Byrne Baby Byrne

Is Ed Byrne the hardest-working man in comedy? Looking at his hectic schedule it certainly looks that way. When not appearing on TV shows such as RTE’s the Panel (and literally dozens of others in the UK), writing plays and sit-coms or doing voiceovers for ads, he’s touring his hugely popular and very funny stand-up routine relentlessly.

Over the past few years he has appeared several times over in America, Australia and New Zealand as well as in the UK and Ireland. He has played the Montreal Comedy festival no less than five times, the last three of which have seen him host a series for RTE, Ed Byrne’s Just For Laughs, which takes a behind-the-scenes look at the world’s biggest comedy fest. The six part series has just returned to RTÉ screens for a third season and features the best in global stand-up as well as including an episode entirely dedicated to Irish comics at the bash.
We catch up with Byrne in the middle of yet another gruelling tour, which will take in most of the UK and Ireland over the next few months. Last night he was in Hemel Hempstead, tonight it’s the Harrow Arts Centre in North London.
“Yeah, I like to be busy,” he says of his permanently full diary. “But believe it or not I turn down a lot of stuff too. Actually, I’ve just turned down doing the voiceover on an ad for McDonald’s. Even worse it was for Happy Meals. There was no particular reason for not doing it – I just didn’t feel right about it. The timing wasn’t great either – I had just finished reading Fast Food Nation!”
The Montreal festival looks less like hard work than a chance to mix it with his peers, as well as getting to see and talk to some of the comedy greats. Is it as much fun to do as it looks on TV?
“It is fun but it’s hard work as well,” he says. “We have to film all six episodes in a week for a start so we hit the ground running and it’s pretty much non-stop all the way. As well as interviewing people I’m actually performing at the festival as well so it does suck a lot of the fun out of it for me. Normally at these big comedy festivals I sleep all day and stay up drinking all night. Despite the reputation Americans have for clean living there’s a hardcore of people who stay at the bar all night and I’m usually among them. I was pretty good this time around - I only stayed in the bar two nights out of seven.
“But it’s a very clever festival in that it’s the only one geared towards the industry,” he adds. “You get people who work for the corporate booking agents and the big TV companies coming along. They pay a large fee to get VIP passes to all of the shows. It’s also a very themed festival. You have the Relationship Show, the Irish Show, the Brits Show and the Down Under show. And then you get the headliners and the old masters showing us all how it’s done.”
Byrne has been at the top of his game for nearly a decade now. Does making people laugh get any easier as times goes on?
“It does get easier in some ways,” he says. “Dying onstage becomes much easier for a start. If you’ve done 300 gigs and you die on just one or two nights you learn to put it into perspective. In the early days if I died I’d be devastated thinking ‘no-body loves me anymore’. I’ve had about two deaths in the last few years and they were both corporate gigs. The last time was at a gig for a bunch of estate agents. They were all a bunch of middle class tossers and they fucking hated me from the moment I walked out on stage. I even went to the promoter afterwards and said I didn’t want to be paid. The easiest gigs are the ones where your name is on front of the theatre and people are paying to see you. The next best ones are comedy festivals where they know what to expect and the worst ones by far are corporate gigs.”
What about audiences around the world – has he learned to deal with the different reactions he comes across?
“Audiences are different,” he says. “I’ve discovered for example that a big audience is better than a small audience. If you’re playing to a thousand people and you get five hundred laughing along with you the rest will follow. But if it’s a few hundred people they’ll stick together. And you can get some audiences where you get absolutely no momentum. You do a joke, they laugh and they wait for the next one to come along and if they like it they’ll laugh but if they don’t they’ll just sit there. I liken it to sex - if you’re having sex with someone and they’re not any good you’re not going to be any good at it.
“There’s no predicting what’s going to get an extra laugh. I was doing some stuff about dentists where you’re afraid to go to them and admit to not brushing. There’s a bit where I say to my dentist, ‘Look, I got drunk, came in, fell asleep and forgot to brush my teeth …OK?’ It would usually get a bit of a laugh most of the time but in the States they completely crack up. It’s probably something to do with the fact that they look after their teeth so well and for anyone to admit they didn’t brush is such a big deal.”
Byrne is a big music fan and attends gigs when he gets the time. Does he see any similarities between music and comedy audiences? “Yeah definitely, I went to see Electric Six up in Camden and everyone was up for it and it was a great night. Then I went to see them at Glastonbury a few months later and no-one seemed interested in listening to them. They were just shouting up ‘Gay Bar’ all the time. It reminded me of the time years ago when I went to see Prince in Cork. He went into this big funk workout, which I thought was great but the audience just started chanting olé, olé, olé, which I couldn’t understand. But then I’m always looking at audiences’ reactions. I was at that movie Bowfinger with Eddie Murphy, and I’m literally looking around at people in the cinema thinking to myself ‘if it wasn’t for pricks like you lot laughing all the time they wouldn’t make shitty movies like this’.”
Never one to rest on his laurels, Byrne’s latest venture is a play which will feature at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival
“It’s about a boy and a girl who are in love,” he explains. “It was inspired by the last three relationships I’ve had. I’ve always done a lot of stuff about relationship and it works well as dialogue. The working title at the moment is Cruelty but I don’t know if we’ll keep that. I don’t know how it will go down. People will probably come to it out of curiosity, mainly because I have a reputation at the Fringe. But the comedy reviewers probably won’t like it because it’s a play and the theatre lovers won’t like it because I’m a comedian!”

Ed Byrne’s Just For Laughs goes out on Monday Nights on RTÉ Two.