The naked Jape

For someone whose job involves embarrassing innocent members of the public while inhabiting ludicrous caricatures, PJ Gallagher is surprisingly nervous when it comes to performing.

“I’m the worst out of any comedian you’d see,” he says, before detailing a pre-gig ritual that involves “banging me head off the wall, telling everybody how shit it’s going to be… I just have to verbalise how crap I think everything’s going to be.
“I think I get more nervous every year. I’m going to do a gig in Kilkenny tonight, and from the minute I sit in the car I won’t say a word until I get to the venue. I’ll just be really freaking out.”
Would he not think of doing something else then?
“But the pay-off is so good when it works, and maybe I feel the pay-off more than the guys that don’t get nervous.”
If he’s bad before a stand-up performance, he’s even worse during the filming of Naked Camera, the hidden camera show that gave PJ his big break after five years as what he calls a “journeyman” stand-up. The show has given a massive boost to the career of the more established Patrick McDonnell, and helped launch Maeve Higgins, but it’s PJ that has become the biggest star, thanks in no small part to his creation of the newspaper-waving buffoon Jake Stevens. Not that fame has made PJ any less stressed out when the cameras are rolling.
“You’re just scared all day long. I think I’m just a nervous wreck. Same with Patrick – me and him would go out and the two of us would be shitting it all day. And then Maeve would come out and not a bother, but me and the other bloke drove each other mad.”
The third season of the show will be the last, with the team keen to quit while they’re on top. Not that practical considerations don’t play a part too.
“Me and Patrick thought of these new characters, went into the Abbey Theatre and got make-up on and wigs made,” PJ says. “We didn’t recognise ourselves, and literally as soon as we opened the door a bloke came up to us with a camera phone and went ‘ah Jake Stevens, Eoin McLove – what’s the story lads?’ That was the first thing we tried this year, so we thought, ‘This is going to be a long fucking year!’”
Filming has indeed taken longer for the third series, and for each gag that doesn’t go well, the pressure on the comedians increases.
“You have to pay the crew for each day,” he points out, “so if you don’t get something, people are asking what the story is. We have had days where we go out and we get nothing. And the next day you get nothing, and nothing, and nothing and nothing – that’s when you really start feeling it, and start doubting yourself.
“We’ve all decided between us that we don’t want to do any more after this one. It’s three series that we’re really happy with. If we did any more we’d fucking ruin it… I don’t want Jake to become Crazy Frog.”
That being said, PJ’s next project is a spin-off show for his most famous creation. Stevens is one of those comedy creations whose reputation started as word-of-mouth, back in the days (not so long ago) when the idea of RTÉ getting comedy right seemed as remote as a Siberian heatwave. Jake has become ubiquitous thanks to things like YouTube, television ads, and a Christmas single that managed to reach number eight in the charts. You do get the feeling he’s at the tipping point between being somewhat of a cultural phenomenon or being the next Cheeky Girls – and his new show may be the deciding factor.
Making Jake will bring the character to Los Angeles, as he tries to become the next chat show king of the US. PJ is looking forward to it – despite the delays that have seen filming pushed back from last October to this March. Already lined up for the pilot is an interview with Mr T. “He was supposed to be in on it,” says PJ, “but he’s not going to be in on it now.”
That should make for better television, but there are other benefits too.
“It avoids paying the big fee!”
Gallagher says his main goals for 2007 are to make a success of the new show, and also to write new stand-up material. Next month sees him wrapping up the final dates of his current tour with a show in Vicar Street. He successfully played the venue twice in December, but since the February gig is the last one of the tour, PJ’s nervous streak will be back with a vengeance. And to think it all started with an act of friendly encouragement on the part of Jason Byrne, or as PJ calls him, “that little fucker.”
The two were working together in a lighting warehouse, “just hanging around there for four years” when Byrne decided to give comedy a shot. It took off and he harassed his mate to join him onstage but PJ refused, until one day Byrne just put Gallagher’s name down on the line-up for a show. It went well, and Gallagher spent the early part of this decade as a jobbing comedian. But after getting nowhere, he all but gave up, until Des Bishop offered him a support slot on a nationwide tour. After that Naked Camera came up, and PJ was able to leave motorbike couriering behind.
Bikes are still his first love, with stand-up and Spain close runners-up. At the moment Gallagher is trying to improve his Spanish – and where better to do that than the capital of the international war on drugs? He arrived in Bogota, capital of Columbia, on January 1, and provided he makes it back alive, is looking forward to spending the rest of the year building on his success in Ireland.
He’s not really a man for resolutions, but is optimistic about 2007.
“If I do as well this year as I did last year, I’ll be happy.”