The civil servant comedian and his 32 gigs in 32 counties quest

Have you heard the one about the comedian, the car and the 32 counties?

For Antrim man Cathaóir O'Hagan this was no joke.

Twelve months ago he had an idea - could he perform stand up in all of Ireland's counties over the course of a year.

A civil servant by day and comedian by night, the 31-year-old first came on to the scene before the Covid pandemic.

Juggling his day job and building his first home, Cathaóir completed the 11,000 mile trip, motivated by a love of performance.

"I wasn't really expecting to actually do it," he said.

"By June I'd done 16 and at that point I was like: 'I wonder could I actually do it now.'"

Comedian Luke McGibbon came up with the idea initially. His trip lasted four years, rounding it out on the same night as Cathaóir.

But securing a gig in all 32 counties in a single year was no easy task.

In order to pull it off, Cathaóir found himself at open-mics alongside cèilidh groups, uilleann pipers and guitarists.

"Some of them were really tough, Offaly was awfully hard to get," he told BBC News NI, adding that Longford also proved difficult to secure a gig.

"A lot of them were just music nights that were open to letting a comedian come down.

"I had to go in then and ask 'can I tell five minutes of jokes to you?'"

So where did his set go down the best?

"The best crowd for me was probably Monaghan, the Squealing Pig down there is unbelievable," he said.

He was also surprised by Roscommon, where everybody was doing "something different", with people performing their own songs, poetry, and comedy sketches.

For the Antrim man, some gigs were tougher than others.

"Cavan was very, very difficult, it was meant to be an open night but everybody cancelled except me and a guy with a guitar.

"But it was still fun and people were still nice to you."

While on stage in Dublin, Cathaóir noticed Elvis had seemingly entered the building.

"Downstairs there was a person's 50th or 60th birthday," he said.

"Their Elvis impersonator was being pumped through the speakers in the room I was in.

"So It was very difficult to compete with the King."

But he was able to get a few jokes out, before letting everybody "rock out" to Elvis instead.

Despite the interruption, Cathaóir was far from all shook up, and took it in his stride.

"Those are the funny things, there's a lot of people who have gig nightmares, I wouldn't call that a gig nightmare.

"It was very funny at the time."

Over 304 days, Cathaóir clocked up 11,402 miles driving from county to county.

Some nights, the comedian stayed wherever would have him, once securing a couch in County Carlow at half four in the morning.

For others, he finished up work and immediately hit the road: "I did Kerry up and down in one day, six and a half hours there and back."

Stopping by in cities, towns and quiet corners in the countryside, Cathaóir was surprised by the growing open-mic community.

"I got to see parts of Ireland I never would have seen, there's so much going on even in rural Ireland.

"There's an open-mic scene for music, poetry, comedy, everybody's welcome, there's just a thriving wee arts community down there, it's really cool."

All that practice seems to have paid off.

On 14 February Cathaóir will compete in the grand final of the Ha!Ha! Hawk's Well competition in Sligo, where he will compete against seven other comedians.

"I just like having a bit of craic, if I win I win, and if not I'll learn from it."

He admitted it will be "tough", as he knows some of the competition.

"My big problem is I'm not very competitive.

"I'm just looking forward to going down, and seeing what it's like gigging, so it'll be fun."

As for what's next, Cathaóir has no plans to dive head first into the comedy world.

"There's no real goal at the moment, except make people laugh if I can."