Byrning ambition to discover Ireland’s funniest TV folk
HANGING around with Jason Byrne is exhausting. The comedian operates on a different level. He speaks at a mile a minute and is fond of the occasional tangent.
We’re sitting in the lobby of Brooks Hotel in Drury Street in Dublin attempting to promote Ireland’s Got Talent, the new TV3 show where he will be a judge. But we’re doing anything but chatting about the programme.
‘What’s the story with Louis Walsh anyway,’ he suddenly asks. ‘He’s just stopped ageing. I guess that’s why they’re paying him all the money. God, he’s beautiful’.
From that we jump to the state of Storm Ophelia, growing up in Dublin and, bizarrely, his recent vasectomy.
It’s something of a wonderful preamble to IGT that Byrne really doesn’t give a fiddlers about convention. He’s doing this show, not because he needs or wants the money, but because he just wants to have fun. He’s liable to say or do anything in a live TV situation which is going to be great for the public, but might leave a few producers with extra grey hairs.
I’M mainly doing this because I think it’s going to be funny’, he tells me. ‘I really am. Because I know loads of Irish people who are hilarious who have never been on telly. When I sit with my mates I am the least funny, they literally go “shut up ya thick, you can’t even tell a joke”.
‘I was away on a rugby trip with my son and his mates, and there were people breaking into impromptu songs, making it up on the spot and it was unbelievably funny. One girl was actually opera singing. I’d never seen anything like it and I think it’s going to be full of these people. I haven’t a clue what’s going to happen.’
There’s no doubt the show has to be somewhat of a success for TV3. With Virgin their parent company, the backstage gossip is they’re pumping €2 million into the programme, which will run over 11 episodes.
Seven of these will be prerecorded, followed by four live shows at the Helix.
Jason is no stranger to having shed-loads of cash thrown at him.
He was a presenter on the Sky One hit show Wild Things, which burned through millions of pounds. ‘Sky has tonnes of money,’ he laughs. ‘Doing Wild Things, that cost a fortune. I don’t know how much exactly, but I know it was a lot. The suits are ten grand each and they had to get a few of them made. Then it was set in a forest with a huge crew and there were cranes and cameras and it was incredible.
‘I’m going to give up the presenting and become a camera man because the budget was just huge.’
Money will be well spent on Ireland’s Got Talent as Byrne is determined it won’t look like a cheaper version of its British counterpart.
‘You don’t want them to go down the paddy whackery line,’ she says. ‘We want it to look professional. But we shouldn’t have to copy the Brits either. It should look Irish, you know. We can leave the polished white smiley teeth behind. It’s the same format, but it has to be uniquely Irish and that comes with the contestants.’
Made by Kite Entertainment, the overall winner of the show will walk home with €50,000 and their own Christmas TV special.
Apart from the substantial pay check, Jason admits he isn’t giving up the day job and is continuing his English tour next week.
‘The travel is difficult, but the gigs are fantastic,’ he says. ‘I go back to the same venues and the same people come back. And my T-shirt is a guaranteed laugh and that’s why they bring their mates. They bring like 20 people from work and afterwards they’re just so relieved, because if I was rubbish they’d have been killed. I don’t find those gigs hard because they’re just good craic.’
Inevitably we end up talking about his good friend, comic Sean Hughes who died this week. ‘He was so good to me,’ Jason says. ‘Even when I was starting off, he just gave me really good advice and was so kind. I knew he was sick, but didn’t realise he was that sick. He was a lovely, kind and talented guy and I think people will remember him for his talent.’
If you want to be in the IGT audience, see TV3.ie/takepart. The closing date is October 31.