The Chronicle (South Tyneside and Durham)
Feel the Byrne
JASON BYRNE TELLS MARION MCMULLEN HOW TOILET HUMOUR AND A TIKTOK BAN HAVE DONE WONDERS FOR HIS CAREER
You’re finally heading out on tour with your postponed stand-up show Audience Precipitation. Have you had to change it much postlockdowns?
(LAUGHS) I’m dying to get back on stage before I kill someone. I’m like a house on fire.
I’m planning to start the show with a little two-and-a-half minute montage of all the things I’ve got up to since March last year.
I have a photo of me at the beginning of it all in a supermarket in Ireland with empty shelves – that’s how crazy things were.
People thought all the food was going to go. I also invented a quiz show in my toilet. I had a ‘guess the movie or TV show’ round using only things around me.
A razor and some trainers became Blade Runner and I used a heart and a gravy boat for Love Boat. Some people started moaning to me about the last one.
The show was planned to start last year to mark your 25 years of consecutive Edinburgh Fringe shows and tours. How did you cope when everything came to a halt?
I was ready to go to Australia on tour. People think it’s like a beach holiday, but it’s three weeks of festivals and shows and travelling around performing to thousands of people.
That got cancelled, then festival gigs disappeared and I had soldout 800-seater Edinburgh shows for three weeks, but everything went.
What helped is that I had been studying meditation and have had therapy. I can’t rate that highly enough. If I could I’d marry my therapist, I would.
She’s in her 60s and might not be keen though.
I had already been to therapy to help deal with the stress of work before the pandemic and I learned the best way of dealing with everything was to keep your brain busy, but therapy is expensive, so we started doing online stuff with podcast Mind Your Loaf. (Laughs) Half of my fans would be watching with a glass of wine saying ‘Go on , Jason’. It was great fun.
I also did Check In Sundays for anyone who was living alone so they could have a bit of contact.
Then there was The Good Room with people like Ardal O’hanlon and Father Ted writer Arthur Mathews talking about growing up in Ireland.
How did you feel being banned from Tiktok for impersonating Body Coach Joe Wicks?
The funny thing is I’ve been doing Joe Wicks comedy sketches for ages. He’s a lovely man and I think he is amazing, but I had a pair of tights with a sock sort of hanging from the gym shorts ... and Tiktok deleted my whole account. Not even a rebuke first.
Mind you, I can highly recommend being banned by Tiktok for any comedian. The publicity has been great for ticket sales.
How tough has the year been for you?
My dad, Paddy, passed away last year in February before all the restrictions.
When we had the funeral, everyone was talking about him and telling stories, so many stories.
Friends and family and fake uncles I didn’t even know were telling me all these tales so I now have something online called the Paddy Lama with quotes of all the things he said like ‘It’s healthy to be mental’.
I think older people have handled the pandemic best, but we don’t follow rules well in Ireland.
People see arrows on supermarket floors and deliberately go the wrong way.
My dad would not have followed the rules and stayed put either. He
would have been driving for miles for a pint of Guinness somewhere.
Has the vaccine made a big difference to the return of live shows?
I’ve heard all the conspiracy theories about the pandemic.
All I can say is if it is a conspiracy theory it’s a good one. Most of this stuff comes from people who don’t know what they are talking about.
I’ve a friend who has nearly died three times from heroin, sniffing glue, aerosols and the like.
He’s in recovery now, but said he didn’t want to take the vaccine because he didn’t want to put poison into his body. I’m like ‘but you used to take heroin’.
I’ve even been accused of being sponsored by Pfizer. (Laughs) I don’t think they need to pay an Irish comedian to speak for them.
Another friend called me the other day and said ‘You’re on Mastermind’. I switched on and there was this young lad in his 20s and John Humphrys asked ‘Who was the referee of the over-75s match in Father Ted?’ And he nodded his head and said ‘Sean Byrne’.
What was it like performing in a multi-story car park for your first Edinburgh Festival shows this summer?
(Laughs) I never thought I’d be playing in a car park, but then I never thought I’d be doing a quiz show and playing the trumpet in my toilet and accidently flushing things down it.
I would have said no to a car park in the past, but now anything goes.
It’s also great being able to stand on a stage and talk for a couple of hours without being interrupted. My two sons just tell me ‘Shut up, Dad’.
What’s really lovely is that when the tour was postponed not a single person asked for a ticket refund.
They were like, ‘We’ll wait for you Jason.’ That’s really touching.
Mind you, it’s been a year without income. The venues still have hold of all the cash.
■ Jason Byrne’s 28-date Audience Precipitation UK tour has just started. Tickets are on sale now from Jasonbyrne.ie
My dad would not have followed the rules and stayed put either. He would have been driving for miles for a pint of Guinness somewhere.
Jason on his late father, Paddy