Eric Lalor plays Cathal Spillane in the long running soap Fair City and is a stand up comedian. His first foray into comedy was a bit unusual. In 2006, as one of the participants of RTÉ Two’s Des Bishop’s Joy In The Hood, his first ever gig was filmed on his home turf of Ballymun in Dublin and broadcast to the entire nation. Eric has been a mainstay on the Irish comedy scene since and has written and performed two solo shows Lalorpalooza and Here! No Evil. He has acted in RTE’s The Importance of Being Whatever, Love/Hate and Amber (directed by Thaddeus O’Sullivan for RTE). Eric has also appeared in the short films No Messages and Breath In and appeared in the hit play Singlehood, written and directed by Una McKevitt and Dan Coffey.

Kristin Vollset is a Norwegian singer/songwriter documentary maker and traveller who ended up in Dublin after travelling through Denmark, Holland, England and Scotland in her van. She was looking for a free spot to park her van in Dublin city centre when she accidentally reversed into a wall and broke a tail light. Then a horse came out from a hole in the wall and the rest is history. In this interview Kristin tells me how she happened upon a group of inner city lads who have a horse stables on Cork St. She ended up hanging around with these lads for the next 2 years and filmed a documentary about her experience. She wrote and recorded the song No Plan with some of the lads and the video for the song went viral. I chatted to her via Skype in her home town of Bergen.

Kenyan comedian Njambi McGrath’s first stand up comedy gig was a disaster. In a half empty club in London, her audience was as ill at ease with her jokes about Africa as she was delivering them. McGrath persevered, in part, because of her upbringing in Kenya. "When you grow up in Africa you see people in much, much more difficult situations than you could ever be in and they just keep going,"Three years later, the thirtysomething is making a name for herself in an industry few black African women have successfully cracked. One of a rising number of African-born comedians making waves in the UK, McGrath says the shock of seeing how the continent was portrayed when she moved to England three years ago encouraged her to use a comic touch to raise serious issues. I met up with her at the Belfast Out To Lunch festival after she performed her show “One Last Dance With My Father”. The show is more than just a stand up show touching on subjects like abortion, domestic violence and the social consequences of a colonial past. It was a pleasure to chat with her. She is such a strong survivor and a courageous woman.