Gerry Mallon

Gerry Mallon (born between 1959 and 1976) is a Galway-based Irish comedian and MC who has performed stand-up in Ireland and the United Kingdom since at least 1998. Mallon was the main organiser of the Galway Comedy Festival as of 2007, and has also been involved in the running of comedy tents at various Irish music festivals, including Electric Picnic. He acts as the MC for the Laughter Loft lunchtime comedy gigs which have been held since 2004 at The King's Head pub in Galway during the run of the city's International Arts Festival each summer. Mallon was born in County Mayo, but moved to County Galway c.1982 to work as an oyster farmer in the coastal town of Oranmore.

Mallon first became involved in comedy in 1991 while handing out flyers for a venue called The Junction, Galway's first comedy club, which had been set up by his friends Cillian Fennell and Pearse Boyce. When Fennell moved to Dublin to produce The Late Late Show and Boyce started a production company, Mallon was left to operate the comedy club alone. He had to stand in for the regular compere one evening and made his comedy debut. In the 1996 Galway Arts Festival programme he was described as resident MC at the city's comedy club since 1994, performing as part of the comedy trio Gael Force 3. In March 2001, Mallon explained how he had been running The Murphy's Comedy Club every Sunday night at the GPO nightclub on Galway's Eglinton Street, where Tommy Tiernan began his comedy career doing "open spots".

In 2003/04, Mallon gave Irish comedian David O'Doherty his first headline spot at the Comedy Club in Galway. As of 2007, he was still running his comedy club in Galway city, operating out of the Cuba nightclub every Sunday night. In May 2010, he started The First Friday Comedy Club at The Co-Op in Moycullen, with David McSavage as inaugural headliner. In February 2017, a number of complaints were made about Mallon's use of language while hosting a Show Me The Funny comedy event in Galway, and he defended the language he used while apologising if he had "inadvertently offended anyone".