comedy Winning Streak

eaders of The Sunday Independent will be aware that, for some months now, the august organ you currently hold in your hands (he means Hot Press, I hope Ed.) in cahoots with The Irish Times has been propagating the myth that Irish comedians are funny. As one of the main perpetrators of this foul falsehood, I feel I should apologise.
According to the paper, we regularly trot out the party line , misleading our readers by carelessly suggesting that because of the international success of Father Ted, Dylan Moran and Tommy Tiernan, it has been a vintage year for Irish comedy blah blah blah . . . How silly of us. What fools we ve been. The journalist behind this salvo is correct, of course. He must be. After all, his organ is much bigger than mine, even more august as it were, a far more patent farce. (Surely you mean potent force? Ed.) (No, I mean patent farce B.G.)
So as the funeral bells toll and the tumbleweed blows forlornly across the stage of Dublin s Comedy Cellar, we can only assume that, for our neighbours in Ulster, the situation is similar, if not worse. After all, it s grim up North.
Broken down cease-fires, explosions, talks deadlocks, murders, re-routed marches and more punishment beatings than you can shake a baseball bat at are hardly a cause for ribaldry and mirth. Comedian and television presenter Patrick Kielty disagrees however, strenuously denying that his brand of consistently topical material, largely based on the troubles , is flippant.
Ah no, I don t think so, he chuckles in a soft Northern brogue. My material is just me having a go at sacred cows. People who come along and see my shows know what they re getting. True, sometimes you get people pulling you up saying Oh, I saw you on the telly and you were very close to the bone and I didn t like that and who d ya think y are? And their complaints needn t necessarily concern Northern politics either.
I actually remember doing a gig very early on up in Tyrone at a Christmas party. There was an old guy there, you know the sort with the jumper on, and a shirt and tie underneath, with the tie out over the jumper and a jacket over it all. I did a joke about religion or sex or something like that and he literally came up on stage, took the mic out of my hand and roared, We don t need that sort of stuff around here! Who d ya think y are dividin us all up? And I was thinkin to myself Oh Jesus Christ! In the end two guys had to come up on stage, wrestle the mic off him and drag him out the back where I believe he grew his two other thumbs.
And while only those with the mealiest of mouths could be offended by Kielty s humour, would Dundrum s finest be of the opinion that because he can laugh at it all, he is doing more than any of those he makes fun of Paisley, Adams, Hume etc. to bring the conflicting sides closer together up North?
Oh Jesus, no! he splutters. You see, I don t look on the bright side of anything. I tell the truth. Like I say in the video, this whole notion of people saying Oh, sure we can all get on together , that s not my fuckin line at all! We can t get on together. Fuckin politicians tell lies all over the world wherever you go. It s very much a case that situations can arise which get very fucked up.
I mean, I open the newspapers sometimes and I don t have to write the material, it s already there! Albert Reynolds goes to London and they tell him he s won and obviously, he s delighted. Then they turn around and say you owe us a million pounds . What the fuck is that all about? Am I missing something? The obvious comparison to be made is Albert with Michael Collins. The Brits told them both they d won and yet they both arrived home with fuck-all.
The video to which the 26-year-old alludes is Stir It Up, a gas stand-up show recorded in Belfast s Grand Opera House late last year. The gaseous adjective is most appropriate for a performance which, while largely entertaining, was also far too long, with more than its fair share of hot air. As such it doesn t do Kielty s abilities complete justice.
COMPLETE LOSERS
Kielty however, who began his career as compere of Belfast s Empire Comedy Club in 1992 and has since made the transition to the small screen, would be the first to admit that he is no Bill Hicks.
No, I don t think I d put myself up there with the comedy Gods, he muses. Although I think that because I was a compere for so long, doing a high turn-over of topical material, I learnt to be sharp on my feet. By its nature that stuff is very hit and miss, but you ve always got tomorrow to open the paper and find new material.
I see other comedians on the circuit and all they do is sets full of generic material. You find that their banter with the public isn t as good, but they re probably more crafted, and better comedians than I am. Personally, I found that being a compere made doing PK Tonight on the telly much easier. But having said that, I don t really like saying I m a TV presenter because it sounds tame and a wee bit wankery. To be honest, I don t really know what the fuck you d call me.
