Many Irish people can be forgiven if they suffer just a little festival fatigue by the end of this week.

Hardly an hour goes by in the summer without some town or city seeking publicity for its own event aimed principally at boosting tourist revenue.

Those who find all this organised fun a little wearing, however, should give thanks to the Rose of Tralee that they don't live in Spain, where the summer hooley has become a work of art.

This morning the curtain rises on a slightly psychotic season of Spanish summer festivals with the legendary fight of the flying tomatoes in the small Spanish town of Buñol, 40km outside Valencia.

While the notion of 30,000 people gathering in the early morning to hurl ripe tomatoes at each other in celebration of the Fiesta de Tomatina may sound odd, it is positively normal when compared with the lesser-known Fiesta de Santa Marta de Ribarteme in Galicia.

This festival is among the weirdest - and certainly most macabre - in the world, and honours people who have had a near-death experience. Those who have been thus blessed are expected to attend the event in their own coffin. Lying prostrate in ornate wooden caskets, they are carried shoulder high by relatives - if they have any - up a steep hill to a small church to attend Mass before being hauled down the hill to the town's quiet little cemetery, where they are - luckily - not buried alive.

Those without families of their own are expected to carry their own coffins through the town's winding streets. And although it's hardly the ideal convalescence for an elderly gentlemen who has recently felt the cold kiss of death on his neck, the sight of the frail and infirm huffing and puffing up to the church hauling their own coffins in their, er, wake, is not uncommon. While every Spanish town has its own slightly bonkers summer festival, from the running of the bulls in Pamplona to the less dangerous but considerably wetter throwing of buckets of water at drunk neighbours in the Asturian mining town of Sama de Langreo, it does not have a total monopoly on festival madness.

In addition to events such as Burning Man, at which thousands get stoned and naked under the hot Nevada sun, there have been decidedly less well known but equally daft events spread across the US this summer. There was the Great Wisconsin Cheese Festival, the highlight of which seemed to be a revolting sounding curd-eating competition - the first person to wolf down a half pound of the stuff wins (but do they really?).

Then there was the Redneck Games in Dublin, Georgia, an event that seems destined to be Simpsonised, if it hasn't been already. It's a day filled with dumpster-diving, hubcap-hurling, armpit-serenading and mud-pit belly flopping, during which contestants - usually very, very large and very,very drunk contestants - throw themselves at speed into vast quantities of muck to win beer they almost certainly don't need. The Finns have their wife-carrying which, incidentally, was won again this year by Estonian legend Madis Uusorg and his "wife" Inga Kaluso.

The Germans have an endless supply of beer festivals and their suddenly itinerant Love Parade. For the English it is (nearly) all about the cheese-rolling and Morris dancing, while the Mexicans like to celebrate the Day of the Dead in which they invite their deceased relatives back into their homes for a party.

Yet there are demented festivals to be found a whole lot closer to home. In addition to all the arts, music and comedy festivals, we have the King of the Tinkers in Ballinasloe, a seemingly endless stream of match-making festivals across the country, festivals that celebrate heavy machinery, oyster-opening and barefoot and bleeding rock-climbing.

There is, however, no contest for the title of world's oddest festival - surely no event can match Ireland's Puck Fair for sheer quirkiness. As if it wasn't mad enough to crown a goat king, the villagers of Killorglin also supply said goat king with a child bride to make his queen - in an orgy of drunken craic which makes running with murderous bulls, tomato- throwing and coffin-surfing seem as sedate and as sane as a Sunday picnic.