The first printed poster advertising the newly established Comedy Cellar , The International Bar, Wicklow Street.

"If The International was our GPO, then this poster was our Proclamation. This poster is the first poster printed advertising the newly established Comedy Cellar. During 1980s, I was a stand up comedian at the Comedy Cellar and was a commisar for propaganda and publicity, because the stand up comedians (Barry Murphy; Ardal O’Hanlon; Kevin Gildea; Dermot Carmody; Alex Lyons) outnumbered the audience. No one knew who or where they were. There was a musical scene in Dublin and a Chicken and Chips comedy scene, like the Red Cow, and the Rathfarnham Inn, but we were starting a new type of comedy. The comedy cellar was the only place you could go for this type of comedy. It was our Cavern! I sent a brief out to five of the top advertisement agencies, and this one was the best of all. It was designed by senior art director (with McConnell Advertising), John Flynn. It is hand painted on a hessian oat sack so there was great texture, and was hand lettered. The poster consists of a pint of Guiness, with a chortling face on the head of the pint and laughter tears coming off it. This was by far the best entry of the posters, however as it was in colour it was going to be expensive. We ran off 750 posters, that we snuck in on the back of a print run of AIB full colour leaflets. They we went and put them up in various places around the city- the poster was so nice, compared to others, we left it alone. Eventually people started to take them from the walls though, as they were so nice, and hung them up on the walls of their homes. When BBC was covering the Edinburgh Festival in July 1990 they used the poster as a backdrop for my feature for my report every night. The poster won best Indoor National Poster in October 1990 by the Irish Creative Advertising Design (ICAD), beating the posters for, for example, Dancing at Lughnasa. The poster had a life of its own. There are still lots of these posters extant, including at the Comedy Cellar in New York and The Cellar Bar, Edinborough. The International is still going strong today, and has also been the platform for Tommy Tiernan, Dylan Moran, Brendan Dempsey, Andrew Maxwell and Graham and Arthur from Father Ted, who performed sketches there. "