The Burke Ethic

THESE PAGES have played host to much memorable sniping between mainstream Irish comedians and their whelpish alternative counterparts in the past 12 months. The wave of vitriol first swelled when the resident upstarts at the Murphy s Corduroy Comedy Club spent a memorable evening performing impromptu Brendan Tits! Gee! Bollocks! O Carroll impressions, before gathering momentum and crashing ashore in spectacularly frothy fashion some months later when a foaming-at-the-mouth Noel V. Ginnity launched a rabid attack on the comedic capabilities of Ardal O Hanlon.
Despite these bullets, brickbats and broadsides, however, it seems that one man has emerged unscathed from this wholesale comedy carnage, in the process dispelling the notion that the gulf between the old and the new cannot be bridged. The Mary McAleese of the stand-up world, Brendan Burke enjoys popularity amongst audiences of all ages, and feels equally at home whether he s doing 20 minutes in the laid-back environs of the Comedy Cellar or an hour-long corporate gig in the staid surroundings of Blazerville Golf Club.
Now he s moving up in the world, with another show planned for January 25th in Dublin s Andrew s Lane Theatre. Is this a sign that he is, perhaps, getting notions above his station?
Well, I hope not, because it s costing me a bloody fortune, he laughs. Putting on your own show is a lot of hard work, and it really makes you appreciate the ones you do where you just have to turn up and everything is already set up for you. I mean, when you re doing it yourself there s the business of faxing people, ringing people, stepping on people s toes, ringing them once or twice too often and then maybe upsetting them . . . Doing the actual comedy is the easy part of putting on your own show. It s getting the bums on seats that s difficult.
Has he found his fellow comedians supportive?
Well, for a long time I thought that maybe I was just being paranoid, he avers. The thing is, I came on the scene much later than most of the other comedians. By the time I came along, they were already well-established, and perhaps didn t see me as a proper comic. I ve done quite well quite quickly, though, mainly through hard work and taking a gamble in organising my own shows, And I think some people might begrudge the fact that they ve gone well. Those people would be in a minority, though, because I think that by showing I m prepared to work hard to do well, I ve also earned the respect of guys who would previously have resented me.
Resentment which Brendan admits was often justified, due to his chronically bad timekeeping.
He laughs. Yes. I know that for a very long time I had a reputation for, em, spending a bit longer on stage than I should have. That s cured, thankfully, and I now actually get more pleasure out of doing 20 minutes, and doing it well, than hogging the stage when I m on with other comedians. Actually, I remember doing a gig with Tommy Tiernan once, and before it started I asked him how long we were supposed to be doing. He said When you feel the sun coming up behind your back, Brendan, you ll know it s time to get off the stage . I thought that was funny.
So, by his own admission Brendan is still something of a newcomer to the stand-up game. Does his relative, em, maturity make him envious of the young twentysomethings currently taking the Irish and English circuits by storm?
Yes, I think they re all bastards, he deadpans. (laughs) No really, fair play to them, but yes, there is a certain amount of envy there because they re getting to do what they want to do and make a living in some cases, a very good living doing what they love from day one. But I would say that when I was in my late teens or early 20s I wouldn t have been able to do stand-up comedy because the majority of my material is based on what I ve experienced in my life from relationships to drinking, to travelling. At the age of 40 I d say I ve been in nearly every country in the world at this stage, and when you see the way people behave in these places it just provides a waterfall of material. That s material I wouldn t have had when I was 22 or 23.
Material, it must also be said, which has come in for criticism in some quarters, with occasional suggestions that Brendan is over-reliant on hackneyed material from the going-for-a-kebab-on-the-way-home-from-the-pub school.
There s a lot of things that are old hat, that you can revive and make funnier, Brendan argues. The reason I do the stuff I do is because they are things that have happened to me. For example, a lot of my material is about the drinking habits of the Irish, and it s my experience that, compared to people in other countries, a lot of Irish people drink an awful lot. I m only doing material that works. If I said something about waking up beside a kebab in the morning and nobody laughed, then I wouldn t do it any more. What would be the point? It s nothing to do with being old school, old hat or old anything else. I do the material I do because it s funny and because it works.
Brendan is scheduled to appear on The Late Late Show on January 23rd, a gig which is something of a double-edged sword for any stand-up. Do badly, and half the nation thinks you re a big eejit. Do well, and it means that you get the blue-rinse brigade seal of approval, a vote of confidence which has been given to such luminaries as Sil Fox, Brendan Grace and Tom O Connor.
I think part of the reason that so many well-established comedians have died on The Late Late Show could be down to the fact that because the people in the audience have waited four years for tickets, they just want to hear jokes, Brendan muses. A routine, for example, about snorting white stuff through a rolled-up #20 note may not be what that particular audience wants to hear, even though it s hysterically funny. Hopefully I ll do okay, because I draw on stuff that most people can relate to no matter what their age. More or less everyone has done what I talk about. I just draw on what people do every single day of their life, but never really think about until someone mentions it.
Brendan Burke plays Andrews Lane Theatre, Dublin, on Sun. 25th January and The Cuckoo s Nest, Tallaght, at 1.30pm on Sun. 1st Feb