It didn't take long for the Michael Jackson jokes to start circulating. In fact they may well be the reason Google virtually ground to a halt last Thursday night as rumours spread about the star's tragic demise. I won't repeat any of the gags of varying sickness here – you can find plenty yourself by googling the phrase "Michael Jackson joke". Or alternatively just think of the the words "children", "cosmetic surgery" and "thriller", add or alter various song lyrics and you'll probably be able to come up with your own.

There is a phrase that comedians use when they deliver a bad taste gag about a topical story – "too early?". I don't think some of the gags about Michael Jackson's death could have come any earlier if they'd come when he was still alive and moonwalking. My problem however, is more to do with the quality of the quips than their morality.

It has been said that at the forthcoming Edinburgh Fringe Michael Jackson gags are now going to be vying with expense claim gags for topic of the month. But at the moment the wisecracks are causing a bit of a kerfuffle. Partly thanks to the continued fallout of Sachsgate no-one seems to want to take any risks. An episode of C4 comedy TNT was cut because of references to Jackson, while Frankie Boyle has reportedly stopped writing his Daily Record column because the paper refused to print his pithy one-liners. And in America the new movie Bruno has reportedly been swiftly edited to cut out an irreverent interview with LaToya Jackson.

But is it too soon for Michael Jackson gags? Even immature and silly ones as well as malicious heartless ones? Well, if you were a close friend or a member of his mourning family you might not want to hear them. but then they've had to live with Wacko Jacko gags for the last two decades. And while Jackson's death is very sad and shocking, it does not feel quite as numbingly shocking as the death of Princess Diana, which came absolutely out of the blue. Yet humour may just be a way of coping with Jackson's death. My first reaction on hearing about Jackson's death was that it was a publicity stunt, but then I'm a journalist, I'm paid to be cynical. And on reflection I don't really think that most of the gags are intentionally nasty or mean-spirited. They are just the way we cope with traumatic events.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see how the comedy world deals with Michael Jackson now. Will old comedy routines such as Bo Selecta's cruel rubber-faced spoof or Lenny Henry's OTT pop video send-ups be discreetly forgotten? The new jokes will no doubt continue. I don't have a problem with them as long as they exercise a decent amount of wit, but then again, as far as I know I'm not related to Michael Jackson. Let's just hope that some of them are more funny than the ones that are clogging up cyberspace at the moment.

Interesting  comedy experiment last night. Comedian Tiernan Douieb organised the world's first Twitter Comedy gig. He got a pretty good line-up too, with Mark "face of Magners cider" Watson and Pappy's Fun Club among the acts. The idea was for everyone to do a ten-minute online set while the audience sat at home, laughing and twittering their heckles and generally enjoying this virtual comedy gig.

I attempted to take on the role of Twittering critic – Twitcrit? – which was a bit of a challenge. Partly because for the first half of the show I was on a train with a very slow dongle (ooh matron) and for the second half I was at a real-life Jimeoin gig at the Udderbelly and to tweet from the audience would have just been rude. So in the end I was forced to play catch up after the gig.

Still, the gig seems to have survived without me. Judging by online figures there were apparently over 6000 followers online, which must be the biggest gig Douieb and even Watson has ever played. 

Things got a bit chaotic at times, with fans using a twitfeed that was supposed to be exclusively for the acts, but let's just put this down to comedic exuberance. Takeaways and off-licenses might have been the real beneficiaries though as fans stocked up on supplies at home. And of course things overran, while one act, which shall rename nameless (well, the very good, very inventive Carl Donnelly) sort of cheated and used his twittering to link to a youtube performance, which was playful but maybe not in the spirit of the Twitter Comedy Club.

Somehow I can't see this replacing the real live gig any more than Spotify is going to replace rock gigs. Despite some valiant attempts at cyberheckling there was no scope for the lunatic physicality of Pappy's, no scope for the nuances of Terry Saunders' brand of stand-up storytelling. But it was an interesting experiment. Just one little thing bothers me though. How do we know that the gags were coming from, for example, the real Mark Watson? 

If you want a flavour of what you missed go to twitter.tiernandouieb.co.uk, where you should either be able to read the gig again or at least read highlights. But don't bother heckling now. All the comedians have gone home.  Which is, I suppose, where they were in the first place.

Just back from a flying visit to the Kilkenny's Carlsberg Cat Laughs Comedy Festival at the weekend. For me this wonderful little laugh-in kicks off the comedy festival season in the same way that Glastonbury kicks off the music festival season. But that is where the similarity ends. Kilkenny is a thoroughly non-muddy civilised affair, in which comedians from around the world are invited to perform in the pubs of this small, but beautifully put together Irish city.

This year's performers included Ardal O'Hanlon, Lee Mack, Dave Gorman and Tommy Tiernan, but for me the undisputed highlight was Ross Noble. On Thursday night he was the second act on at the Rivercourt Hotel and at 9.56pm, when he picked up the festival's yellow wooden plank of a logo and pretended it was Prince's guitar the Festival really began.

Noble is currently in the middle of a UK tour, so one might have expected him to simply lift an excerpt from his full show to fill his allotted 20 minutes. Instead, however, this master of improvisation simply played around with the scenery, tugging the curtain, peeling off a Moon-shaped banner from behind him. Of course he also did his favourite impersonation – Stephen Hawking – but this was a small drop in Noble's freestyling surrealist ocean.

On the following night Noble cropped up on another bill at the Ormonde Hotel. I wanted to catch as many new acts as possible while I was there so I said to myself that as soon as he repeats himself I will leave and catch a gig elsewhere. Noble came on, grabbed the logo and I thought here we go again. Except his mind was in a different place now and we got Noble doing a Klingon morphing into Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Paul Simon doing an impromptu gig in a Chinese restaurant before somehow becoming Bob Dylan with his brain flapping in the wind. If ever there was a definition of the phrase "you had to be there" this was it.

Another highlight of the weekend was Dave Gorman, returning to stand-up after years of doing strange quest-type shows. And one to watch is Hannah Gadsby, a quirky Tasmanian who is coming to the Edinburgh Festival in the summer and will surely end up in London too. Imagine a large lesbian who resembles a very young Eric Morecambe and you've got a hint of Gadsby. Her material is expertly crafted and often based on her upbringing. As she points out, her first name is a palindrome*, just like other members of her family: "Mum, dad, nan and my brother Kayak".

I had to leave earlier than planned so I missed various tantalising shows, not to mention the annual Ireland v Rest Of The World football match. I haven't heard the result yet, but the Irish usually win. I may not know who won the football, but Kilkenny is definitely a winner where comedy is concerned.

Ross Noble is at the Apollo Theatre, W1 for six weeks from 14 September. Information: 0844 412 4658; www.nimaxtheatres.com

*thanks to JonB for correcting me.