David O’Doherty Interview
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Irish comedian, David O’Doherty, is returning to Australia with We Are All In The Gutter, But Some Of Us Are Looking At David O’Doherty. We sat down for a chat to find out more about him and his keyboard.
Hi David, how are you?
I am reasonably well. I have a dual career at the moment where I do stand-up by night and on days I don’t have gigs, I try and write 600 words for my children’s book. I got my 600 words today so I’m reasonably pleased with myself, but not in a smug sense.
How many children’s books have you written?
I’m doing the third one right now; the series is in 19 languages now. It’s something I did before I did stand-up, and then stopped for about 10 years, and just got back into it. It’s really fun; doing stand-up, you can lose your mind with the relentless thinking of jokes and narcissistic self-analysis, so it’s really nice to be writing a story about a man who thinks that sharks comes out of toilets and eat you if you sit on them for too long – so Toilet Shark.
That must be great to use your imagination…
Yeah, totally! I have the sense of humour of an eight-year-old. Luckily, grown-ups haven’t quite noticed that – yet. But I’ve always done stand-up for kids – I actually did a play for kids in Australia a few years ago – and I really enjoy it. I’ve found that I have no status with kids whatsoever. Some people are old-school disciplinarians, but children just see me and they’re like, “This guy is an absolute idiot, we are gonna make mincemeat out of him.” And I’m happy to be that person. I’ve actually been reading my favourite book from when I was a kid, by Michael Rosen, and it’s been such a massive influence on my stand-up for adults. I’d love to say my big influence was seeing Bill Hicks or Mitch Hedberg or some cool comedian when I was 14, but the truth is it goes back to really weird kids’ books I used to like.
Is that where the keyboard comes in?
The keyboard comes in because my father was a jazz musician, so he’s impossibly good at the piano, and I realised when I was 17 that I wasn’t going to be particularly good – I’m ok – so I kind of turned away from big pianos and started messing around with little pianos. Then there was the added bonus that you can fit one in a sports bag! You can take it on a RyanAir flight and you don’t get charged an extra £150. Also, it reduces your song back to their absolute essence; if you play a big piano, and you’re as good as my dad, you can just play these fancy arpeggio chords and people will think you’re unbelievable, whereas on a shit keyboard, the best tune in the world will still sound slightly shit. There’s a great charm in that for me.
Well, the audience seem to enjoy it…
Well… Thank you very much! [Laughs] I’ve been touring this show since the Edinburgh Fringe, and I have a curious popularity whereby a large number of people come in some places, and then other places absolutely no one comes! On my UK tour, I’ll play Hackney Empire with 2,000 seats, but then tomorrow I play in a place called Phurles in Tipperary, and I think there were 11 tickets sold the day before yesterday… So my feet never move too far off the ground!
I suppose then it will be intimate!
So much of the good stuff comes out of those gigs. What I do is quite loose, and some nights you make up loads of it or cool ideas come to you on stage. This could be one of those gigs! They’re often the most fun.
How much freedom do you give yourself on stage?
The songs are pretty tight; they need to follow some kind of musical pattern. The way this show has evolved, there are two or three big bits in it, and then on any given night, there’s an opportunity to go off in a variety of interesting directions. I was doing a show in Melbourne about three years ago and about half way through the gig, a drunk lady basically just cascaded boobs first down the stairs, and then when she got to the bottom, she bounced up and walked out, thinking that nobody noticed. She was at that level of drunkenness where she didn’t feel physical pain. I was like, “We all saw that, right?” And that became the whole rest of the gig. Someone falling down a flight of stairs is so much funnier than anything I will ever come up with!
So being able to improvise is important?
Yeah, but even the word improv implies that’s it’s predictable and trained. People are always so impressed by it; if someone shouts something at you at a gig and you shout something vaguely interesting back to them, people are like , “Oh my god, he’s a genius”. But if you’re on the bus and someone calls you a dickhead, you say anything back to them and no one’s particularly impressed by it. For some reason, when you say things on stage, people are just way too impressed!
Have you ever had any song requests?
Oh, yeah. I’m all right at the piano, so I can play most tunes. I have a thing for S Club 7’s ‘Never Had a Dream Come True’ – for some reason I have S Club 7 songs on my mind… Whenever I sit down to play a tune, very often it will be ‘Ain’t No Party Like An S Club Party’ or ‘Never Had A Dream Come True’. But people know me for certain songs, and then the problem that comedy has over music is that people go to a U2 gig or Oasis gig and get pissed off if they don’t hear certain songs, but then if a comedian tells the same jokes, the audience goes “We know these!” which is good and creates a pressure to keep writing.
Will you be connecting with the big Irish expat community in Australia?
While it’s always nice to meet Irish people in Australia, you chase the Irish expat crowd at your absolute peril. I know bands that go to Australia and everyone turns up wearing local Gaelic football jerseys and comedians have people jump up on stage during a set to get a selfie, like, “Come on, man, it’s me! We’re both from Ireland!” People I know that have moved to Australia due to the shambles of the Irish economy are yet to meet anyone in Australia who isn’t Irish. That is not the cultural experience I want when I go half way around the world!
So what kind of cultural experience are you looking for?
At the comedy festival, I do like seeing comedians I haven’t seen before. In Australia, there are some incredible comedians that I’ve seen for the first time like Zoe Coombs Marr, Claudia O’Doherty, Hannah Gadsby. And I fly out on 5th March, which is just when the Ireland winter starts to get depressing. There’s nothing nicer than jetting off and seeing the last sight of Dublin and the mountains with the snow on top of them being like, “Haha, suckers!”
David O’Doherty Australia Tour Dates
Adelaide Fringe
8th – 13th March
Canberra Comedy Festival
17th March
Brisbane Comedy Festival
18th – 20th March
Melbourne International Comedy Festival
24th March – 15th April
Sydney Comedy Festival
17th April
Perth Comedy Festival
19th April
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