Not just another Jason in the crowd

Jason Byrne was in bullish form when he spoke to Hot Press after his return from the Edinburgh Festival: “Of course it went well! And even if it didn’t, do you honestly think I’d tell you?”
Byrne was knackered after a month performing at the Fringe Festival. Playing a gig every night for a month would take it out of anyone. But the Dublin-born comedian has no regrets.
“It was great,” he insists. “I played the biggest room you can possibly play there, the capacity was 850. My biggest following is in Edinburgh.”
It’s not bad from a professional point of view either, he admits. “I always get loads of work after Edinburgh.”
Before heading over to the festival, Byrne’s fellow comedian David O’Doherty told us that he was glad to see the back of the Perrier Award: his thinking being that lazy journalists focused on the nominees and ignored everything else that was going on.
“That’s true to an extent,” says Byrne. “There’s about four journalists in Edinburgh that’ll go around to all the shows and find brand-new people. They’re the young guys who actually care about comedy. The others don’t really give a shit.”
He was glad to see O’Doherty get a nomination for the Perrier’s replacement (whose name nobody can remember). “The funny thing is, the bigger acts like myself, Dara O’Briain, we’re not eligible because we’re too big!” 
Despite performing every night, Byrne still managed to catch a lot of good stuff at the Fringe. Apart from O’Doherty’s act (“very good”), Jim Henson’s Puppet Improv was one highlight. Henson’s son Brian was the mastermind behind the “outstanding” show.
His work for the London Times gave him the opportunity to meet some of his heroes. Teaming up with Maeve Higgins of Naked Camera fame, Byrne did a regular podcast from the festival for the Times Online site. At one point it was the third most popular podcast in the UK.
The pair met up with the likes of Harry Shearer and ‘70s legends the Goodies. “Maeve didn’t even know who they were!” laughs Byrne.
Many of the biggest acts appearing at Edinburgh would be almost unknown in Ireland, Byrne reckons.
“Irish comedy is about as big as Icelandic comedy on the world stage,” he admits. “All the big people play in London. They might come over to Dublin for one or two gigs every year.” 
But one familiar face who made a splash was David McSavage, who took his act to the streets and won many admirers. “There’s a lot of street performance over there, but most of it is acrobats and jugglers and that sort of thing, they’re not used to someone doing what Dave does,” Byrne explains. “He went down very well, even the alcoholics thought he was great.” Apparently, anyone who was there when McSavage incited his crowd to give the finger to a busload of American tourists won’t forget it for a long time. 
Byrne has crossed one comedy rubicon lately with the release of his first DVD, Out of the Box. “It’s great to have it out,” he says. “I should have done it ages ago, I just wasn’t able to. It’s so important to have a DVD out, you can put it up on your website and anyone in the world can order it. It’s great too having full control over what’s in it. I do a lot of TV work but obviously I don’t get the final say over what goes in.”
With the latest generation of students beginning their adventures, we asked Byrne how he found college. “I went to college to keep my ma’ happy,” he admits. “I just wanted to be out working and earning money after finishing school. I went to Dundrum Tech to do a course as an accountant technician. There is such a thing apparently.”
It didn’t get very far though. “During the second year, me and my mate were asked to leave the college,” Byrne recounts. “We were taking students up the road to a pub called Ryan’s and getting them smashed every day. The principal called us in and told us that we were undermining the whole college, so we were asked to leave.”
He doesn’t feel like he missed out on the social side of college life, though. “I went out with a girl for four years who was in college, in Trinity, so I felt like I was in college anyway. It just wasn’t for me. I’m glad I left, ‘cos otherwise I never would have ended up doing what I do now.”