were the three wise men, then the International was the stable. "The only other source of comedy was Jury's Cabaret, " says stand-up comedian Tara Flynn, who went on to found the Nualas. "No one was on the telly.

Careers were for Hal Roach and Brendan Grace and those boys. The International was the only place to go for something different and it was Mr Trellis and Dermot Carmody who started it all really. People did comedy because that's what they wanted to do or had to do."

From such humble origins emerged the superstars of the 1990s . . . O'Hanlon, Dylan Moran, Tommy Tiernan, Ed Byrne. Then Father Ted happened. The most notable showcase for Irish comedy in the 1990s was written by Arthur Matthews and Graham Linehan and, featuring Ardal O'Hanlon and Dermot Morgan in leading roles, the show also endeavoured to showcase almost every comedian worth their salt in the Irish comedy firmament . . . Joe Rooney, Tommy Tiernan, Graham Norton, even old-hand Brendan Grace.

Father Tedwas the shot in the arm Irish comedy needed. And it galvanised an appreciation for Irish talent internationally that still endures. According to Tara Flynn, Irish comedy is now an easy sell. "There's a general perception that it will be of a certain standard if it's Irish, " she says. "In Ireland, there's a very nurturing air in places like the International.

So you can grow for quite a long time and develop your own thing. You don't have to come up with the knob gags you have to come up with for the British circuit. In Ireland you can come up with something a bit quirkier."

And thus there is now a vibrant comedy circuit around the country, comedians such as Dara O'Briain, Dylan Moran, Graham Norton and Patrick Kielty have become staples of British television; Irish television has granted shows to Des Bishop, Karl Spain, Jason Byrne, David O'Doherty and PJ Gallagher; and RTE's The Panel remains a reliable showcase for comedy talent. "It used to be if you wanted to get your comedy on TV you had to go to Britain, " says Patrick Kielty. "But it's kind of bizarre. There are fewer platforms for comedians on British TV now and there are huge platforms on TV in Ireland."

So what's with this popularity of stand-up comedy all of a sudden? Andrew Maxwell has had the benefit of watching it all from London and thinks he knows. "Everyone in Ireland knew that it was always a country full of potential that was largely crushed by fellow Irish people, " he says. "Ireland basically went from 1950 to 2007 in the last 15 years. In times of cultural upheaval we look around for people who can interpret that. It's why we have popular economists like Eddie Hobbes and David McWilliams. There isn't an economist in Britain who's as huge as that! We want someone to interpret the changes. Comedians like Tommy and Des have an interpretive vision and people feel the need for that in Ireland at the moment."

So comedy's about a quest for meaning . . . not so much the new rock 'n' roll as the new mass?

Ardal O'Hanlon isn't so sure. "I think we can delude ourselves that what we do is more important than it is, " he says. "I think most good comics try to introduce some philosophical rigour to their material and address real issues, but let's face it, a 20-minute tract on climate change isn't going to be that funny, and at the end of the day we're trying to make people laugh." .