"Yeah, I was arrested again a few weeks ago for vagrancy and street performing.” David McSavage – stand-up performer of some brilliance, audience-baiting enfant terrible and all-round agent provocateur of the domestic comedy scene – is filling me in on the details of his latest brush with the law. “What had happened was that a few months previously, this one particular guard had arrested me for performing on Grafton Street. I was supposed to be up in court, but when I showed up the first day, he wasn’t there, and I wasn’t able to make it for the rearranged date, so there was a bench-warrant issued for my arrest.

“So this guard eventually came across me again performing on Grafton Street a full five months later, arrested me and kept me in the cells in Pearse Street overnight – a real cunt of a police officer, basically. But you see, the thing is that the arrest actually led to me appearing on the Late Late Show, which led to my Vicar St. date selling out. So that guard is inadvertently responsible for kicking my career the next rung up the ladder. I’m actually going to go down to the barracks on Pearse Street and present him with a bottle of champagne and two free tickets, just to show that there’s no hard feelings.”
For McSavage, such scuffles with The Man aren’t exactly an uncommon experience. Infamously, he was arrested five years ago at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for having the audacity to mention the word “penis” during a street performance. His confrontational (though exceptionally well-crafted) style of humour has also seen him earn the ire of more than one audience member over the years, and he has had to negotiate his way through – with varying degrees of success – a litany of perilous scenarios.
On one occasion 12 months ago (in an incident subsequently recounted in hotpress), an ultra-irate Temple Bar loiterer took severe exception to McSavage’s intimation that he may have been “having troubles without the methadone.” Whilst residing in Denmark during his global travels in the 1990s, the comedian also had to endure one outraged Copenhagen citizen smashing his guitar to pieces, and a lingerie-clad behemoth on a stag night breaking his nose courtesy of a supremely well-delivered head-butt.
McSavage, however, remains unrepentant about his inflammatory approach.
“Well, it’s like journalism or music or any kind of art-form,” he contends. “If it’s not a bit revolutionary, a bit up-your-arse or in-your-face, then it can become quite tame and irrelevant. I think if it lacks that little bit of attitude, then the question arises as to why you’re doing it in the first place. If you’re not gonna invest your show with a bit of fire and conviction, then you should just go and be an accountant or something.”
Whilst he remains an incorrigibly bellicose performer, McSavage is perhaps the living embodiment of the old adage that comedy can sometimes mask great pain. He begins our interview by offering an advance apology in case he offended me during a tired and emotional outburst in a comedy club a couple of years back (in reality I wasn’t present on the night in question). The incident was just an isolated instance of madness during a prolonged period of heavy drinking, to which he unceremoniously called a halt 12 months ago.
Though he professes to be much happier in his life and career nowadays, McSavage nonetheless maintains that most people seeking to make a living from comedy are grappling with depressive tendencies.
“There’s something very sad about comedy, and being a stand-up comedian,” he observes. “There is an immense well of underlying melancholia. First of all, most of the stuff you’re talking about concerns things that don’t work or stuff in life that’s pretty fucked up. Also, there’s this constant need to keep the audience laughing no matter how miserable your own life is. You go onstage and talk about all these incredibly painful things, and people are entertained by it, but then you come off and you still have to deal with that stuff that’s bothering you.”
Nonetheless, things have undeniably been looking up for McSavage of late. Aside from the Vicar St. dates, he is also currently resident warm-up artist for the Late Late Show, a slot that has exposed his work to some of the most esteemed artists in the entertainment industry.
“Yeah, Billy Connolly was a guest recently, and he told me he really likes my stuff,” elaborates McSavage. “It was funny, I had to explain to him that I do regular shows and I’m not just a warm-up guy. He was kind of intrigued, because he says he never has support artists at his own shows – he likes to get warmed up with the audience. That’s definitely an interesting approach, but then he is one of the great stand-up performers of all-time, so perhaps that makes it a little easier to get away with.”
So, is Dave McSavage a happy man in 2004?
“Well, I have my moments,” he replies. “I think giving up drinking was the smartest move I’ve made in a while. You know, you enjoy for it a certain amount of time, but when it starts to get that point when you wake up the mornings and you just feel incredibly fearful and hateful and scared of everything, it’s time to knock it on the head. I just generally feel more calm and at peace nowadays so, yeah, it’s an exciting time, definitely.”

Dave McSavage plays Vicar St. on March 20 & 21. While the first night is sold out, a limited number of tickets are still available for the second show