Meek And Ye Shall Find

David O’Doherty has consistently been one of the top Irish comedians over the past number of years, and in recent times has deservedly come to the attention of a wider audience courtesy of his excellent RTÉ series The Modest Adventures Of David O’Doherty and his nomination for the if.comedy award at the Edinburgh Fringe.

Set to play Vicar Street next month, David has a fresh batch of new material to debut.
“I was in New Zealand over Christmas with the Flight Of The Conchords guys,” he explains. “There’s still some stuff from my Edinburgh show last August floating around, but it’s getting easier over time to write shows. I tend to use the recording function on my phone to make notes, so you can use that as a graph to judge how productive you are in a given period. So I’ve been recording quite a lot of stuff.
“The drawback with that is sometimes you record what you think is the funniest thing in the world, and you listen back to it afterwards and it’s you standing on O’Connell Street going, ‘Imagine a shop that has no doors and just people working inside it.’ That’s the downside to that system.”
O’Doherty’s friends Flight Of The Conchords, of course, have become one of the hottest tickets in the comedy world courtesy of their superb HBO series. When did he first meet the New Zealand duo?
“I played piano with them at Edinburgh in 2002,” reflects David. “They came over here and did loads of gigs. Flight Of The Conchords have played Kavanagh’s of Portlaoise and places like that. They really like it here. New Zealand is remarkably similar to Ireland, except they’re a little bit better at rugby, I guess. They’re not working on their show at the moment because of the writers’ strike, so we just did some hanging out together over Christmas.”
David says that the pair have retained the same freewheeling approach they had before their US success.
“They’ve never cared much for PR or having posters or anything like that,” he shrugs. “They arrived over to Edinburgh in 2002 with no posters and not having completed their Fringe applications or anything. They played to between four and twelve people for all of August that year. But they got an amazing review on the last day, and decided to go back the following year, because they thought a few more people might come. Then some Americans went to see them, and HBO invited them to do a special and then a series.
“It’s kind of like The Office – the good thing does for once become popular. In 2002 in Edinburgh, there were only six people there a night, but generally five of those people were stand-up comedians going, ‘Oh my God, this is genuinely next level’. People like Jimmy Carr, Daniel Kitson, Chris Addison and myself would go see them a lot, and then I ended up playing with them.
“But yeah, they are the least changed-by-success people ever, they kind of realise how ridiculous it all is. Jemaine had to go and buy a pair of black shoes the other day, ’cos it turns out he’s been nominated for a Grammy. And occasionally ridiculous things come through, like they get an email from the Beastie Boys and that kind of carry on.”
Schedules permitting, David hopes to do a cameo on the Conchords’ show, and is also working a new TV project of his own.
“I’m doing a top secret new thing for Channel 4 in a couple of weeks. People have been talking a lot about Modest Adventures over there, but this is a bit more of a live thing, so that’s what I’ll be working on over the next while. I’ve also recently acted in a film with Dylan Moran and my brother Mark, called A Film With Me In It. Mark actually wrote it, and I had a ridiculous haircut, which has now grown out somewhat. My character had a brain injury and I was in their care. It’ll be very exciting to see what the film’s like.”
Interestingly, the first time I interviewed David, some five years ago, he mentioned The Mighty Boosh as a name to look out for. In 2008, the Boosh are one of the biggest comedy acts in Britain, and are set to play two nights in the Olympia later this year.
“That’s the Edinburgh effect,” says David. “You see stuff and you go, ‘Wow, this is going to big’. Pappy’s Fun Club were the big surprise hit in Edinburgh last year, and they’re going to go on and make wonderful things, there’s just no doubt about it. You see them and you go, ‘Yeah, that’s brilliant’. Of course, the Boosh did their radio series before they moved to TV, and there’s a lot to be said for the BBC radio comedy department.
“Flight Of The Conchords did a BBC radio series in 2005 that’s absolutely brilliant. And then there’s the League Of Gentlemen too, and On The Hour. But with regard to the Boosh, I know Noel really well. He’s one of the most down-to-earth and lovely guys you could meet. Part of the success of it is that they’re such different characters. The character Julian plays in the show is an exaggeration of himself; he likes jazz music and loves bass solos and things. Whereas Noel loves Kiss and Towers Of London. Somehow they meet somewhere in the middle, and out of that comes this amazing comedy show.”
So how does David view his own career at the start of 2008?
“I feel that with every year I’m getting closer to the sort of show that I want to be doing. You’re just refining it, and I don’t think you ever get there. I hope I never reach the point where I realise what it is that I do, and then do that. Rather, you’re just all the time trying to figure it out, bumping along and recording stupid messages into your phone. I’ve been doing comedy since 1999 now, and it’s been a nice build.
“The good thing about that is that the people who are into it really do like it. They send emails and they do come to the shows every year. Especially playing small clubs, there’s an intimacy that you don’t really get with the bigger places. People sit there and go, ‘Holy shit, I’m sort of part of this’. That’s why I really like doing smaller places, and I’ll certainly continue playing Kavanagh’s of Portlaoise.”

David O’Doherty plays The Mill Theatre, Dundrum on January 26, the Out to Lunch Festival, Belfast on January 27, and Vicar Street, Dublin on February 10