"Delivery plus content. He’s a smooth operator with an innate confidence….. there are great lines – equating the dangers of the internet with more lo-tech fears from his childhood, or his routine mocking the encyclopaedically trivial knowledge of Gaelic football commentators, which he conclusively made his own"
Chortle 2010
“A double act show he did in the Edinburgh Festival with Patrick McDonnell was a resounding success. If they don’t get their own television show by the time the Fringe is over, then there is something deeply wrong in this world"
The Scotsman
"Rooney is very funny, but it is with his guitar in his hands that he becomes unmissable… his impressions of seventies rockers singing nursery rhymes brings tears to the eyes"
The Stage
"We’re here to wallow in how immensely bad it can get. Us Irish, we love the idea of a hard old time on the way,” Rooney declared inside an ornate theater-pub, prompting knowing laughter from the standing-room-only audience, many of whom were hoisting pints."
The Los Angeles Times
"I’m still laughing at the thought of Fr. Damien (Damo) Lennon, the gurrier curate who lead Fr. Dougal astray… He was an inspired invention and was brilliantly played by Joe Rooney"
John Boland, Sunday Independent
"Occasionally laconic, at times infectiously manic, and always rivetting – coupled with his years of experience have made him one of Ireland’s “10 Most Wanted”, when promoters nationwide pick up their phones."
The Hot Press