Are you a chuckle, snicker, or guffaw kind of person? Or do you make no sound at all, you just squeeze your eyes really tight and shake up and down? Doesn't matter really, what ever style of laughter you practice you'll be welcome at the Sky Cat Laughs Comedy Festival in Kilkenny City from Thursday, May 29th - Monday, June 2nd.

This year, the humungously popular (and prestigious) comedy festival celebrates 20 years in action and will celebrate in appropriate form. Old favourites will return, new faces will appear and international and home-grown talent will frolic together and acknowledge the festival that launched the careers of so many now household names.

Acts hailing from the Emerald Isle include (deep breath) Dara Ó Briain, Tommy Tiernan, Ardal O’Hanlon, Des Bishop, Barry Murphy, Jason Byrne, Bernard O’Shea, Neil Delamere, David O’Doherty, Colin Murphy, Colm O’Regan, Karl Spain, Eleanor Tiernan and Chris Kent. Al Lubel, Ivo Graham, Katherine Ryan, Harriet Kemsley, Tiffany Stevenson, W Kamau Bell and Neal Brennan are amongst the new talent who'll take to the stage.

Brilliantly, none other that Norm from Cheers, George Wendt will return to the Festival and joining him for the birthday reunion will be Dom Irrera, Rich Hall and Adam Hills and the ever popular comedy trio Après Match.

There are heaps of other unmissable acts from outside Ireland who'll be hoping to tickle our funny bones and as an added bonus title sponsors Sky will exclusively showcase some upcoming programme highlights during the festival, like Sky 1 HD’s 50 Ways To Kill Your Mammy featuring Baz Ashmawy and his mother, Nancy.

Says Baz, “After nearly 6 months of cruelly dragging my poor 71-year-old mother around the world, doing my bucket list of things she should do in her life, I'm so delighted to be coming home and launching 50 Ways To Kill Your Mammy at the Sky Cat Laughs festival. I've been going to the festival for years and I honestly can't think of a better place to premiere our new series for Sky 1. I love the festival and we're both honored to be part of it. It's the perfect place and atmosphere to share our new series. We can’t wait.”

It's going to be one hell of an occasion. Sky Cat Laughs Comedy Festival artistic director, Naoise Nunn expressed, 'The line-up for this year’s festival is very exciting – our best yet. The Cat Laughs Comedy Festival has played an enormous role in establishing modern Irish comedy and helped launch so many now-household names in comedic talent. It’s a testament to the Cat Laughs that these huge success stories are coming back to the festival that gave so many their starts. This year’s Sky Cat Laughs will be an enormous celebration and we encourage everyone to get their tickets early and be in Kilkenny this June bank holiday weekend for the mother of all parties".

So there you go! For the full programme, tickets and venue details visit https://www.skycatlaughs.com