L-R: Ben Hurley, El Jaguar and Jimeoin

My feet have barely touched the ground since the start of the Comedy Festival, but it’s a fun ride and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

First Laughs at the Opera House on 25 April was a fantastic night. It was a late one too – after over three hours of stand up comedy we emerged from the theatre with bleary eyes and aching ribs.

17 comedians in total entertained us. Now that’s a lot of bang for your buck. Like a pack of licorice allsorts, there was a good mix of old and new names, local and international comedians and plenty of fresh material.

Host Ben Hurley was excellent and kept things together all night. Steve Wrigley, one of my favourites, was the second comedian on the stage and which I thought he lacked the sheer exuberance he is known for he was still pretty damn funny. Newcomer Sarah Harpur bravely tackling pregnancy and cat abortions, and Jamie Bowen sang us his awesome rock version of Gangster’s Paradise.

Then it was the lovely Maeve Higgins, who I must say I wasn’t hugely impressed with when I saw her last year. This year however, she was much more confident and her musings on Weight Watchers and turning into a Mountain Woman were quite funny.

The ‘did he just do that?!’ highlight of the evening was the masked Mexican ex-WWF wrestler El Jaguar in his super tight lycra leotard. With very little prepared he managed to have everyone in hysterics with his lion taming antics. I’m really looking forward to his show El Jaguar’s Festival Fiesta De Haha at the Fringe Bar from 11-15 May. And if you want to get up close to his buns of steel, he’s posing for Dr Sketchy this Saturday at Mighty Mighty. Rrrawr.

Miles Jupp took the piss out his pomminess which greatly amused my English friend, while local gal Jan Maree took the piss out of her Hutt-ness and told us tales of staying in a motel in Perth (mental note: never go to Perth).

Jason Cook was hilarious with his wife jokes and observations of Australian accents, and one of the best comedians on stage that night. He has two shows in the Festival – Jason Cook in Fear, and Jason Cook’s Asylum – and if you want to be sure of laughs he’s a safe bet.

NZ comedians Chris Brain and Jeremy Elwood both had us in stitches with their take on topical issues like the Iceland volcano, the Wellywood sign, Telecom’s XT network and sheep shaggers, while Dai Henwood regaled us with tales of getting older and hairier and Jarred Christmas was amused by the fact that we were sending a team called the All Whites to the South Africa for the World Cup.

I thought Zoe Lyons did very well for a jetlagged lady, and was really impressed with Jarlath Regan’s signature dance move, the risky shoe-throwing ‘Get Smart’.

The night finished off with the guitar-playing cowboy Wilson Dixon singing us a very funny song which included such pearls of wisdom as “never… get directions from a blind man”, and an incredible jaw-dropping performance from Terry Alderton. He’s one of the four comedians in The Big Show on from 12-15 May at The Opera House, which promises to be another great night of comedy.

First Laughs was a brilliant night but the fun didn’t end there. I was also lucky enough to catch Irish comedian Jimeoin’s show Something Smells Funny on 30 April at the Opera House. He was funny, to be sure, but it wasn’t quite the laugh fest I was expecting. His slow pace of delivery at times meant I started to drift off, and his banter with the crowd and picking on people with weird laughs, while funny at first, wore thin after a while.

But you cannot deny he is a master of observational comedy and his musings on the trials of making a bed for example, or trying to understand how women think (it’s impossible, don’t even try), were awesome. I’d give his show a 7 out of 10.

And that’s all – for now. Have you been to any comedy shows yet? I’d love to hear your thoughts…