A peeling to all tastes: Hot Press Interview with Andrew Maxwell

Perhaps most familiar to Irish audiences thanks to his appearances on the late topical discussion show The Panel, Andrew Maxwell is shortly to undertake his most extensive tour of the country yet. Titled Banana Kingdom, the six-week trek will visit every corner of the nation, and allow the comic to give full reign to his opinionated views on politics, culture and society, whilst also boasting a sizeable portion of good-humoured interaction with the audience.

“There’s a couple of reasons for calling the show Banana Kingdom,” says the affable Maxwell, sitting in a quiet corner of the Shelbourne. “I love bananas – I’ve been touring as a comedian since I was 17, eating them every day, so it’s a brief shout-out to the yellow fruit. And obviously it’s a play on words, with the banana republic reference. Originally, the show was performed in Edinburgh, so it was an allusion to the fanciful dreams of Alex Salmond, the Scottish nationalist leader.

“A banana republic is defi ned as a small country that survives on one basic crop. It stemmed from Guatemala, but in the case of Scotland what they’d be depending on is ever-dwindling oil reserves. So the title was referring to that, but it works in Ireland too.”

As it happens, Andrew feels that an Irish kingdom – albeit one with a unique twist – may offer the ideal solution to the North’s political problems.

“It’s a running joke that I’ve done,” he explains. “Anytime I do a gig in the North, it’s mostly Republicans. So I set forth my own political platform, which is that Ireland should be a sovereign, 32-county monarchy with a Protestant king. It’s the only solution that makes everyone happy – you get everything. Obviously, when it comes to the king, there’s not a lot of Irish Protestants to pick from, but I’m more than willing to put my name forward.

“I’d be very liberal. No babies would be stolen off girls – guaranteed. I would also emancipate all hedonists from the yoke of prohibition. Those things could be taken for granted.”

Is all this covered in the show, or is it merely a private fantasy Andrew has chosen to unveil?

“I do touch on some of it,” he laughs. “As I say, the original show was mostly about Scotland, then I did it for two weeks in the West End and it changed again. And it’ll adapt further. Since doing Edinburgh, I’ve also written and performed a series for Radio 4 called Public Enemies. I did four half-hour shows and they all looked at different topics, like online security and the drugs trade. And I also did a panel show for BBC Northern Ireland called Monumental. So that all adds a bit to the original material, but obviously it will have an Irish slant.”

The eclectic mix will also feature plenty of banter with the crowd, which is an area of performance Maxwell clearly enjoys.

“The fi rst half of the show is what you might call ‘in the room’ comedy,” he notes. “I work the crowd and see what’s going on in that town. You never know what will come up. There’s weird stuff – like, Boyle in Roscommon is Ireland’s UFO hotspot.”

One wonders if the town’s most famous comedic son, Chris O’Dowd, is aware of that. “I’ve actually talked to Chris about it,” nods Maxwell.

“He’s fully aware of it. As for other discoveries, the people in Wexford town have a weird Northern Irish tone. Every third sentence or so, you’re going, ‘Is that a Northern accent?’ It’s not a strong Belfast sound, but you might wonder if someone was originally from up north. But yeah, the firsthalf of the show is almost like a meet and greet, where I just chat to the audience. It goes for a bare minimum of 40 minutes – although if the craic is in-house it’ll be an hour – and then the second-half is where I’ll tell stories and lay out opinions.

“But that’s the second part of the show. I always guarantee that before I give an audience my opinion of something, I make sure they’ve had fun fi rst! I’m an entertainer before anything else. I’ve lots of opinions about things, but I know that they’ve not come for the opinion show.”

Maxwell has certainly been keeping busy. In addition to his stand-up and the aforementioned radio and TV projects, he also found time to front a BBC Three series entitled Conspiracy Road Trip, which saw him meet with conspiracy theorists of all stripes. In the series’ most memorable moment, he led one such group of individuals – all of whom were fi xated on the possibility of alien life on earth – in a dance invasion of the notorious Area 51 base in Nevada.

“We were all so giddy with the whole daftness of it,” Maxwell recalls. “The base is vast, something like 50 to 100 miles squared in the desert. So I told the group there was no way we were going to actually meet the aliens – they think it’s a global alien prison – but we could possibly communicate with them through the universal language of dance. They went for it because they were good craic. I mean, they still believed it, but they had a sense of fun about it. So, we created all these geodesic shapes, which scientists believe will facilitate communication with aliens.

