Hoot Press: Kevin McAleer

They’ve hopefully long since bleached the trauma of the incident from their childhood memories, but Kevin McAleer will never forget the time his young toddlers watched him die. It was at Glastonbury in the early ‘90s, and the now veteran Northern Ireland comedian’s rather unique style of stand-up seriously failed to impress the crowd.

“My kids would have been only around three or four years old, and it was their first time to see what their dad did for a living,” he recalls, laughing. “I was shouted off the stage at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon. I had plastic beer cups thrown at me! So that was the kids’ introduction to my job. Thankfully, we all survived.”
Given that he delivers his routines in a flat, monotone Tyrone accent, it’s perhaps not so surprising that McAleer’s performance didn’t go down so well at Glasto at the height of the Troubles. Thankfully, that unsettling experience didn’t put him off festivals. He’ll be headlining the Comedy Tent on the first night of Forbidden Fruit in Kilmainham next month.
“Tents aren’t really my favourite sorts of venues,” he says. “Glastonbury aside, I’ve done some dodgy gigs in tents in my time, but I suppose now with festivals having designated comedy tents, it makes it better. The people who wander in there are actually people who want to see comedy. I think that’s a huge improvement. Even so, when I do a gig in a tent, you’re kind of prepared for people being too drunk, and too tired, and all those things.”
Considered one of the founding fathers of modern Irish stand-up, McAleer’s very much an acquired taste. Citing his comedic influences as Flann O’Brien, James Joyce and Umberto Eco, and first coming to prominence as a regular on RTE’s Nighthawks in the late ‘80s, the pepper-haired Northerner initially specialised in short, surreal sketches of rural life. His act has since broadened considerably, but the deadpan delivery is largely unchanged.
His live show is totally scripted, which must make hecklers hard to deal with.
“I do get heckled every now and again, especially at a festival set-up when people have had a few drinks. I’ve got one line, which is, ‘Sometimes I hear voices’, and that usually works. I just plough on and hope that the laughs outweigh the heckles.”
What sort of set will he be performing at Forbidden Fruit?
“It’s going to be selected highlights of my current show, which is basically the continued tales of this very paranoid character who thinks the world is out to get him,” he explains. “Because they’re short sets [at festivals], you’ve got to condense things and present a kind of edited highlights package. So it’ll be a punchy 30 minutes of highlights of the best of my current show.”
Any other acts that he’s hoping to catch over the weekend?
“I’m working the next day so I can’t hang around that much. I’d love to see David McSavage, but he’s on the Sunday. One of the best live gigs I’ve seen in a good while was David McSavage – and it was actually in a tent as well, at a comedy festival in Cork last year.”
Fellow comedians aside, he confesses to being totally ignorant of most of the musical fare on offer. “I looked through the music line-up and it made me feel like a 57-year-old – which I am,” he sighs. “I had heard of maybe two of the music acts, and that would be, like, Chic and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry. I have to say the rest of them, I’m just completely ignorant of their names, never mind what type of music they play. Of course, it’s a festival so I’m hoping to stumble across some interesting stuff. Often the best festival memories are the accidental musical experiences.”
A regular live performer, he says that the recession hasn’t spared the comedy industry. “Well, the numbers for my live gigs are down, and that might be a natural progression, or because people have had enough of me, or it could be the recession. Even in my home town of Omagh where normally you’d always be guaranteed a full house, the numbers are down. Somebody said that comedians and undertakers will be okay in this recession. I don’t know about undertakers, but comedians are definitely struggling with a smaller pot of money, like everybody else.”
Literature is unlikely to become a profitable side-line for him. Although McAleer announced a few years back that he was writing a novel based around the assassination of JFK, the book still hasn’t made it past the first draft. “I wrote the first draft of it maybe five or six years ago, but it never got beyond that,” he admits. “It’s the fiftieth anniversary of him being shot this year, so it would be a natural time to bring it out, but it won’t be happening this year. I haven’t given up on the idea finishing it, but I’m very daunted by the process. The first draft was easy, but the other drafts could take me the rest of my life.”
He has been doing some extracurricular TV work, most recently presenting Our Friends in the North, a four-part RTÉ documentary about Ulster-Scots culture in Northern Ireland.
“That was something very new to me. At the time it was a very steep learning curve and in the middle of it I was going, ‘Never again!’, but by the end of it, I was becoming more comfortable. I’d be interested if someone came to me with another idea. Actually, I’m learning Irish as well; that’s my big obsession at the moment. I’m doing my show in Irish at the Cat Laughs this year. I’ve just had it translated so I’m busy learning that.”
It might not be as profitable as it once was, but what advice would McAleer give to aspiring stand-ups?
“I suppose to try to do your own thing and be original,” he says. “I don’t see a lot of comedy these days but, of what I do see, a lot of it is formulaic stuff. I suppose that’s natural when you’re starting off, but the people who stand out are the people who show their own personality. So be yourself. Put your original stamp on it.”

Kevin McAleer headlines the Forbidden Fruit Comedy Tent on the Saturday.