Midway through Hot Press’ interview with comic Jason Byrne in the front lobby of the Dublin Airport Maldron, we’re rudely interrupted by the arrival of four grizzled, casually dressed, smartphone-bearing young men.

“Hey Jason, would you mind?” one of them asks, proffering his iPhone, seemingly oblivious to the fact that we were deep in conversation. His three companions also hold up their telephones. The fucking youth of today!
“Well...em... sure thing, lads,” Byrne says, signalling with his eyebrows that it’s probably going to be less time-consuming to oblige than to refuse. “But why don’t we just take one on yours and then you can send it to your mates?”
They’re apprentice electricians, attending a safety seminar in the hotel. As yours truly takes the picture, the Ballinteer comedian chats about his new TV3 show, Snaptastic (essentially he interviews celebrities about their childhood photos).
Tall, thin and bespectacled, Byrne’s an immediately likeable, down to earth type of guy. A fortnight south of 43, he has been a successful stand-up and occasional TV and radio host for the guts of 20 years. He's massive in Ireland and pretty big elsewhere. It’s difficult to convey in print the hilarious range of accents, gestures and facial expressions he employs telling his stories, but it’s very easy to see why he’s so popular.
He’s also a dedicated follower of fashion. “Do you like me new shirt?” he asks, tugging the sleeve of said garment. “I bought it especially for this interview.”
OLAF TYARANSEN: What’s your earliest memory?
JASON BYRNE: I’m quite good at this because this show I do on TV3, Snaptastic, has got a bit of nostalgia to it! The first thing that strikes me is my first day in playschool. So that was [age] four probably? It was at a recreation centre in Ballinteer. I just remember all the other kids crying. But I was never a whinger. My mum checked me in with the teacher, and she put like a camouflaged bib on me, and they just sat me into a sandpit. I watched my mum go out the door. That’s my earliest memory.
So you weren’t a particularly emotional child?
Well, I was just brought up in a sociable household so we were used to being with loads of different people. So to be plonked down with another bunch of strangers is no different.
Did you have many siblings?
One brother, Eric, who’s now living in Sweden, and two sisters, Rachel and Eithne. They’re younger than me. I was nine years old when Eithne was born so she’s me baby sister. My other sister, Rach, is two years younger than me, so she’s 41.
Was it a happy childhood?
Oh Jaysus, yeah. I lived a place called Ludford Drive in Ballinteer, in south Dublin. There were I don’t know how many hundreds of houses on that one stretch, alongside a big green. So there’d be about twenty of us, boys and girls; then my sister’s friends, twenty of them; my brother's twenty – so there'd be hundreds of kids playing on the road, and playing football. We used to do estate Olympics. All the kids would get out their bikes and we’d do a few laps, then we played tennis, football, basketball, and we’d all win points and then there’d be an actual race! So that was cool.
Did you like school?
I loved my school. The school was at the top of the road so, again, it was just an extension of your mates hanging out except there were different classes. Then my home life was my mum and dad – my dad worked in Guinness and he was in and out like any old fella. You’d see him now and again, and he’d drive you out to the beach, or whatever. As I say it was a really sociable house, so the neighbours would come in. They’d go out to the pub and then bring them back to our house and I have brilliant memories of them all singing Perry Como and Tom Jones downstairs. In my head there’s a hundred of them, but there were probably about fifteen, smoking and singing and dancing.
What were you like academically?
Teachers would tell you that they really liked me because I never did anything evil or bad to anybody. I was a little bit of a messer, but I wasn’t the class clown; there were two other guys way funnier than me.
What did you think you were going to be when you grew up?
I didn’t have a clue. I did my Leaving Cert at 17, and I went in to see the guidance counsellor. I hope they’re better at it now! I did engineering in school, and I was rubbish at that, but the teacher goes, “I think you should try and be a mechanic!” Now I’d never seen the inside of an engine when I was 17, so I was just going, “Mechanic?” and they’re going, “Yeah, so career night is going to be in a week or so.” So I went to see the mechanic, sat there with him, and he goes (strong Dublin accent), “So you’re interested in mechanics?” and I was going, “Emm... yeah?” And he had this thing, I’ll always remember it, a thing for dipping into fuel but it was like a Swiss Army knife, and he goes, “What’s that?” and I go, “I don’t know!” Then he goes, “Listen, son, if you don’t fuckin’ know what that is, you’re not going to be a mechanic!” So I left!
Was it a religious household?
