As festivals go the Melbourne International Comedy Festival can certainly boast of its numbers. Last year it attracted 600,000 visitors and this year it is expected to do even better with the more than 1,000 performers giving 477 shows at 119 venues.
But Comedy Festival chairman Bill Shannon thinks the number that counts is the measurement of laughs and with a conservative three laughs a minute, he calculates the Comedy Festival delivers a million laughs during its month long season in Melbourne and many more if you count its touring component.
