Anything could happen on a night with Jimeoin

As comedian Jimeoin continues his latest tour, Result!, he tells why keeping it loose and unstructured on stage works best, and why there’s nothing wrong with a good old-fashioned fart gag

JIMEOIN wanders on stage in a colourful shirt, chuckling to himself, and, to wild applause, performs a burst of deeply dodgy dad dancing. ‘‘You keep laughing, I’ll keep doing it,’’ he admonishes.

Born in Leamington Spa into an Irish family, the twinkly eyed performer emigrated to Australia 30 years ago and fell into comedy shortly afterwards when, on the spur of the moment, a mate put his name down for an open spot in the pub and he thought, ‘‘Why not?’’

One minute he was playing pool, the next he was up on stage, never having seen a live comedy show in his life, let alone performed one. And he took to it like a natural, unplanned and unrehearsed, cracking gags off the cuff. And it’s been pretty much that way ever since.

Jimeoin is decidedly old-school in his approach to comedy. Particularly at the Edinburgh Fringe, where he has recently celebrated his 25th year. He seems like the traditional jester wandering amid a sea of angry young comics.

‘‘The opposite of being slick is my angle,’’ he explains. ‘‘To look vulnerable and idiotic as opposed to snarling and spitting and full of confidence, which grates with me. If it annoys you in a social environment when you see that sort of behaviour, then it’s annoying when you see it up on stage. I guess people want to see someone ruling it. Like a rock star striking a pose. But it’s not what I do.’’

In a similar vein, Jimeoin specialises in a kind of anti-banter, feigning that he can’t talk to his audience. Not for him the clichéd ‘‘what’s your name, where do you come from’’ chat with the front row.

‘‘I do find people talking to the audience leaves me a bit stale. You’re at the back and you can’t even see the person who’s being spoken to. All you can see is the back of this person’s head and you’ve no idea what they’re saying.’’

At the start of his new show, Result! – which stopped off at Birmingham Town Hall for the Birmingham Comedy Festival in the autumn and now returns to the region for a date at Warwick Arts Centre on February 23 – he deals with current affairs in one fell swoop: ‘‘Trump’s a bit of an idiot and Brexit’s a bad idea.’’

That done, he can get on with the main business in hand… having a laugh.

‘‘Sometimes I see a show that does really well in Edinburgh, a political show with a message, and you think, that’s not going to translate to Southampton. They just want a good night out. So that’s what I give them.

‘‘Not everything has to have a narrative. When you go out with your mates for the evening you don’t think, I’ll have this conversation, then that one and then I’ll put everything I’ve said into context. You just go with the flow. And that ends up being the narrative! I’m not trying to structure anything.’’

The randomness of a Jimeoin show is a huge part of his appeal. Dancing, impressions, visual gags, one liners, non sequiturs, stories, songs... In a word, variety. All of comedy is here, all seemingly conjured out of the ether. Oh and, lest we forget, fart gags – completely ignored by most comics and yet, in the right hands, downright hilarious.

‘‘What are they thinking?’ he laughs. ‘‘It’s staring you in the face. You’ve got to go for the jugular every once in a while. It’s about light and shade.’’

The visual gags are a particular Jimeoin hallmark. With the most expressive of faces and his trademark dancing eyebrows, he at times comes on like a borderline gurner.

A typical impression might be the look on his wife’s face when she sees a woman with a nice handbag. But the more surreal impressions are his speciality, like a cow standing in the rain or, memorably, a moth struggling to flap its way up to the moon. You certainly don’t see anyone else on the circuit doing this kind of stuff.

Jimeoin has been touring annually in the UK for some years and was the first act to be signed up by entertainment giant Live Nation when they started touring comics.

Although he’s always been a big noise in Australia, where he’s had primetime TV shows, it’s only in the past decade that he’s properly broken through over here after Jimeoin doesn’t do current affairs and his shows are unstructured doing Michael McIntyre’s Comedy And, reckons Jimeoin, touring, with Roadshow and Live At The Apollo. its in-built safety valve of an

Though with typical humility, interval, works well for his type of Jimeoin puts his breakthrough comedy and his kind of audience. down to good fortune. ‘‘I’m starting to feel that an hour

‘‘It was a fluke really. The first year might be too long. Concentration I played the Edinburgh International spans are getting shorter. An hour’s Conference Centre I had a pushing it, especially when it’s 6pm timeslot, which is no good at nonsensical stuff.’’ all. But the London Olympics were Thirty years on, Jimeoin is still on and the big primetime acts were that bloke down the pub cracking struggling as everyone was in the up his mates. Only now he’s doing it parks watching the big screens. But in theatres for thousands of fans. at 6pm they were flocking in and I had my best year, selling out 1,200 ●●Jimeoin is at Warwick Arts at weekends. So that tipped me on Centre, Coventry, on Saturday, to telly and I was off.’’ February 23. For tickets call 024

The new tour comprises the best 7652 4524 or see of his two latest Edinburgh hours. www.warwickartscentre.co.uk