Sun. Oct. 14

Billy Connolly recently went over like gangbusterss at the Loeb Drama Center, suggesting - if you needed one - that cutting-edge comedy can come from across the pond as well. (Actually, Connolly lives in L.A. and Scotland, so we're stretching a bit ... ) But a Boston company called Off the Boat Comedy is bringing comics to the Burren and giving the Irish pub in Somerville a wrinkle. They've done two comics, and the third is Ed Byrne, who does several shows in these parts. (It's his second Boston gig; he did Denis Leary's "Comics Come Home Benefit" in 2003.) The show Byrne's been touring in the UK, and the one he presumably will bring here, is called "Standing Up and Falling Down." Yes, he's Irish. (We can say that; so are we.) Byrne will take on the sacred - a joke about the late Christopher Reeve - and he'll not shy away from strafing a living celeb or two, but most of what he speaks about comes from his own life. "I go on at length about things I've personally experienced," he told the London Sun. ""Without getting all arty-farty, there is a lot of pain in comedy." Bryrne's Burren show starts at 7:30 and tickets are $30 and $25. He winds up his five-gig run with a show Sunday Oct. 14. Tickets are available at www.bostoncomedyfestival.com. For a chat with Byrne, hit "read more."

247 Elm St. Somerville, 617-910-7134 www.offtheboatcomedy.com

    Byrne – who’s been a professional comic 14 years and has done five bits on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” -  specializes in “what Americans call sweating the small stuff, letting little things irritate me. Lately, I’ve talked about homophobia of right wing Christians, but I do  a lot of pop culture references, making fun of movies and pop stars and like.” One of his current obsessions: “The juggernaut of blandness that is James Blunt.”
  There is also, he says “the sexual divide, those foibles we have, basic rudeness in relationships, women’s obsession in asking us what we’re thinking. You want to say ‘We share everything, can the contents of my head not be the one thing that remains exclusively mine?’ They never believe you when you say nothing. Women will never understand a man’s ability to be completely and utterly vacant. We think things that are so stupid you don’t want to know. You don’t want to open that box.”
     Byrne says his live act is “me turned up a notch, maybe angrier and funnier.” What he hopes an audience will take away: “I would hope they come out of it a positive state of mind. It’s very therapeutic. The fact that everyone’s laughing to a certain extent means they agree with you. People think ‘I thought I was the only one who thought that.’ When you realize we all do it  … When you reach the end of a show, you’ve told people a lot of stuff they wouldn’t want to know or care less about but because you’re a comedian they’ve sat there and listened. Now, if you were a guy in a bar …. I like to think when you come out of my gig at least you feel you got to know me a little better. It’s not like I’m trying to change anyone’s opinions, but everything I said I believe.”