Jason Byrne Interview

A regular within the pages of BBM, Irish comedian, Jason Byrne, is coming back to Australia to celebrate 20 years of stand-up and his 10th visit to Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Here, he lets us in on what to expect and why he just can’t stop coming Down Under.

Hi Jason, how are you?
Not too bad!

Where are you talking to me from?
I’m at home in Ireland. I was just about to play football with my son! We just moved into a new house and I’m setting up the goals wrong…

What have you been up to since we last spoke to you?
It’s been a mad year with a lot of TV work. I have a show in Ireland on TV3 called Jason Byrne’s Snaptastic Show, a photograph-based show where celebrity guests bring in photographs of them as a kid. And then the audience bring in photographs and we take the piss out of them, people send them in over the Internet, we play games, there’s stand-up, and everything. And then there’s a show for Sky, which is like It’s A Knockout in a forest with people dressed up as animals blindfolded… The actual games are pointless – it’s just people banging into trees and getting lost.

Sounds like our kind of show! What about the stand-up?
Well, I’ve been doing stand-up for 20 years now, and I haven’t missed a single year of Edinburgh [Fringe Festival], which is really odd. I thought I’d just call the show 20 Years A Clown, like a celebration. I’ve come up with some cracking stuff, and I’m trying to make it a celebration, but I don’t wanna do that thing where you just do a “best of” because I’d think I was cheating! So, it’s all original, there’s a 50 Shades Of Grey routine, the audience get up and play games with me, there’s props throughout, and there’s a finale celebration – but if I told you what it was it would ruin everything! Of course, the crowd will probably just be going “Yeah, just do something fuckin’ funny.”

But, as well as a 20-year career, you’re also celebrating 10 years at Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
Yeah, it’s weird, I can’t believe it. But they’ve been very good to me out there, I mean, it was Melbourne where I started doing stunts and that’s what’s helped me in my TV3 show, and I’m currently on my Irish tour, and I basically fly to Australia and bring all the tried and tested stuff and add in a bit of Australia stuff. I just hope I can still go to Australia every year – I need a Melbourne injection. Last time I was there, I was starting to train for a marathon, but I won’t have to do anything like that. I’ll still be running, but I won’t be training anymore, which is fuckin’ mad! I’ll be staying down by the coast, so I can do my nice old man jog.

If you could return to Oz for pleasure, what would be your ultimate Aussie getaway?
I haven’t been back to Byron Bay for ages and we loved it when we went there. I’d love to just go there and chill out or get up into the Great Barrier Reef. I will do that one year; I’ll get on a plane and be purely there as a tourist. I like to see shit, y’know? I don’t like to just lie on a beach; I’ll go and see Ayres Rock, do a bit of scuba diving. I’ve never done scuba diving before, and I know with my luck, both of my lungs will definitely blow up like balloons!

By Charlotte Mellor
@cmellor_03