Odd man in

“Basically, I get paid for shouting at the telly”, explains Colin Murphy, the Downpatrick native whose Blizzard Of Odd series is already being tipped for a return to our screens later this year.

“I’m a big TV fan”, he admits, “but the problem is I’ll watch just about anything and I’ve discovered that bad telly can be funnier, or at least as funny, as good telly. Bad telly is compulsive in a way that’s very addictive. You find yourself continuing to watch a terrible show just to see if it can possibly get worse, and it very often does. So maybe presenting Blizzard gives me the opportunity to vent my spleen at bad television programmes that suck me in with a grim fascination when I could be doing something much more creative instead.”

The TV series has raised the profile of the boy Murphy in the South of Ireland, but in his native Ulster he’s a well-known veteran of Belfast’s live comedy circuit, regularly handling MC duties at the Empire comedy club and also hosting comedy nights at Queen’s University. How did he happen on a career in comedy?

“Like a lot of people I sort of drifted into it by accident. I went to art college where I fell in with a group of friends who were involved in straight theatre, and from there I moved into comedy improv. The stand-up stuff evolved from that, in that I discovered I had a knack for talking absolute nonsense that appeared to amuse the audience. But the comedy scene in Belfast is quite small, so you’re obliged to go a bit further afield.

From there I moved into television comedy, writing for three series of the BBC’s Stand Up Show, and I’ve done some acting work as well, in People Like Us and Eureka St. for the BBC and Ardal O’Hanlon’s Big Bad World on ITV. It’s ironic that I’m now known as a sort of quasi-critic, a gamekeeper-turned-poacher I suppose.”

What are his own favourite moments from the Blizzard repository of rubbish?

“I was more involved in selecting the television clips, since it was the job of the series producers Marian Cullen and Mark Gordon to view the films that we showed clips from, but it’s actually the Mickey Graham martial arts film Fatal Deviations that knocks me out. He plays an inner-city Dubliner in this ‘chop-socky’ feature and it’s mind-numbingly bad. The other one that comes to mind is Gorgo, a Godzilla-type caper set in the West of Ireland in which all the natives wear aran jumpers and travel about in currachs. The funniest thing about that one is that the natives all speak Irish, which is sub-titled, but they use the same phrase, ‘Cad A Dheanfamíd Anois?’ no matter what the occasion. So entire conversations consist of people asking one another ‘What Are We Going To Do Now?’ which is not a great help to people who might wish to brush up on the native tongue.

“The strange thing about Blizzard was that we were innundated with e-mails from people asking where they could buy these terrible films. Since, not surprisingly, most aren’t available on video there’s a possibility that we might have a festival of bad films at the Irish Film Centre in Dublin later this year. Apparently there’s a lot of interest. And there’s a lot of bad stuff out there.”

The series also took a pop at RTE’s music programmes such as the music quiz No. 1. As somebody who appeared on that show in a previous life I confess to being horribly embarrassed, if amused, at seeing it again after almost 20 years. But has he ever come in for criticism from those whom he lampoons on screen?

“Not really no, in that most people appreciate that’s it just a bit of fun. And having a laugh at Gerry Ryan’s hair circa 1987 is hardly a crime against humanity, though I think that haircut has since been outlawed by the European Court of Fashion Mistakes. But we’ve all been there. There are grey-haired adoring mothers of celebrities all over the country who are unaware that their photo albums are probably worth thousands. Maybe I should set up an agency.”

Has watching so much dross cured him of his addiction to TV?

“Not at all in fact because you tend to watch even more closely to see if there’s anything

we can use. We discovered the strategic placing of a Maeve Binchy book in an episode of ER during the last series. It’s probably made me become even more obsessive. But there’s a lot of really classy stuff as well, such as The Office on BBC2. I like that sort of comedy that’s grounded in reality, and you just know that the people who wrote that series must have spent years temping in grim office situations. It’s also nice to think that maybe they’re getting their own back on people who gave them a hard time back then. Office managers all over the country must be cringing.”

With the end of the current series he’s taken the opportunity to return to stand-up. What can we expect from Colin Murphy ‘live’?

“People who are expecting a Blizzard Live show I hope will be presently surprised since I don’t talk all that much about television in my live show. It’s more observational, stream of consciousness stuff. I’m a great admirer of people like Dylan Moran and Tommy Tiernan, and I’d like to think that my approach is somewhat similar.

“One of the good things about being a comedy MC is that you get to demo a lot of material on those nights and you can select the best bits for the one-man-outings. I find it difficult to talk about what I do on-stage since it changes from night to night. I’m off to the USA in February to do an Irish Comedy festival with Des Bishop, Michael Mee, Jason Byrne and some more of the Irish brigade so I’ll probably be telling some tales about that when I come back. I’ll also be talking about lap-dancing, since when I was working on Blizzard my hotel was on Leeson Street and I had to walk by these clubs every night after work. Let’s just say I find the whole phenomenon, uh, odd. That’s definitely the word.”

You’re currently preparing for the US trip with some warm-up gigs in London. Are Irish comedians still as popular in the UK as ever?

“Irish comedians tend to do very well in the UK by dint of the fact the Irish scene is relatively small in comparison to, say, London. So an Irish comedian has to change his material regularly so as the audience hasn’t heard all the lines before, and that teaches you the craft. In London it’s possible to gig for months in different venues using the same stuff. That usually means that a comedian who’s had six months experience on the Dublin circuit will have a lot more to draw upon than a similar guy or girl in the UK. We’re just better!”