Did they just make that up?

IAN COPPINGERtalks about the pitfalls of improv with Brian Boyd ahead of his appearance with Whose Line Is it Anyway? at the Carlsberg Comedy Carnival

IMPROV may not have the same profile it had when the TV show Whose Line Is it Anyway?was topping the ratings, but it's still a stalwart of the live comedy circuit. Ireland has its own world-class improv performer – Dublin's Ian Coppinger – who is a permanent member of the globe-trotting Whose Line Is it Anyway? troupe.

“I had been doing improv at the Comedy Cellar in Dublin, and got to know the English improv guys, and it was just a chance meeting on a street at Edinburgh when they needed someone to fill in at the last moment that brought me into the group,” says Coppinger. “Soon after, I went with them on a tour of China, and as soon as they realised I wasn’t afraid to get my round in and could hold my drink, they made me a permanent member.”

The current Whose Line team features many of the original Channel 4 faces, and members often overlap with Paul Merton’s touring improv players. Over the past few years, Coppinger has travelled around China, Japan, the Middle East and Australia, and has heard it all in terms of audience suggestions. “You get a lot of ‘gynaecologist’ and a lot of ‘Eiffel Towers’ shouted out when you ask for a profession and a location,” he says. “What we tend to do is explain that we get these suggested all the time and ask for something different. The other regular is when you ask for an object you would normally find in a kitchen and a man – it’s always a man – shouts out ‘a woman’.”

Improv is a notoriously hit-and-miss affair, and Coppinger says that seeing bad improv is worse than seeing bad stand-up. “The problem here is that people are put off the whole notion of improv if they see one bad act – which is like never going to see stand-up because you once saw a really bad comic. But in the right hands it has a higher gag rate than stand-up, and the best compliments we get are when people accuse us of using rehearsed material or having a plant in the audience – which never, ever happens – because that means we’ve really made an impression.”

Funny five: acts to catch next weekend

ARJ BARKERYou'll know his face from his work on Flight of the Conchords. His solo show is a bit sublime.

APRÈS MATCHThey did some of their best stuff during the World Cup, and Risteárd Cooper's genius Des Cahill is worth the admission price alone.

CHRIS ADDISONFrom BBC political spoof The Thick of It. A very erudite and entertaining turn.

AIDAN BISHOPComing into his own now. Very smart Noo Yawk-tinged humour from the Dublin resident.

RUFUS HOUNDYou'll know him from various panel shows – can hold his own on the comedy stage.

You can see the Whose Line Is it Anyway? (with guest Josie Lawrence) at the Róisín Dubh, Galway, on Friday, July 23, and Carlsberg Comedy Carnival in Dublin’s Iveagh Gardens on Saturday, July 24 and Sunday, July 25

carlsberg comedy.com