“Have you seen the end of Blazing Saddles, where they try and slow the bad guys down by having a toll booth in the middle of nowhere? That’s what the base is like, it’s so remote. My idea was that we’d do all these silly shapes, and then someone would come out of the guardhouse and tell us to sling it. That way, I would have had something funny for the show and it would have reinforced their opinions that it was on the QT.”

Unfortunately, the airforce personnel on duty refused to take Maxwell’s editorial requirements into account – and duly detained him and his motley crew of conspiracy theorists at gunpoint until the local sheriff arrived.

“The sheriff was a really nice guy,” Maxwell says fondly. “He was a Mormon and Mormons are very sweet. It took a long time before he showed up – we were detained for eight or nine hours. The sun set and we were made to sit on the desert floor, covered in bin bags, and were held at machine gun point for a long period of time. They confiscated all our footage and it cost the BBC a fortune. When the sheriff fi nally showed up I took control of the situation, and told him it was all my fault, that I was a comedian with the BBC and this was my programme. He goes, ‘I know. You have no idea how high this has gone – somebody in Washington rang me in my office, and they’d just had a call from London.’

“Eventually, we were all fi ned and given citations, so we weren’t arrested or charged with anything – if I had been, it would have been curtains for my American career. I’ve made another TV show in Hollywood since. We were given the citations, which was basically a big fat parking ticket each."

Away from such X Files-style encounters, the Dublin native also continues to curate the Altitude comedy festival, which now takes place at the Mayrhofen ski resort in Austria, having relocated from France. Kicking off at the end of March, this year's fi ve-day event features performers like John Bishop, Tommy Tiernan and Marcus Brigstocke. Altitude maintains Andrew’s happy knack of attracting high-profi le talent to his comedy ventures, which fi rst became apparent with his popular London stand-up night, Fullmooners. When I ask if he has run any gigs under that banner lately, Andrew strikes a more serious note.

“Paul Byrne, one of the founders of Fullmooners, was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma on the first day of Edinburgh,” he grimaces. “He directs all my one-man shows and co-writes a lot of my stuff – he co-wrote the Radio 4 series with me. He’s in chemo right now. But we revived Fullmooners for one night only in Edinburgh. We sold out a thousand tickets. Everybody was there, we had a massive bill – John Bishop, Jason Byrne, Jason Manford and so on. It was an epic show. So we’ve got a bit of a taste for it again, and we’re looking at a couple of great spooky venues for 2014.”

Though he numbers some major comedy names amongst his contacts, Andrew says he’s placing increasing emphasis on people who are simply enjoyable to be around.

“As you get older, all you really want is for people to be nice,” he shrugs. “There are people I know who are very talented and they’re cunts. None of the Irish lads are cunts. Tommy and Jason are sweethearts, and so are Dara, Ed and Neil. They’re all lovely guys. But there’s a couple of guys at the top of the tree in the British scene, and quite a few in America, and they’re just dicks. And it’s terrible, because a lot of huge acts are really great people. Like, last year our two headliners at Altitude were John Bishop and Eddie Izzard, and both of them were just sound as fuck.

“The year before that our headliners were Frankie Boyle and Jimmy Carr, and both of them have reputations for being caustic, but they were really nice, generous men.”

Though based in London, Maxwell clearly retains a deep interest in Irish culture and society. As someone who’s fascinated by politics and – by his own admission – never short of an opinion, I wonder if the comic has been surprised by the relative calm in the country during the painful economic contortions of the past few years.

“The weird thing about Ireland is how much we venerate rebels,” he muses. “We do that because rebels lie in such opposition to the vast majority of Irish society, which is characterised by deep passivity. If you just vote for a political party because your granddad did, then you get what you deserve, mate.”

Observing politicians in general, he’s wearied by certain hackneyed gestures.

“In the UK, the Labour Party are always doing the power thumb,” he sighs. “Have you seen this? You take your thumb and press it into your index fi nger, and use it for emphasis when you’re talking. That’s called a power thumb. Clinton was the first one to popularise it, and New Labour were besotted with him, so they started doing it as well. It’s meant to be a gesture of such sincerity, though also power. You’re pointing at somebody with your thumb instead of your fi nger, so it’s not an aggressive or accusatory gesture, but you’re still demanding that level of power over the listener.”

Whilst talking bollocks. “Yeah!”

Andrew Maxwell’s Banana Kingdom tour commences at The Forum, Waterford on February 14, and among its stop-offs will be The Royal Theatre, Castlebar (22); Langton’s, Kilkenny (March 9); Roisin Dubh, Galway (15); Opera House, Cork (16); Queen’s Mandela Hall, Belfast (27); and Vicar St., Dublin (28). For full list of dates see andrewmaxwellcomedian.com