How about jammy rich bastard for starters. The aforementioned PK Tonight, on which Kielty was given free rein by the BBC, ran from October 1995 to March 1996 and was quite a success, resulting in Kielty setting up his own production company, Green Inc., an outfit which has recently secured a prime-time slot for the prodigious talent on that comedic oasis, Channel 4.
Yeah, I set up that production company with Jackie Hamilton, who set up The Empire Comedy Club. The Channel 4 show, which we came up with between us, is the first gig we ve got and we can t believe our luck.
Jackie Hamilton? The same Jackie Hamilton who reads out soccer results on UTV every Saturday afternoon? Surely not?
That s Jackie fuckin Fullerton! bellows Kielty. Shane O Donoghue on 2FM made the same mistake when I met him. You should have heard him; Are you hanging around with that fuckin grey-haired guy in his 50s? Jesus, I thought he just gave out Linfield 0 Glentoran 1 .
Moving swiftly along . . . what s the new show all about? A series of socio-political debates analysing the violent sectarianism which has ravaged Patrick s community for over two decades?
It s called Last Chance Lottery and it s all about losing, he explains enthusiastically, suggesting that I might not be far off the mark. When you think about it, we re all losers, all of us.
What we plan to do is get a studio audience in with their lottery tickets and not tell them the results until we go out live at 9pm. If anyone has won anything they get thrown out of the studio. So we could have a millionaire or a #10 winner, it doesn t matter, they re out of there. From there on in the show is basically a celebration of ordinary punters who are all complete losers. At the end, the two biggest losers come out and play for the star prize.
And when can we expect to experience this tele-visual valley of tears?
INTELLIGENT HECKLING
In January at 9 o clock, comes the informed reply.
Hmm . . . perhaps Patrick could be a little more judicious with his plugging?
No. Basically if you turn on your television at 9 o clock at any stage during January, be it am or pm, it ll be on. It s actually a real germ show. Yeah, that s it in a nutshell actually, it s a show for germs. Because basically if you re sitting in at 9 o clock at the weekend watching telly, you are a fuckin germ. I mean, I know, I ve been there. It s not a smug show though. It s not Oh I m great and you re all losers . It s more Actually, if you look at it properly there s a bit of loser in all of us .
There certainly is, not least in the couple of fools in the audience who choose to heckle Kielty during the course of Stir It Up.
I m sorry, I don t speak pissed, he apologises to one audience member who fancies himself as a wag, while another is asked Is that your own mouth, or are you breaking it in for a dickhead? It s said that a good comedian should never use a prepared put-down but, fuck it, if it s delivered in the right manner, the results can be pretty impressive. Good hecklers are, however, as rare as celibate bishops, so does Kielty see interruptions from the floor as a nuisance, or can they actually contribute to a show?
They do contribute, he expounds. I think intelligent heckling is great, except you rarely hear an intelligent heckle. I ve heard a couple of great ones though, but they weren t said to me.
There s an infamous club in London called The Tunnel Club, and there was a great one one night when Jo Brand came on and said Hello there, you re a lovely crowd , at which, some bloke down at the back roared out Thanks, so are you! I mean, that was inspired. There was another one where another girl came on one night and she wasn t too gorgeous in the old looks department. As soon as she walked on stage some guy screamed out Don t show us your tits!
And how does wee Paddy best cope with such frivolous banter?
Well it depends, he says. At the end of the day, if someone is shouting Bollocks! , I don t mind giving them a standard put-down. Most of your average crowd won t know it s been used before and even if they do, it doesn t really matter.
Occasionally if you hear a good heckle you find yourself thinking Ah, maybe I can run with this for a while , if it s just a load of old bollocks though, and you ask them to repeat themselves, you know you re just going to get a load of old bollocks back again.
The Empire was famous for the You re shite! and Okay, make us laugh brigade. In my time there, I saw a number of top comedians near to tears backstage, whining that This is shit, how can you call this a comedy club? The reason they were saying this was because they went out on stage and expected respect!
Belfast audiences are very Right then, get the gags in and if they re funny we ll give you a break . So, as I said, three years of compering a very rowdy venue keeps you on your toes. It helps you figure out what s worth running with and what just deserves a standard put-down.
Finally, the killer question: how does Kielty think comedy can be defined?
Tragedy + time, he replies without so much as a hum or a haw. That s what Lenny Bruce said and I really think he hit the nail on the head there. n
PATRICK KIELTY s video Stir It Up is out now on EMI. Germs can tune into Last Chance Lottery on Channel 4, every Saturday at 9pm.