At home with Eddie Bannon and Adam Hills

For comedian Eddie Bannon, life has taken a new lease since he made the move out to Rush. “We were trying to move out of the city because we lived in the centre for five years. We were getting old, not going to Lillies as much as we used to, so we decided to move out of town. It’s great to be by the sea, we go for a walk on the beach every day with the dog”.
Walk into any musician’s house or apartment and the chances are you’d have no trouble spotting what they did for a living. Does Eddie think that the same applies to comedians? “You could certainly tell if my wife was out of town or not. She goes away every now and then and I become mesmerised by the amount of shit that builds up around me. It really is amazing. We have a lot of pictures of friends but I don’t suppose you would know. I’ve got a lot of DVDs and games, that’s the one thing. We’re big fans of films, Sky Plus and wine”.
He considers his DVD collection to be full of “all the classic ones that you get when you’re in your forties. ‘Magnolia’, ‘Lost In Translation’, ‘The Big Blue’. ‘Intermission’, ‘Whale Rider’. All the greats”. Noticeably absent are any featuring stand up comedy, something that it would seem he gets enough of in his day job. “Because I’m away so much (as well as touring, he has recently taken on the role of director of the Kilkenny Cat Laughs festival) and my wife Carolyn Lee is a comedy agent, when we get home we tend to lock the door and get a bottle of wine out and do whatever we want”. That doesn’t include as much socialising as it did in the past. “Going into town now is something of a military manoeuvre but we’ve found that a lot of the local pubs round here are brilliant. Some of them have these shuttle buses that drop you home pissed at three o’clock in the morning, which is fantastic”.
Eddie and Carolyn’s house has become something of a regular stopping point for comedians visiting these shores, with Adam Hills the current lodger. How does Eddie find having him around? “He’s great, he’s one of the easier guests. Over the past few weeks we’ve had six Australians living in the house, a couple of comedians and their partners. Adam’s here with his new partner, who he’s kissing right now….”
Somewhat reluctantly, Hills (an Australian) joins the conversation. Staying with Eddie, it transpires, has become something of a tradition. “I’ve known Carolyn for years, we used to work at the same radio station together in Australia ten years ago. I’m not sure which comes first, me deciding to come to Ireland or the gigs being booked. Carolyn is also my agent so it’s debatable whether the social or work diary comes first. Last year I was performing in Amsterdam on my birthday and they both came over and Eddie was playing on the same bill so we made a big weekend of it. You know what, I think my social life comes first and the gigs are booked around that”.
Being so far away from home, Adam finds these surroundings far more appealing than the other options. “Just the pure fact of being in a house that has photos of friends and family around is a lot more comforting than staying in a bland hotel. When they’re also two of your best mates and you’re near a beach, it’s hardly work”.
Does he think that the comedy circuit encourages a greater camaraderie than maybe the music scene? “Definitely. Whenever I talk to musos I’m amazed how few musicians know each other whereas I’ve done five or six gigs in the past fortnight with about a dozen comedians. The Irish circuit is small enough that everybody knows each other and will come along to your gig and go for a few pints afterwards”.
Before we go, given the week that’s in it and the fact that an Englishman and an Australian are in conversation, I feel I have to ask Hills if he saw any of the Ashes. “No, we couldn’t get the coverage over here. I would check the internet every hour and it soon became painfully obvious that England were going to win, but well done to them. The Australian cricketers and the public had become a bit complacent. Someone told me that the New Zealand team started to beat Australia when they began to hang out with them after the games. I hear the English team did exactly the same thing, stopped seeing them as sporting gods, and realised they were just a bunch of blokes”.