Karl MacDermott was amongst the new breed of stand-up comedians in the Ireland of that era.

In 1988 he helped co-found The Comedy Cellar at The International Bar in Dublin with Barry Murphy, Ardal O’Hanlon and Kevin Gildea. 

After appearing in his own one - man comedy show Memoirs of a Midget at The Peacock Theatre in 1989 and he had successful runs at The Gilded Balloon in The Edinburgh Fringes from 1991-93 with shows like An Afternoon With Klaus Barbie's Pen-pal and Stand-Up Stories. In September 2021, his new humour fiction novel 58% Cabbage, about a sit-down nobody who tries stand-up comedy, was published by Black Spring Press Group.