Neil Hamburger chats to Hot Press ahead of Vodafone Comedy Festival

Courtney Love, Madonna, U2, Hall & Oates and Julia Roberts are all likely to be unwilling participants as NEIL HAMBURGER jets in for the Vodafone Comedy Festival.

You have to admire Neil Hamburger’s resilience. Most American stand-ups who’ve had plastic glasses lobbed at them by Ardal O’Hanlon fans bewildered by their washed up Las Vegas entertainer shtick wouldn’t be coming back for more, but the Artist Also Known As Gregg Turkington can’t wait for his Vodafone Comedy Festival return.

“The glasses were empty – who wants to waste good beer – and thrown very, very gently,” he laughs. “To them it was akin to somebody vomiting on stage. Maybe I should have tried that! If it happened every time, I’d start thinking, ‘This isn’t the career for me’ but I played three sets that time, two of which went down really well. You were at the one where the audience wanted to see the Irish guy from Father Ted who tells build-up/punchline jokes. I don’t really do build-ups or punchlines and I’m not in Father Ted, so they responded accordingly. You have to take the rough with the slightly less rough.”

Lest there be any confusion, Neil Hamburger is on a comedy alter ego par with Alan Partridge, Johnny Vegas and John Shuttleworth who’d be dead jealous of the album of lounge classics Hamburger is currently recording in California.

“It sounds like what you’d expect from a ‘60s Tom Jones record gone horribly wrong,” he confides. “We‘ve got such royalty playing on it as Probyn Gregory from Brian Wilson’s band and Rabbit Bundric who was the keyboardist with The Who for thirty years. I’ve assembled my very own Wrecking Crew!”

Delivering such lines as, “What is the difference between Courtney Love and the American flag? It would be wrong to urinate on the American flag” and “Did you hear the one about the paparazzi with the heart of gold? He stole it from Princess Diana as she lay dying in her car” in a phlegmy drawl, it’s understandable why Neil Hamburger tends to delight and disgust in equal measure. Asked whether there’s such a thing as going too far in comedy, Turkington sighs wearily and says: “I’m always surprised that people don’t figure out straight away that it’s a character saying these extreme things. You’re an entertainer putting on a show rather than necessarily telling the truth. There are enough visual cues to indicate that Neil Hamburger is a show.”

When not in Neil Hamburger mode, Gregg Turkington can be found co-presenting On Cinema, a spectacularly inept movie review show that’s currently on its ninth adultswim.com series, and which has earned him Hollywood roles of his own – albeit of the bit-part variety.

“It’s a preposterous soap opera disguised as a movie show,” he explains. “What makes it funny – I hope – is the ugly personal dynamics between these two characters. Because it’s such a detailed world and we’ve been doing it for so long, the people at Marvel – who are also in the business of creating universes - have become big fans and offered me an infinitesimally small role in Ant-Man without me having to audition for it. That in turn lead to me being asked to do the last ever episode of CSI, which is this insanely big machine. I like visiting that world, but I wouldn’t want to live in it.”

In order to avoid further Ardal O’Hanlon-style ‘crowd not getting it’ scenarios, Turkington tends to put together his own stand-up bills in the States featuring younger, like-minded funnypersons. Who’s good out there at the moment?

“I love Todd Barry who was over in Dublin with me the last time. He’s been doing these shows where he goes out for 90 minutes with no material and just riffs off the crowd, which is terribly brave/stupid! I don’t know how many other people could pull that off. There’s another guy I tour with a lot, Major Entertainer, who lives up to his name by merging music, jokes and showmanship: it’s sensational. Megan Koester is one of the bravest comics playing around Los Angeles. People in this city are afraid of offending the industry – Harvey Weinstein getting away with it for so long being a case in instance – but she names names and goes after people. That combination of being fearless and hilarious is very potent.”

Originally from Darwin Australia, Turkington pitched up in the States during what was considered the Golden Age of American stand-up.

“I got to see Richard Pryor towards the end of his life when he wasn’t in great shape,” Gregg reminisces. “He came out in a wheelchair, looked around him for a moment and said, ‘I’m all fucked up’, which was as poignant as it was funny. Even in that most fragile of states, he exuded charisma. I also did a show with Robin Williams who I was never a fan of but by God, when you saw the guy operating live in a small room you realised what a master he was. He wasn’t on the bill but just turned up and made us all look really inferior. These are the people you aspire to be as good as.”

Neil Hamburger plays the Vodafone Comedy Festival in Dublin’s Iveagh Gardens from July 26-28. vodafonecomedy.com