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As he prepares to launch himself upon the nation with another tour, Irish comic Ed Byrne is firmly of a belief that the current breed of parents spoil their children rotten, whether it’s to do with the ever-increasing size of garden trampolines, or his own kids’ demand for elderflower cordial.

Childhood, both his, during the Seventies, and the current generation’s, will be the theme of the comedian’s tour, Spoiler Alert, which has a stop at the Waterfront Hall in Belfast on Saturday February 10.

For Ed, parenting today is completely different than it was during the Seventies.

“My dad wasn’t a bad dad, he was just a Seventies dad, says the 45-yearold father of two young sons. “I could never see my children ever again from this moment on, and I’d still already have done more parenting than he did in my entire life.

“But, of course, I made a conscious demarks cision that I was going to be an awesome dad. My wife will come back with tales from her friends of how awful their husbands are and she’ll see me smiling and say, ‘Alright, stop congratulating yourself just because such and such can’t be left alone with their children for two minutes’.”

In show, Ed compares and contrasts the old-school child-rearing days with 21st century methods, and suggests that there are different ways to learn how to be a mother or a father.

“I grew up in what I would call an aspirational household, in that my parents bettered themselves over the course of my childhood. My mother was a radiographer and ended up a lecturer in radiography, while my dad was a sheet metal worker and went up to a supervisory role.

“I’d still say that you are expected to do a lot more parenting than our parents did, and that’s a weird thing because you tend to think that your parents are where you learned parenting from. But you don’t, really. It’s more that you look around you to see what’s going on with other parents.”

Ed extends his analysis on the culture of entitlement to look at areas where we could perhaps do with being spoiled a little bit more. “Where I think we’re not acting spoiled enough is in the political arena,” he says. “We have a tendency to accept what’s happening, and that’s where we should be acting more entitled — we are literally entitled to the government we want. We’re spoiled in all these little ways, but not spoiled enough.”

As well as stories about his two young sons, Ed weaves in routines about running out of petrol in the most awkward place imaginable, helping rescue an injured man in the Cairn- of his chainsaw rather than his neckwear. “I use it for firewood, both for my wood-burning stove and also for the barbecue. The first time I used one I was fine, though I think it worried my parents that I had bought a chainsaw.”

Having premiered Spoiler Alert at the Edinburgh Fringe and used the month of August to hone the show, it is fully ready to go.

Ed says: “Being on stage is enjoyable, and this part of the writing process is enjoyable. The empty page, though, is a scary thing. On the first leg of the tour, l’ll do about an hour and 15 minutes, plus I’ll have a support act.

“I keep a tour diary now of places where the curries are disappointing and where they are good and where audiences have been good before.”

An exhaustive series of UK dates, which began in September and will finish next May, will see the comedian, who has been an acclaimed stand-up — with audiences and critics alike — for 20 years now, travel to virtually

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