For trio of stand-ups, Erin go bragh meets Erin go Ha!

By Jerry Fink

Tuesday, June 2, 2009 | 2 a.m.

They may not have the brogue, but they have the ancestry — and the Irish humor.

The Irish Comedy Tour, which features three comedians whose parents and grandparents came from Ireland, comes to the Bonkerz Comedy Club this weekend.

Producer and co-star Derek Richards hopes the luck of the Irish will be with the group at Bonkerz.

For the past three years The Irish Comedy Tour has performed at Elks lodges, VFW halls and the like.

“It’s been fun performing in all these different types of places,” Richards said from his home in West Palm Beach, Fla. “But we’re ready to go to the next level.”

It wouldn’t disappoint him if the next level happened to be Vegas.

“We’d like the opportunity to do a show for an extended period of time at some juncture,” Richards says.

O’Sheas on the Strip? New York-New York with its Nine Fine Irishmen pub?

Richards is a Detroit native whose parents came from Ireland. The cast also includes Boston native Mike McCarthy, whose parents also came from Ireland, and New Yorker Jim Paquette, whose grandparents were from Ireland.

The three comedians became friends on the comedy circuit and in 2006 decided to take advantage of their common heritage.

“We were doing a lot of jokes about our Irish upbringing in our acts and decided to join forces,” Richards says. “I describe it as taking an Irish pub and a comedy show and putting them into a food processor.”

Paquette plays guitar, does comedic Irish songs and hosts the show, introducing McCarthy and Richards.

The three comics perform together about half the time. The rest of the time they devote to their solo careers — McCarthy and Richards as stand-ups and Paquette on the dueling piano circuit, with a little stand-up comedy on the side.

“Jim does some classic Irish drinking songs with comedic twists as well as throwing a few jokes into the mix,” Richards says.

Richards was an on-air radio personality when he was fired in 1993. “That’s typically the case in radio,” he says. A friend worked at a comedy club and put Richards on stage.

He’s been there ever since.

“I had never performed stand-up comedy before that,” Richards says. “But I had always been a big fan and I was never shy about going up on stage.”