Brendan shines

“It wasn’t that much of a change really,” considers comedian Brendan Burke with a quizzical grimace. “I went from looking at a load of piss samples to looking at a load of piss heads. I was a micro-biologist at Beaumont hospital and I was usually on call. Being woken up at 6am to look at stool samples lost its lustre for me somehow. I think I made the right choice.”

While pursuing his career as a lab-technician Brendan studied acting at the Oscar theatre school, where one of his classmates was the actor Liam Cunningham. Unfortunately, Brendan wasn’t to emulate his fellow students’ success.

“I was a terrible actor. The more serious I tried to be the more the audience fell about in the aisles. And I tried really hard but it seemed that once I took to the stage it was impossible for me to be anything but funny. I don’t think I have a serious face. I was invited back to my secondary school recently and they had my graduation class picture on the wall, from 26 years ago. A group of gormless eejits mugging at the camera, it’s all hair and innocence, neither of which I possess now incidentally.

“Then I looked at the graduation pictures from last year and you’ve got all these chisel featured guys with shorn hair and attitude. They all look like they should be in Radiohead. And I think my generation didn’t have that level of cool and that’s why I can’t act serious parts. I have an innate sense of eejit that I can’t cover up, so comedy was the obvious choice.”

When Brendan first took to the boards at the International Comedy Cellar, he differed from his fellow comics in that he had a successful career and a relationship already under his belt. Did his routine differ from those of his more avant-garde companions?

“It’s a funny thing that, because although I’d done a couple of impromptu gigs before my first gig at the Cellar it was because my relationship broke up in ’91 that I decided to give the Cellar a go. I was totally devastated by the break-up and really I just talked about that experience.

“What struck me as strange was that everybody could empathise with the sentiments. In fact, just thinking about it now, I was probably being very serious about what had happened and the crazy way you act when you’re devastated but again the audience laughed. And it was great therapy. I began to realise how absurd it was to continue to tear myself apart because of this loss, since I’d find myself a couple of nights later on stage relating the experience to a room full of hysterical strangers.

“Another way that it helped was that by the time I began to branch out in terms of material and talk about my childhood or travelling or whatever, I’d lost the fear of performing live.”

Since that initial run of performances, Brendan Burke has become one of the most popular and indeed profitable comedians working on the Irish circuit. He’s headlined at most of the country’s premier comedy venues and is one of Ireland’s most in-demand corporate entertainers, having recently returned from a series of corporate events in New York. How did he achieve this success despite not doing the Dublin-Edinburgh-London circuit?

“Well the circuit when I started wasn’t as established as it is now. And I had to play some really awful gigs after that initial period of success. I remember once playing a show at Baldonnel aerodrome and dying on my ass. I walked out and said ‘Hello’ and this guy in the front row roars up ‘Homosexual!’. I thought that if I was what they thought a gay man looked like, well, they probably weren’t gonna be my crowd. The real break came when I did the RTE TV show The End. I had this routine that I still do now about a night-club bouncer standing at his door, scratching his arse, throwing a few practice shapes, having a sly pick of the nose and people loved it. Again it was just an observational piece but it struck a chord. And the reason it did well for me on TV was that as it’s a mimed piece it’s difficult to sell it in print interviews!

“It’s interesting that RTE seem to becoming interested in investing in Irish comedy talent because nothing will give an aspiring comedian a leg up more than a slot on TV. Even an appearance in an advert on TV can raise your profile, as also happened to me. Although in my ad I played a barman so that for the next three years every time I went up to a bar the guy behind the taps would go ‘Ye know you pull that pint all wrong in that shaggin’ ad’. Like, fair enough.”

What does the future hold for Brendan?

“I’m currently gigging steadily around the country and combining that with the occasional corporate gig here and abroad. While stand-up is still my first love I’ve still got a bee in my bonnet about the acting. Every time I see Liam Cunningham on screen I go ‘I cudda bin uh contendah’. In fact if anybody reading this has a really sad play, an absolutely heart-rending tragedy, please send it to me for a look. Something like a country and western classic except sadder. I guarantee you, if I play the lead you’ll be dealing with a comedy smash!”