No. My mum loves mass and still goes. And the reason my ma goes to mass, as well, is because all the auld wans from the road go to mass, so it’s that social thing. They love going and talking to each other and she’ll tell everybody how great I am. If I play a 500-seater I’m playing a 1,000-seater. That’s how it goes: multiply it! (Laughs) So that was the only religion in the house.
Do you believe in God?
Oh no, I don’t have that belief at all. No. I suppose that comes from my dad because he just goes, “When you’re gone, you’re gone.” The full-on misery! The only thing that I’d have in my head is because of what I do – I do very strange things when I’m onstage.
What do you mean?
I sometimes get people’s names and what they do for a living just by looking at them for ages. So I just think that there’s some sort of spiritual energy coming out of everybody but where the hell it belongs... (shrugs). I think maybe the world is more physics than religion, so that when we die, energy just goes back into the earth. The really frightening thing is when people see the light and the shit... I do a lot of running and when I run really hard I see that, because these endorphins kick in viciously, it’s like, “Oh my God, this is brilliant!” I think that’s probably what happens.
Do people need religion?
The main thing I always say is I envy people that have faith. I’d love that! I listened to a lady on the radio. She says she died, and then she did the floating body thing – which is probably that endorphins thing again, probably just hallucinating, going mental, because your body’s trying to shut you down in a nice calm way – but now she 100% believes in God. She hasn’t got any fear of death! When I gig in Hong Kong and Malaysia, I see the poorest fuckers walking along with sticks on their back, put them down and then they get their incense, because there are little altars everywhere, and so they believe that they’re going somewhere, which is amazing. Because I have kids, wouldn’t it be great to know that we’re going somewhere? But because we work in this logical world, as a stand-up, we basically tell people a lot of shit that they don’t want to hear. I love science, I love all that stuff. And then if you ever listen to Ricky Gervais – Ricky is the best guy arguing about God. He’s just hilarious about it, so I’d love Gay Byrne to get his hands on Ricky because he’s just done Stephen [Fry]!
Have you ever had a near death experience?
I’m accident-prone. I got knocked down once as a kid. That’s the nearest! I went across the bonnet, rolled across it, hit the ground and stood up and kept walking. I think I was in shock! Because all these women ran out of their houses going, "Jesus Christ you’ve been knocked down!" and I went, "Well, I’m alright!" They sat me down and got me water, but I was fine.
What age were you when you had your first drink?
It was me and Carl McDermott, my best, best mate. He’s 45 and I’m 43 and his parents are my godparents. Carl got a can of Heineken out of his house when I was 16. We were in Ballinteer. So Carl just got the can, tasted it, and he nearly puked. I tasted it, it was horrendous. I went, “That is the worst thing I’ve ever tasted in my fucking life, that was gross!” I was really fit because I did loads of running, so I never smoked or anything, so that was it! Then, when I was about 17 we got two litres of cider – I had to go get it for all my mates because I was tall. We went off to Enniskerry and had the funniest time ever. Our Mas drove us to the campsite, and we all had the cider in the middle of our rucksacks so our parents wouldn’t know. We sat around the fire and all of us were pouring it out on the ground pretending to drink. We put blackcurrant in it because none of us could stand the taste. The next morning we got up and it was just purple puke in different areas. That’s as tough as we were!
Did you experiment with any drugs?
Jesus, no! I never took them because of my fear of it killing me. We’d never seen drugs when I was a kid. Even when I went up into my teenage years and twenties. There was no cocaine, heroin, nothing in that area. If there was, I didn’t see it. But I never took it.
Surely there’s loads of drugs in the world of stand-up comedy?
I couldn’t take it now either. This is the thing – stand-ups are big drinkers, so when we go to Kilkenny it’s great because the lads all sit around and have pints. There’s not really a drug world anymore. I know in England they probably would have taken coke, and in America stand-ups would be into it, but I’m so accident-prone, you know? I fell off three swings when I was a kid. They snapped. I'd get on bikes, and the wheel would buckle and I’d fall off. There was no way I’d ever put a fucking drug in my body because I know if I took ecstasy, I’m the one on the front page of the newspaper.
Have you ever been the subject of a tabloid front page story?
I’m trying to think. Oh, I know what happened which really drove me mad. I did an interview with a journalist and he said, “David McSavage says RTE can’t write comedy.” And my words were, “No they don’t write comedy because they don’t have a comedy department, it’s all written and brought in." Front page next day, "Byrne says RTE don’t do comedy." That was it! I was going, “I never fucking said that!” I still haven’t met him; I’m going to fucking kill him when I see him! It was one of those tabloid heads. I was going, “Man, what a thing to do,” you know? Because that’s damaging! I was working for the BBC and they have a comedy department – but RTE don’t have that. They need that so people can sit in there and create and work.
