Lessons In Laughter

“I’m smaller and more nasally than I imagined,” says Dublin-born, London-based comedian Andrew Maxwell of his new live DVD. “It’s odd watching yourself back.” Maxwell has reflected quite a bit on himself in the pages of Hot Press – the highs of TV and critical acclaim, the lows of drunken blackouts. Today, however, as we sit upstairs in the Stag’s Head, he is here primarily to impart wisdom. An affable chap who loves talking all things comedy, at the top of the game he has been in since the tender age of 16, he gives us his guide to starting out in stand-up.

First thing’s first, his One Inch Punch DVD is about to hit the shelves. As the man himself says, winter is “the only time of year” to put out a DVD. So if, hypothetically, this is a product cynically targeting the Christmas market, how would he sell it? “What would be the sales pitch?” he ponders, for the briefest moment. “If you have... (chuckles) if you have a strange son that won’t leave his room, this is the DVD for him! If one of your teenage children has recently painted his bedroom all black, this is the comedian for him!
“There’s a couple of things that bring you down to earth as a comedian, no matter how big you get,” reasons Maxwell. “The fucking peak of a comedian’s career is his recorded work, which is a stocking filler at Christmas for a fucking weird teenage member of the family! Just like football isn’t about scoring goals, it’s about selling jerseys. Lionel Messi’s real job is selling garments for prepubescent boys. In scoring goals, his job is to be a present for an estranged father to give to his son.”
So essentially Lionel Messi, Andrew Maxwell and, say, Miley Cyrus, are all in the same boat? “We’re all in the same boat,” he nods. “Selling products to confused kids!” Still, it must be nice to have a record of your work. Whereas musicians can play the same hit songs forever and ever, comedians can’t rest on their live laurels.
“Like you said, it’s the exact opposite of music. Music lasts forever. Last night in the hotel, I was listening to Nick Drake and Biggie Smalls...” He was listening to Nick Drake and then Biggie Smalls, right? They didn’t secretly collaborate did they? Just finger picking and with a little Biggie rapping over it...
“No they didn’t! (bursts out laughing) That’d be fucking great man! Yeah! One man committed suicide and another one waited til he was killed, but together…” He digresses. “A great track will live forever, whereas comedy has a mayfly nature to it. It’s really satisfying when the box comes through – you get, like, 50 copies yourself. It’s like a really nice pebble you found on the beach with your missus when you first fell in love.”
Comedy isn’t always about feeling the love, however, as Maxwell examines on his new release. How does he feel about the whole heckling thing?
“You let them do what they do. It’s like being a doorman – let them swing first. The thing about heckling is that it’s completely rigged against the poor guy. They’re always drunk, or mentally ill, or drunk and mentally ill. In their mind they think it’s a 50/50. They think it’s the toss of a coin, but you know it’s an Indian Reservation casino! They haven’t a hope! You’ve got the stage, you’ve got the mic, everybody’s facing you, everybody’s paid in to see you. He’s… a dude”
Occasionally it can turn out to be a very nasty dude. “A few times I’ve had to throw people out,” he says. “One time in Bristol, a skinhead was coming towards me and I’m like ‘I am going to make you cry before you get to the stage’. And I just tore his personality apart. He was clearly a vulnerable and fragile personality anyway, the fact he wanted to beat up an Irish clown. He was climbing through chairs, almost in tears and at the last step to get onto the stage, he just (feigns defeated collapse.)”
That word of warning leads nicely into the instructional part of the interview – five lessons for making it as a comedian. So without much further ado about nothing, the man Maxwell in his own words...

Lesson One:
“What you do in those dangerous heckling situations – take the microphone. You tap him on the head, above the forehead where it’s quite vulnerable. Everybody pisses themselves laughing because every time it makes this noise – BONK! Which is fucking funny! They’re baffled that everyone is laughing at them and they’re in extreme pain. You know that little hammer you open a crab with? That’s what it’s like. DONK! They’ll often reel around looking for their friends. ‘Let’s get him!’ And their friends will be (giggles like a stoned schoolgirl.)”

Lesson Two:
“You’ve got to do what you find funny. If you try and second guess what the audience find funny, you will fail. Even now, when we were trying to conjure up what to talk about on The Panel yesterday, if you try and second guess the audience, you’re nowhere. It has to be what you find funny. Your angle, not ‘hmm, this demographic would really like this stuff’. No way.”

Lesson Three:
“It’s that Hemingway thing. Write. You just gotta do it. The one thing I love about the game I’m in is that – unlike almost everything else in Ireland, the classist nature of it – in comedy, it doesn’t matter who your dad is. You’ve got to be good. That’s why it’s more a sport than anything else. The only hand-up you can get is your talent and work ethic. There’s nobody else that’s gonna make you a good comedian. Your old man could be a millionaire. He could get writers in. You’ll ruin the material.”

Lesson Four:
“First couple of years, you should do it stone-cold sober. Second couple of years, you should do it really fucking high! Until you have the good half hour’s stuff, never drink or get stoned before going on stage, because you’ll never own that material. Until you get good, then deliberately fuck your shit up! Deconstruct it. Once you’ve learnt how to paint a house, learn how to paint an unrecognisable house!”

Lesson Five:
“Apart from anything else – you’re the joke. That’s what I always tell open spots. No matter how pissed the heckler is, you’re the human being that is so fucking needy that you’ve got to stand at one end of a room and demand that strangers give you unconditional love. There’s strippers who are more balanced than you. A stand-up comic doesn’t exist without an audience. Almost on a sub-atomic level. It’s just a man and his neuroses!”

Andrew Maxwell’s new DVD One Inch Punch – Live at Vicar Street is out on November 19.