Hoot Press 2005: Golden Giggle Awards

It seems like only yesterday your correspondent took over the QWERTY for Hoot Press (actually it should have been the day before yesterday, but I’m nearly always late).

In fact, it’s been a year, and the festive maelstrom is upon us with its attendant summarizing and assessment. This puts us in nasty territory. I hate awards, and all such pointless-but-convenient ways of tabulating the ongoing work of a disparate bunch of artists. However, you gotta have some way to mark the annual achievements of all they tell me, so Golden Giggles it is! Just a caveat before we begin – like all comedy it’s all fairly subjective and personal, so I hope you have as much fun disagreeing with my choices as I do agreeing with them.
LIVE STAND UP COMIC AND DVD OF THE YEAR
Before I get to Tommy Tiernan, just a word about some utterly unsung Irish stand-up heroes. There’s a small group of Irish stand-ups who, although you will occasionally see them in a club here, don’t register on the big house radar of native chuckledom. Lacking the essential publicity engine consisting of a high profile domestic TV series, they mainly ply their trade in a workmanlike fashion on the UK circuit. Few – too few – people will have seen them live here. But they are arguably a division above some of the more familiar club comics on the home front.
There’s Ian Coppinger, hugely respected within the business for his extraordinary character acting and improvisation, as well as his increasingly mature stand-up style which has developed over the years from a virtual collection of one-liners to a more expressive story-telling milieu. Ian is opening for Pat Shortt on most of the Limerick funnyman’s current tour dates, which means, apart from anything else, he will be seen by thousands for the first time early in 2006 during Pat's Vicar Street run. They’re in for a small but perfectly-formed treat.
In the same category, I’d also like to mention the Trojan work of Kevin Gildea, truly the great stand-up purist, who is shackled by his modesty and maybe to some extent by the unpredictability which goes with the territory of his clever and experimental bent.
If the vast talent of either of these men is ever harnessed in a high profile way to give them more general exposure, they will be revealed as the overlooked gems they are.
Now we get to Tommy. There needs to be another category for the man. Comedy Plus or Comedy 2.0. There’s just no one to compare to him for passion, performance pitch and content live.
Now taking the packet steam to the US for a protracted harangue in the ear of America, his corporeal presence is lost to us for a while.
But you can cuddle his representative Loose DVD for comfort in his absence all through 2006. Or you could just keep watching Leno and Letterman, because it’s only a matter of time, surely.
AUDIO COMEDY OF THE YEAR
Radio comedy is great. It’s cheap, and if you have the inventiveness and imagination required, you can go anywhere and do anything with a full-blown audio production. On the other end of the scale, the intimacy and immediacy of talk radio is in some ways the most analogous environment to live stand-up there is, outside of the clubs and theatres themselves. In the latter regard, special mention to the gentle Corkonian understatement of Maeve Higgins’ visitations to Today FM and the more formalised characterisation of Paul Woodful’s Dublin Deejay DJ Gary buzzin’ and keepin’ it real on Saturday mornings on 2FM. The prize, however, must go to the more labyrinthine construct of Roger Gregg’s Crazy Dog Audio Theatre and this year’s epic Last Harbinger.
Crunching in his gravel box, creaking his doors and probably doing special things with coconut shells as well as marshalling some great performances from the Crazy Dog players, Gregg creates the parallel universe of Moloch.
It’s a world bent on its own destruction, with lying leaders propped up by a co-conspiratorial media into which the Harbinger comes to try and warn them to change or be doomed. Extraordinary audio production values, biting and relevant satire, and darkly hilarious script and acting. If you missed it on RTE Radio in the summer (what can you have been thinking?) it’s out now on CD.
TV COMEDY SHOW OF THE YEAR
Just hitting the airwaves as this hits the shelves is the second series of Stew on RTE 2. It’s already won the IFTA ahead of Pat Shortt’s Killnascully and The Panel and builds on the extraordinary success of the team’s first attempt to provide Ireland with a real grown-up sketch comedy show, with great writing and acting and production and all that stuff.
Its success represents a triumph for persistent comedy inventiveness over the years on the part of its main driving force. Over the years Paul Tylak (Quacksquad, Flatheads – erm, Noel’s House Party) and Paul Woodful (Joshua Trio, Glam Tarts, Ding Dong Denny O’Reilly etc.) have been wholehearted comedy warriors. But this vehicle for their writing and acting - as well as the notable contributions from other members of the team has seen them begin to get recognition at last. Their Hoot Press Golden Giggle seals this beatification once and for all.
COMEDY CONTROVERSIALIST OF THE YEAR
In the absence of any top notch blasphemy from T. Tiernan this year, we need go no further than the enigma of Satan’s busker himself, David McSavage. McSavage is a talented and charismatic, though erratic performer whose street theatre instincts can create as much odure as goodwill when applied to interior scenarios. A trawl through his “Pages Of Truth” on his web site (www.davidmcsavage.com) will give you a sense of the man’s struggle with the harshness and insensitivity of others. Whether the world is the mirror image of this in himself or vice versa is a moot point. I’ve seen him tear a room apart in the good way and the bad way. You either go for it or you don’t, but the guy can pack ‘em in at Vicar Street so he definitely has his followers. He wins the award for the most puzzling protest ever. This occurred recently when he stood outside Aras An Uachtaran as a random band of “entertainers” arrived to attend a reception held by President McAleese to acknowledge the positive contribution of same to Irish life in general. Frankly most people would view this affair as harmless at worst, but McSavage is about railing against things, and therefore stood outside brandishing a placard with the word “Why?” daubed thereon. It’s still not clear whether he wanted the event called off because of a didactic belief that comedians should be shining a stark light on the ills of a society where they prowl the periphery like gaunt harbingers and ought not be tainted by fraternisation with the Oppressive Regime under which we toil here in The Republic of Ireland, or because he was not invited. Nonetheless, his sparky bile and spirited opportunism are singular and deserve recognition greater than being referred to as “comedian Brian McSavage” the following day in the paper of record. If all his venom were as focussed (or more focussed than this) and he fell foul a little less of unleashing it disproportionately on the grounds of appearance, weight or type of shirt worn by members of the audience, Dave will do some more real and interesting damage in 2006.
PITHY COMEDY REVIEW OF THE YEAR
Asked recently what was his take on the above-honoured McSavage, comedy barperson Kenny at The International swiftly constructed this little beauty. “There is a fine line”, he ventured, “between David McSavage and comedy.”