Prankster's Ball

This month sees Naked Camera star PJ Gallagher play a trio of stand-up gigs at the Carlsberg Comedy Carnival at Dublin’s Iveagh Gardens. Does he enjoy performing at comedy festivals generally?

“Yeah, I do,” he replies. “You’ve got Kilkenny and now this one, so you kind of get used to them. And Electric Picnic always has a comedy tent, which shouldn’t work at all, but for some reason it’s just brilliant. Normally you’d think that comedy at a music festival is just going to be a disaster, and traditionally it always is. It’s always some big poxy tent, and you’re talking while everyone is just wandering around, or getting drunk cos there’s nowhere else to go.
“But at Electric Picnic, it really has a proper audience. It’s a little hidden gem in there. But I guess comedy is just so popular now that you can do these things. It’s nice as well having the Carlsberg Festival, because we now have a festival in Dublin. It’s about time!”
Does PJ get a chance to go out and watch bands at Electric Picnic?
“I do. It’s the best thing about doing the comedy there,” he chuckles. “You’re working for, like, 20 minutes over the whole weekend, and then you’re there to see whoever you want. I love Damien Dempsey, so I was delighted to see him. And I think Laura Izibor is just ridiculously amazing. She did a fantastic performance with a gospel choir in one of the smaller tents. I’d never even heard of Antony and the Johnsons before I saw them, but they were savage.
“I gave up drinking after Electric Picnic last year, because I got so wankered. I haven’t touched a drop since. I wanted to see a couple of bands, and apparently I did go and see them, but I can’t remember any of it, so that was the end of that.”
Interviewed recently in this magazine, Aussie comic Jim Jeffries talked about the occasion on which he was punched by an irate audience member. Although PJ has never been confronted himself in such a manner, he has witnessed some of his fellow comics having to deal with outraged hecklers.
“Sometimes people just get annoyed for no reason,” he says. “Years ago, before any of us had done anything, Neil Delamere was doing a brilliant gig. For no reason, this fuckin’ eejit started giving him shit. He just stood up in the middle of the room, and went, ‘Wait a minute, you’re making fun out of everybody in this room, you fuckin’ eejit.’ Delamere was going, ‘Yeah, I’m doing a comedy show.’ The guy just didn’t get that people at a comedy show might actually end up being a part of it, or something.
“He was really freaked out, I don’t know what he expected Neil to do. Maybe he thought he was going to pull a load of things out of a box, or show little movies. I don’t what he was talking about, but he was really upset.”
PJ says that there will be no more series of Naked Camera, as the show’s popularity means the pranks are now too difficult to execute. But will he return to television in some capacity?
“I’ll do something, but I’m in no rush,” he responds. “I don’t want to do anything that my heart isn’t in, and I don’t want to do television just for the sake of it. As soon as I have an idea that I like, I’ll try and push it. At the moment, I’m just focusing on the stand-up, the tours and the festivals. Then it will be the run-up to Christmas, and come the New Year, you can be pretty sure that I’ll be trying to ram something into RTÉ.”
Interestingly, after studying acting at the Gaiety for a couple of years, PJ actually became involved in comedy when he started working alongside Jason Byrne in a Dublin lighting warehouse.
“They knocked it down after we left,” he reflects, “probably because they were ashamed of what went on there. That was kind of like our comedy college, because neither of us knew how to work properly, we were crap. We used to just buy whiskey and drink in the basement, and we spray-painted a telly on the wall that we’d stare at when we were locked. It was a completely ridiculous place. It was great fun.”
Byrne is noted for his chaotic live shows, and during one interview with your correspondent, gleefully recounted the occasion on which he wrestled David O’Doherty whilst swathed in bubble-wrap. Has PJ ever partaken in such shenanigans?
“Oh man, we used to have the greatest craic ever during Jason’s shows. There was one show where the punchline for a joke was just me walking out in the nude with a sweeping brush. It was in Vicar Street, and I was so scared I had to get really drunk to do it. And then I walked out naked with the sweeping brush and shouted, ‘What the fuck are you two doing here?’ To this day, I can’t remember what the joke was, but that was the punchline.
“There was this brilliant night once. We’d write all the names of the sketches behind the screen, so we’d know exactly what to do next. One night we got to the end, and there was this sketch Jason had written on it called ‘Anchor’. We didn’t know what the fuck it meant. We asked Jason what it was and, he said, ‘No man, that’s the encore’. He hadn’t known how to spell it!”