An interview with David O’Doherty
How do you compare doing a festival show to gigging in comedy rooms?
I mean it’s not a chalk and cheese situation, but it is two quite different cheeses. Maybe one is a sharp stilton and the other a more lingering emmental. They are both delicious in their own right, but the second takes much more effort to churn or whatever. I could make a joke about cheesy grins here.
You wrote a children’s book in 2001, Ronan Long Gets It Wrong. Do you see any similarities between that kind of work and what you do as a comedian? Do you have plans to write any more kid’s books?
Yeah, I’ve written quite a bit of kid’s TV stuff and I’m writing a play at the moment. Children are much more critical than adults. If an adult doesn’t like a show they’ll sit through it and afterwards say something like ” I couldn’t get into it”, or describe it as “interesting”. If kids don’t like a show they go en masse to the toilet and make a snowman out of toilet paper. This has only happened once.
Charlie Pickering recently told me a story about when you changed your “occupation” on your passport from writer & musician to comedian. What did this moment mean to you?
Comedian is a ridiculous occupation. On the scale of respectful occupations it ranks close to balloon animalist. I guess I used to emphasise the writing end of what I did because one day I wanted to be on stamps and banknotes like Samuel Beckett or James Joyce. When someone asked what I did, I’d say in a pompous voice, “I write”. And when they asked what I wrote and I’d have to say “vignettes”. Then they’d ask what I did with my vignettes, and I’d have to admit that I spoke them into microphones for money. Now when anyone asks I say “I provide comedy solutions.”
Is comedy art?
Much comedy is about as close to art as bee-keeping or inflight magazine journalism. But then occasionally you sit and watch a show and the hour passes in a second and reminds you of things you’ve thought about but never put into words and it feels like you’ve shared a genuine experience with a bunch of strangers and then you get on your bike and cycle home but it’s still stuck in your head like a great song or a beautiful picture or smile from a girl when you were fifteen. Then you try to explain it to your flatmate and it sounds boring.
This is your second solo show in the Melbourne Comedy Festival. Did you enjoy your experience in Melbourne last year?
Last year was one of the best experiences I’ve had in comedy. The festival is very well organised so you can really concentrate on doing the show. In Edinburgh generally the venue smells of puke or something has just broken down or been stolen.
Last year a friend of mine witnessed Stewart Lee and yourself having and argument about the size of a slurpy in a 7/11 in Fitzroy. Are these the issues that really occupy the thought of the great comedic minds of today?
You see there are no 7/11s in Ireland. They did a Starbucks-style invasion in the late ‘80s, but for some reason it didn’t work out. Within two years they had all packed up and gone. I say “for some reason”, I have a fair idea why. Nobody I know ever paid for anything in a 7/11. As the staff were all underpaid friends of people’s big sisters, a blind eye was turned to the whole fiscal end of the transaction. Having Slurpees reminds me of my renegade youth.
Your career got a kick start when you won the “So you think your funny?” competition in 1999. Did that help propel you forward or did it become something to live up to?
You have to be careful in that situation because you win one of those newcomer competitions with seven minutes of material and suddenly people want to book you for hour long shows. It took me about three years to get a decent hour together and seven years to achieve this level of fame where I am the number three ranked person called David O’Doherty on Google.
You’ve been doing standup for seven years. Is it hard to keep fresh?
It’s not something I’ve worried about so I reckon the answer must be no. I used to work in telemarketing, so when I’m low on motivation I take a glance at some of my old callsheets.
“What is the most important factor when deciding which washing powder to buy? (A) Non-biological. (B) Gentle on fabrics. (C) Whitest whites. (D) Environmentally friendly (E) Combination of all four.”
Tell us about your new show “Grown Up”.
Let’s start with what I’ll be wearing. I recently got these sweet shoes that have a built in pedometer. You know, one of those things that counts your footsteps over the course of a day. I’m serious. So I’ll be wearing them. Apart from that there will be plenty of talking and half a dozen songs performed on a yamaha keyboard from 1985. There’s a bit about Tiger Woods, a bit about my dog and at the end I finish with a bit where I fix pretty much everything that’s wrong with the world.
For details on how to catch DOD in action go to David O’Doherty – Grown Up