Cummins Up for Air

One of the most successful Limerick comedians on the Irish circuit is Steve Cummins, whose energetic and attitudinal brand of humour makes him perfect for MC-ing gigs. Indeed, he is resident MC at Dublin’s Laughter Lounge. Hailing from the Treaty City’s notoriously tough Moyross Estate, I wonder how Cummins’ Limerick background informs his comedy.

“The reason I’m such a good MC and host definitely stems from that,” replies the talkative Cummins. “I’m very confident and I’m not scared of an audience. A lot of people come up to me and go, ‘How could you possibly stand in front of these people?’ and so on. And I go, ‘Jesus they weren’t going to throw a petrol bomb at me!’ There’s very little chance that people are going to stab me. I have on occasion had people get aggressive after a gig – some coked-up guy, and he was being a smartarse. I made a show of him because I’m faster and more quick-witted, and I do this for a living, so you’re never going to win. Then he’s snorting coke for the rest of the evening, and he grows a pair of balls and decides to come up to me and be aggressive or whatever.
“If some guy comes up to me doing the nose-to-nose thing, then I’ll say, ‘You better back the fuck off.’ When somebody says it and they really mean it, it will go through somebody’s brain and they’ll go, ‘Fuck, I’m not gonna mess with this guy.’ So, I’m not scared on the stage, and the other thing is that I have a really good instinct for atmosphere and vibe. Before any gig in the Laughter Lounge, I’ll tell you how it’s going to go. Because of that, if the atmosphere’s too high, I know I can bring it down, and if it’s too low, I know I can bring it up, so that it becomes a really good night for everybody.”
Cummins admits that there isn’t a notable Limerick tint to his accent.
“I’ll have people come up and go, ‘You don’t have the Limerick accent’,” he notes. “And I’ll go, ‘Yes I do – but I wanted a career in media, so I got rid of it!’ Basically, I have my Limerick accent for when I’m driving, because there is no greater fun than suddenly putting it on and going, ‘Who the fuck are you?’ It’s great having a proper scumbag Limerick accent to fall back on. It is a genuinely terrifying noise, it’s one of the worst accents in the world – I don’t care if people in Limerick get mad at me, just listen to yourself!
“There’s Dermot Whelan, Karl Spain and myself. Dermot’s Limerick accent has disappeared along the way, no more than my own, and Karl Spain ate his Limerick accent (laughs). You can put that in, I love Karl. He’s the nicest guy in the world, genuinely one of the sweetest men you’ll ever meet, but he’s a slagging bastard. If you’re gigging with him, and he’s announcing you on, he’ll say something horrendous. Like, he’ll say he met me on Facebook and I was a 14-year-old girl, stuff like that. Or there’s a great one where he goes, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, some of you may know that Ricky Gervais is playing Dublin tomorrow night. Unfortunately, he couldn’t be here, but here’s Steve Cummins!’ There’s people literally going, ‘Aw!’ as I’m coming on!”
Although there isn’t a regular comedy club in Limerick these days, Dolan’s Warehouse does occasionally host stand-up shows. Cummins acted as MC for one such gig a while back, although the headline performer was not your run-of-the-mill comic.
“Mick Foley, the wrestler, who played the character Mankind and was WWE champion for years, was doing a speaker’s tour and a bit of comedy afterwards,” he recalls. “He was booked into Dolan’s and they contacted me through Karl Spain, who knew I used to watch wrestling as a kid. They said, ‘Would you support Mick Foley?’ I said, ‘Damn right, even meeting Mick Foley would be cool.’ It was lovely, they treated me like royalty there. But you had 400 hardcore wrestling fans in a room, and there was maybe one woman there, and most of them are wrestling nuts. There was this big screen covering the stage and it was showing some of Mick Foley’s matches. The crowd is watching it as if it’s live and loving every minute.
“I was going to intro myself from offstage – which is a kind of soul-destroying moment – and go on, do about 40 minutes, call a break, come back and introduce Mick Foley. As soon as they start lifting the screen, the crowd are chanting, ‘One more match!’ And I go in my best, deepest voice, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage’ – and now the audience are cheering – ‘Steve Cummins!’ And at that point, you could just hear 400 people going, ‘Who the fuck is Steve Cummins?’”
Thankfully, Cummins’ ability to win over rowdy audiences came to the fore.
“I walked out with both of my middle fingers up and shouted, ‘Fuck you and your boos!’” he remembers. “I said, ‘I know I’m not Mick Foley but you have to listen to me for half-an-hour.’ And I pointed to a guy in a wheelchair in the front row and said, ‘Sir, are you drinking tonight?’ He goes ‘Yeah’ and I said, ‘Technically you’re drink driving.’ The place went mental. It was one of the most fun gigs I’ve done in years.”
In general, Cummins has no hesitations about including wheelchair users in the onstage banter, as to do otherwise would effectively be a form of discrimination.
“I was doing a gig and there was a guy in one of those big fuck-off wheelchairs,” he says. “You know the ones with the wing-mirrors and the alloys. He was going past the side of the stage wearing a cowboy hat and I went, ‘Brokeback Mountain’. He laughed so hard he crashed into the wall into the venue. Seven people rang up the following day to complain. Not him or his friends – seven patronising fuckers who couldn’t see past the chair.”