Rambling shambles and full of blarney

Last week Irish comedian David O'Doherty performed to a room of "old people with blue hair".

"I started singing a song called Corporations don't [expletive] with the D. O'D which is a bit where I take revenge on anyone who's ever messed with me from a big business point of view," he explains casually, "and the blue rinsers went, 'Wait a second here, he's meant to be singing songs about puppies'. So now I'm attempting to cultivate more of a hard-ass, street, hip-hop image."

O'Doherty may be one of the nice guys at this year's Comedy Festival but nice guys don't always finish last. His gig comes highly recommended from critics offshore, but it was Kiwi musical comedy duo Flight of the Conchords who encouraged him to come here.

They met at the Edinburgh Festival four years ago, and O'Doherty holidayed here in 2004, when he hung out with the Conchords' "cool" posse: Wellington bands Fat Freddy's Drop and the Black Seeds, and film-maker Taika Cohen (whose short film Two Cars, One Night was nominated for an Oscar).

O'Doherty went away with an impression that everyone here is a bigtime film-maker or a rock star. But at this year's Comedy Festival it is O'Doherty who is the rock star, albeit a mild-mannered one. His show is called Grown Up, because, at 30, he figures he finally is, despite the crappy Yamaha keyboard he was given as a kid that is central to his performance.

He'll segue in and out of kooky observations - "Ireland is the only country in the world shaped like roadkill" - and cute, poetically inventive songs, such as the ditty Not Quite Right: "Like table tennis on your own, like naming your car or mobile phone, like wearing swimming shorts as underpants, like wearing underpants as swimming shorts ... "

The hype surrounding O'Doherty has been hard to ignore but somehow he has managed to.

"PR always gives a weird spin to shows. It's always like, 'Strap on your laughter goggles, there'll be shards of mayhem flying around the theatre'. I can't talk in that language at all. If I had to talk in PR, I'd say, 'Please come to my show; I hope it will be nice and good'."

Those adjectives are also his nemesis. His contemporaries are described as "edgy" and "dangerous", whereas O'Doherty gets what he calls " wussy" reviews. It doesn't help that he had a weekly gig on a kids' TV show, that he's a published children's author, and that he sings about, well, wearing swimming shorts as underpants.

"Oh no. See, I have this fear. Very often my reviews say, 'You could bring your granny to see him'," he moans, hence the older crowd at last week's gig. So he's relieved to hear that he has also been called an "utter shambles" who writes "intolerably bad songs".

In the comedy world, that's a compliment. "No!" he laughs. "My songs are beautiful. They're perfect creations of tiny keyboard and voice. As for them being shambolic, certainly I'm no slickster. I'm not very Mike King about these things. So there won't be very loud music and me coming on stage with flashy lights. The lights will go off as I go on stage. The other night I managed to get my foot stuck in the step. So half of me was kind of on stage, the curtain was open and the audience were just going, 'What is this weird physical theatre?' "

His career in comedy flourished just as his jazz career sank. O'Doherty's dad was a jazz pianist, and would often sneak his underage son in to gigs. O'Doherty jnr would hide under the piano, fascinated that the bass player would be wearing pyjamas.

But after 20 years with jazz on his agenda, his dad sat him down and delivered the harsh truth: he sucked. His brother was already working in stand-up, and he'd grown up listening to his dad's collection of Goon Show recordings. With his floppy hair and doe eyes, a career as a stand-up didn't seem out of reach.

His first show, at the height of the Irish stand-up boom in the late 90s, was with Father Ted's Ardlan O'Hanlan (Father Dougal) and Black Books creator Dylan Moran.

Soon he moved on to the festival circuit, got his own radio show and in 2001, published his first children's book, Ronan Long Gets it Wrong.

In 2004, he scored the gig on the kids' show, as a physics teacher who taught through hip-hop.

O'Doherty now regularly tours the world doing what he does best: talking and singing. "I'm not very good at editing so what you hear on stage tends to be the gig but also the director's commentary to the gig. I just talk. It's not terribly 'Hi everyone! Badaboom, badaboom!' It rambles and rambles. And that's the nice thing about it. Stand-up should be a reflection of you and it turns out I am a shambles."

Who: David O'Doherty

Where and when: The Comedy Gala tonight, Herald Theatre, Aotea Centre, tomorrow and May 16 - May 20, 8.30pm.

Bookings: Ticketek (09) 307 5000