If you know nothing else about comedy, chances are you’ll have heard about the Perrier Award. Dylan Moran and Tommy Tiernan launched their careers into the stratosphere by winning the world-famous crown, along with the likes of Steve Coogan, Rich Hall and the League of Gentlemen.
But while David O’Doherty is making his sixth journey to Edinburgh for the infamous Fringe Festival, he’s not sorry to see the back of the now-departed Perrier.
“It was just a way for journalists and publications that didn’t really know or care about comedy to find a lazy angle on the whole thing," he says. "Hopefully now we can get back to people trying to do good shows, without all the pressure of enforced competition.”
Perrier forged a link with the Edinburgh Fringe in 1981, but many comedians felt their stomachs churn when the social climber’s bottled-water-of-choice was snapped up by Nestle in 1995.
Nestle’s habit of down-sizing ethical standards when African markets were at stake prompted Coogan, Rob Newman and Stewart Lee (among others) to demand that the awards be scrapped.
The pressure finally told this June when Perrier announced its withdrawal from the sponsorship deal, to be replaced by Scottish bank Intelligent Finance (doesn’t quite have the same ring does it?).
Ethics aside, O’Doherty reckons the demise of the Perrier can have a liberating effect on the Fringe: “I’ve seen people get really upset because the Perrier judges had come along to their show and it didn’t go as well as they hoped. Whereas the Irish crowd generally didn’t give a fuck about that sort of thing, which was the right attitude to have.”
The keyboard-wielding Irish comic is returning to Edinburgh for the sixth time, and still reckons it’s like nothing else on earth: “The first time I went there was in 1999, I’d only been doing stand-up for a few months. It’s just mind-blowing to go over, there’s 800 shows a night! You go from a place like Dublin, where there might only be one thing you really want to see every month, and suddenly there’s 50 shows a night you’d like to catch.”
O’Doherty is bringing a new stage show over to Scotland (it debuted in Whelan’s at the beginning of this month) and he’s quietly confident.
“Comedy isn’t really like rock’n’roll," he reckons, "it’s not a case of making a sudden breakthrough overnight. It’s a slow build-up, you build your audience year after year.”
With five years at the Fringe under his belt, he’s also been playing shows in New Zealand recently ("I think I got a lot out of that, from performing with some great people”) but with so much competition for punters, the Fringe can be the ultimate test of a comedian’s mettle.
“I’ve performed to crowds of six people," he admits. “That’s when you really learnt a lot, it’s less like a gig, more like a conversation.”
O’Doherty’s advice for anyone making their first pilgrimage to Edinburgh is simple: “Go and see as many shows as you can. You learn as much from a really bad show as a really good show, you can watch someone and think, 'Okay, that’s not how to open a show.’”
His own tips for this year’s festival included US comedienne Maria Branford and a man with whom you may be familiar, Russell Brand: “I know he may come across like a cock on Big Brother, but he’s a brilliant comedian.”
Another must-see is 2002 Perrier winner (sorry) Daniel Kitson, “the best comedian of my generation” according to O’Doherty.
While the Scottish media has been infected with mawkish pessimism, predicting an Irish invasion that will swamp the inadequate home-grown talent, O’Doherty doesn’t expect a wash-out: “I’d say you’ll get a balance of Irish and Scottish comedians," he prdicts. "We do have some good people going over of course, Dylan Moran, who’s my favourite Irish comedian, and Maeve Higgins is one of the most talented Irish acts in a long time.”
O’Doherty has said in the past that his chance on the Irish comedy scene came because the heavy hitters were all over in Scotland for the Fringe and slots opened up in their absence. So does he reckon there’s any young comedians in Ireland today who have the potential to make a similar jump?
“Limerick’s Alan Bennett is 19 years old, a very funny guy, he’s already won the Irish heat of So You Think You’re Funny?”
With so much emphasis placed on awards in the comedy world, surely O’Doherty must occasionally regret not persisting with his first vocation, jazz?
“I’m trying to throw in a lot more major seventh chords," he quips, "then get rid of all the talking bit by bit so eventually it’s just the major seventh chords and I’ll have fulfilled my dream to be a jazz musician.”