Math’s entertainment

Dermot McMorrow is in full flight on stage, miming the antics of a drunken man attempting to climb into his pint. Anyone who’s ever attempted to carry a pint through a crowded pub while the worse for drink will recognise the manoeuvre. Within seconds the pint has taken offence at this outrage and is now pursuing a terrified McMorrow around the stage at arm’s length. Later the comedian will collapse in a drunken heap with both arms against the wall, as his unsteady feet slide him towards an almost horizontal position. “I’m not being sick,” he assures his hysterical audience with the fervent veracity of the truly pissed, “I’m just trying to see how long I am.”

Off stage, Dermot McMurrow could not be more different to the manic, shouting madman who appears in his act. In fact, the soft spoken person who sits opposite me sipping an alchol-free lager looks every bit the secondary school maths teacher that, during the day at least, he is. I suggest it’s an odd combination of career choices.

“I suppose it is,” he admits, “but I’d like to think I’m quite a funny maths teacher. I came to comedy late, though it was something I always had an interest in. About six years ago there were a lot of retirements at the school and I made a couple of speeches which went down well, and after that I got approached to do a couple of funerals and a divorce. So stand-up seemed to be the next logical step.”

Although he’s lived and worked in Dublin for almost 30 years, much of his comedy concerns his rural roots in the Sligo town of Ballisodare.

“I had quite an idyllic childhood,” he remembers, “cutting turf and poaching salmon and doing the kind of things that only people in books do now. I’m lucky in that I was surrounded by some very funny people. I think most Irish people are naturally funny. Or maybe we’re just great bullshitters.

“My biggest comedy influences are my brother Sean, who’s an artist, and my mother who’s 85 now and at the epicentre of bullshit in Ireland. I mean that as a compliment. My other brother is a garda so we were the ideal country family, except we never had a priest. But it was a happier time, the good old days of polio and rickets. There were no hospital queues. Mind you, there weren’t any hospitals either.”

The Irish fascination with drink also plays a major part in McMorrow’s act, yet curiously, it was the decision to curtail his own drinking that gave him the impetus to try stand-up.

“Like a lot of Irish people,” he remembers, “I was a social drinker, which in Ireland usually involves drinking more than a chronic alcoholic would in any other country. I still enjoy a drink now though I don’t drink nearly as much or as often. Eventually I decided that it just wasn’t fun anymore, or maybe I just got bored so I went from hanging out in pubs to hanging out in comedy clubs. It’s not actually the being drunk thing that I find funny, it’s more that drunk people are vulnerable, and vulnerable people are funny.”

He also combines biting satire with more slapstick material, and routinely discusses thorny subjects such as abortion in his act.

“It is a thorny subject but it exists and therefore we should talk about it,” he considers. “It’s a scandal that we just export that problem. But if you could have one here, there’d probably be a nine-month waiting list. One of the best things about performing comedy is that you can encourage people to look at things a little differently. You can make people think and maybe even change their attitudes. You can look at issues we normally avoid in a different atmosphere. Certainly my views on abortion have changed as I’ve got older. I’m pro-choice now, but in the womb, for example, I’d have been leaning very much on the pro-life side.”

With six years on the circuit behind him, McMorrow reckons that it’s probably more difficult for those now starting out in the game.

“It used to be the case that there weren’t a lot of comedy venues, and obviously there weren’t as many acts. Nowadays, despite the fact that there are more clubs, it can be difficult to break into the circuit. You might do an open-mic gig one week and wait two months for another gig. Because promoters need established acts to bring in the crowd. The only way you get better at performing is to make mistakes and learn from them, so you need to gig constantly. My own experience is that my best stuff comes from throwing away the script and winging it. Of course my worst stuff also comes from the same source, so you’ve got to be careful. But you’re always learning.”

A mutual friend informs me that Mr. McMorrow is a martial arts expert, a fact that, no offence intended, would not be immediately apparent from his physique and demeanour.

“I’ve been practising the Japanese martial art of aikido for over 20 years,” he confirms. “I’m a sho-dan, or first dan, thanks to my excellent teacher John Rogers. In many ways it’s the antithesis of comedy since you don’t talk, but it harmonises body and mind. I’ve never had to use it though, except once in class when a huge kid jumped on my back. He was just kidding around but whatever way I fell, I catapulted him across the classroom about 15 feet. It was a total accident and he wasn’t hurt but it did my reputation the power of good. The whole school is now in awe of my martial arts skills. Actually, maybe you shouldn’t print that bit.”