10 QUESTIONS YOU SHOULD NEVER ASK A COMEDIAN

WHAT DO YOU DO FOR A LIVING?
Comedians hate being asked what they do for a living. They particularly hate being asked what they do for a living when they are on stage doing it for a living. If you are introduced to a comedian and have to ask them what they work at, then they are obviously not as good at what they do as they should be. If you were introduced to Billy Connolly, you wouldn't ask him what he does for a living because you'd already know. That is because he is the Big Yin and everybody knows him, loves him and owns at least one of his videos.

IS IT REALLY HARD STANDING UP IN FRONT OF ALL THOSE STRANGERS?
There is no correct answer to this curiously inevitable question. Denying that you ever feel nervous on stage makes you sound like an arrogant git, while there is no more effective a way of clearing a room than breaking down, bursting into tears and sobbing: Oh I'm so glad you asked me that because it's the terror. The terror, I tells ya! Nobody understands, but you might!

DO YOU WRITE YOUR OWN JOKES?
You wouldn't dream of asking an artist if he paints his own pictures. As far as bare-faced theft is concerned, I have only ever knowingly nicked one joke in my life. It was a few months ago, I was dying on my arse, I couldnt remember any of my own material and I knew this one would work because it s one of my favourite jokes of all time. However, as I have since read that Dara O'Briain has sold out unashamedly, I won't be sullying any of my future performances with his lucre-tainted mainstream guff.

WHAT KIND OF STUFF DO YOU DO?
This is a bugger of a question. Obviously you know exactly what kind of stuff you do because you're up there week in week out doing it. Trying to describe it without sounding like some goon featured in Private Eye's Pseuds Corner is an altogether different kettle of fish.

WHY DON'T YOU DO A BIT FOR US NOW?
At parties, it's as inevitable and irritating as the hairy social misfit in the corner producing a guitar as if from nowhere and playing House Of The Rising Sun. During a lull in the conversation some drunken or even more disturbingly, sober fool realises that there's a comedian in the room and suggests having an impromptu comedy festival.

HOW DO YOU THINK UP JOKES?
Almost every comedian I know claims to carry a small notebook in which they diligently record any funny thoughts they have, witty remarks they hear or wry observations they or anyone else they know makes.
Mine is in front of me at the moment, and a cursory trawl through the few pages that haven't yet been torn out reveals several phone numbers, the name of a very slow horse which a friend told me to bet on, a recipe for Greek kebabs and one joke about condoms that isn't even remotely amusing.
Needless to say, comedians keep these notebooks about their person at all times and never leave the house without them, ever. Except when they regularly do and have to resort to borrowing biros from barmen and drunkenly scrawling random words on bits of beer-mat and cigarette box instead.

DO YOU EVER GET GROUPIES?
A pointless question, as no comic in his right mind is going to deny having dipped a toe in the sea of Groupie, even if the nearest thing he's got to a post-gig shag is a quick one off his own wrist in the dressing room afterwards. Having said that, I have seen women make themselves available to comedians for no other reason than that they have taken a shine to them after witnessing them perform stand-up on stage. It's not big and it's not clever and you re only degrading yourself girls. Thanks.

COULD YOU MAKE ME LAUGH, LIKE, RIGHT NOW?
No.

DO YOU SUFFER FROM DEPRESSION WHEN YOU'RE NOT ON STAGE?
Yeah. Every minute of every gloom-ridden day brings me an inch closer to personal hell. Excuse me while I prepare for death by cataloguing my Smog and Radiohead albums in alphabetical order.

DID YOU USE HUMOUR AS A DEFENCE MECHANISM BECAUSE YOU WERE BULLIED AS A CHILD?
Did you ever pass those first year psychology exams you were repeating in UCD?