Ha, Humbug

On the surface, Karl Spain would appear to have it all. He’s a successful comedian, one of Limerick’s most beloved exports. He has a girlfriend (in case you were wondering – everyone’s always wondering.) But beneath all that, Karl Spain has a problem. You know Christmas, the most wonderful time of the year? The season, as they say, to be jolly? It makes Karl Spain miserable. And he’s here to tell you why.

The first reason is signalled by a harsh sound hacking down the phone line. Ah, tis the season to feel unwell. “I’ve a slight cough,” Karl says, by way of unnecessary explanation. He’s not going to expire halfway through the conversation is he? “Hopefully not but this would make for a fitting tribute to me. Would I get the cover?” Of course. The death of Karl Spain would surely prove to be our nation’s ‘Diana’ moment. “You’re lying! Anyway, I don’t think Diana was on the cover of Hot Press… I’m some kind of princess, is that what you’re saying?” Moving swiftly on, with no imminent demise on the horizon, he’s set to lay out his dossier of Christmas misery…
Let’s start, as most people do, by talking about the weather.

The Weather
“Snow doesn’t bother me. It’s just that whole Christmas thing of the weather being shit. Suddenly you can’t get parking – people stress themselves beyond normal levels. Traffic is a nightmare. As much as the Irish love partying, we’re just putting on the hazard lights and stopping in a lane of traffic. It was horrific last year because there were floods and it was freezing. And with the economy so bad – there must have been families who were only missing a swarm of locusts for it to be the end of the world.”

The Office Christmas Party
“There’s always that guy who thinks, ‘she hasn’t given me any encouragement all year, so I’ll wait till the Christmas party and then I’ll lunge at her. In front of her boyfriend. Who’ll probably punch me out.’”
We all like to imagine Karl, Tommy, Jason and the likes getting together once a year to rent out a photocopier and scan their arses, but surely comedians don’t get to go to many office dos?
“We work at them, doing corporate gigs. And if you stay late, you get to see them up dancing! My favourite one was seeing a girl singing ‘I Will Survive’ into a 7-Up bottle, as she sashayed around the dance floor.”

Going Out
“One Christmas, I walked up to a nightclub wearing a pair of runners and a black Adidas t-shirt, and the bouncer actually said, ‘I can’t let you in, you’re too sporty looking’ – much to the amusement of all my friends. I couldn’t go near that type of place nowadays. I like going to late bars. But you have that thing where you’ll be blocked at the door of a pub by a new bouncer. Because they won’t normally have security on the door, but they decide to get some for Christmas. You’re told, ‘sorry, regulars only’ and then you look in the window to see your cousin home from the States, drinking his Christmas drink. WITH A TAN!”

The Shopping
“You see people with about ten bags of shopping – this year could be interesting though, the amount of money wasted will surely go down. But somehow… I don’t think so. I have nieces and nephews now. It’s become quite competitive with my sisters, buying presents for them. You can see the disappointment on their faces sometimes and you just think, ‘I spent nearly a hundred quid on all this!’ And then in comparison to what they get me... ‘Oh look, I made you a picture!’ A picture…”

The Presents
“I don’t get good presents, I never have. The worst present I ever got? A golf umbrella. For two reasons: I don’t play golf, and I don’t use an umbrella. My brother gave myself and my father one each. My father seemed fairly pleased with it, then my brother confessed that he’d got three for the price of two. That’s how one ended up with me – ‘Well, one for dad and then one for... Karl?’”

The Music
“I heard ‘Last Christmas’ on the radio during the week, which I couldn’t believe. Here we go again. I don’t even listen to much music, mainly talk radio. But there’s no escape. It seems to get earlier and earlier every year. I always joke on the 26th of December -‘so that’s Christmas over for another nine months.’ Why anyone would buy a Christmas album, I don’t know. If you step outside your house, you’re going to hear them. Simply having a wonderful Christmas time. It could be lonely this Christmas. Do they know it’s Christmas?” With that incessant soundtrack, how could they not?

Ecumenical Matters
“I’m not religious. People don’t celebrate the birth of Christ – people celebrate the birth of the USA tin of biscuits.”
So will Karl Spain not be at Mass on Christmas morning?
“No, he won’t! I remember my older siblings pulling a suitcase out from under my parents’ bed. I was toddler, it’s one of my earliest memories. All the presents were there and they just went, ‘See, there’s no Santa.’ I just remember thinking, ‘Oh, so this is a thing they’re making up to keep us good.’ Then ‘Holy God and Jesus are watching’ became ‘Aw, this is the thing they made up to keep us good the rest of the year!’ So religion and Christmas are very entwined for me!”
Now that the Pope has relaxed his stance on condoms, will he be giving all his friends multipacks for Christmas to celebrate?
“I might buy them for the parish priest!”

Karl’s Christmas Wish
“I wouldn’t call for the abolition of Christmas, I’d just call for people to have a reality check. Maybe that’s what all this is, the economy going bust. Children might get a second-hand Xbox now instead of having three on the shelf. I used to get hand-me-down clothes. My mother used to make us pairs of trousers out of curtains and I wore those trousers for a loooong time.”
Exactly. And Karl turned out just fine. So, could he sum up the misery of the season in one sentence?
“A child screaming on Christmas morning – ‘Jesus Christ!’ – at their present.”
Many miserable returns.

Karl Spain plays the The Laughter Lounge Christmas Party in Dublin on December 2.