What was your first sexual experience?
Next-door neighbour. No, it wasn’t my next-door neighbour! Orna Ryan O’Brien, that was her name! If she sees this she’ll go, “What?!” I was 15, and I just thought, "this is the best drug in the world, if this is what drugs are like!" Because now kids have sex really young. I’m sure at 15 or 16 there’s a lot that are doing that, but again in Ballinteer all you did was just squeeze a poor girl’s boob on the outside of her jumper for hours on end and just be kissing her like the tongue thing for like... I don’t know, you could be doing it for nearly an hour! Like on and off, having little breaks! And I remember going into me mum, into dinner, and I went upstairs and changed into a Polo neck, so I was sitting having dinner in a black Polo neck. This was a Polo neck that my mom would only put on me if we were going out somewhere posh, and I’m sitting there in the black Polo neck because I’ve got a huge hickey!
Are you often approached in public?
Yeah. In Ireland, nearly everywhere people know who I am. But they’re nice, the Irish, they treat you like a family member. So I walk through Grafton Street and it’s like “Howya, Jason,” and I’m like, “Yeah!” But in Australia – I do well out there, and that’s a different type. They’re way more respectful. They’ll walk up to you slower and go (Australian accent), “Excuse me? I just want to say you’re really funny and I like your stuff,” and you go, “Thanks!” Actually, me and Des Bishop used to talk about this. Another thing that can happen in Ireland is that there’ll be two girls – one goes, “Oh my God, can I get your picture?” She’ll stand with you, she’ll give her phone to her mate, her mate will always go, “I don’t know who you are.” And then the mate who doesn’t know who you are jumps in, you put your arm around her, and she goes, “I still don’t know who you are,” and they know well who you are! They love that.
They don’t want to give you a big head.
No, no! I was with some locals at a bar in Australia and this Irish girl was with us, and we’re talking away, and she goes, “Oh my God, if my mother knew I was standing beside Jason Byrne she’d kill me. She thinks you’re awful!” And the Australians turn around like (aghast), “What did you just say to him?” They go, “Why would you tell a person that your mother thinks he’s awful?” They’re going, “He doesn’t need to know that!” She’s going, “No, I just meant – I think he’s great, I just thought I’d tell him,” and they go, “In this country you don’t do that!”
When did you do your first gig?
God, the first microphone gig was in the Coach House in Ballinteer before a band called Revelino. You know Brendan Berry and Brendon Tallon? There were these girls going to Romania to look after the AIDS babies, as they called the poor orphans who had AIDS, and they asked me to host the night. I stood there and died on my ass. Because I'd just watched Billy Connolly and I went, “Well that’s what you must do, just talk about blue stuff,” not knowing that there was a skill in stand-up if you want to talk about that. You’ve got to earn it and you’ve got to let the audience in easy. I stand there talking about old people pissing themselves beside hand dryers. Oh my God, my mother was there! My mate Brian Roche taped it and there’s people walking by me, queuing up at the bar and they just start talking! So then I brought on a band and that was it, I said, “I’m not doing it again.” I was 21.
Obviously it didn’t put you off...
Brendan Berry and Brendan Tallon convinced me to come back up when they were playing on their own and I would do ten minutes just before they played and that worked better. I was shitting it though. I got a teddy bear and I used to just cut off his arms and his legs and his head. That was part of the act! And everyone was laughing away and I’m going, “Oh, okay.” I stopped doing it for a while, and then I was at the Castle Inn with Martin Byrne, another friend of mine, and Simon Bligh was on – he’s an English comic – and Barry Murphy was hosting. I won a joke competition on the night.
What was the joke?
It was a fastest response thing. And the joke competition was what do Éamon de Valera and Mary Robinson have in common? And my answer was, “Mary Robinson doesn’t live next door to my ma.” And Barry loved it! So he said, “That’s the winner!” So I went to collect it afterwards and Martin goes, “He does comedy!” I go, “No, I don’t!” Just because I did it with Revelino, like four gigs, then Barry went, “Alright, I’ll put you down for five slots.” “No you won’t!” “Yes I will, yeah, if you turn up you turn up.” He goes, “If you’re rubbish after five, forget it.” So I said okay and he put me down and that was it. I never stopped. Barry was the first person ever to pay me. Five pounds. And I kept it, like a spa, because I was going to frame it!
Well, your career has certainly blossomed from there!
 It has grown from there! But then I spent it. I needed the money. One day I had no money and I spent my fiver!
You’re now the most successful comedian up in Edinburgh. What is it about you and Scotland?
This is my twentieth year now and I’ve never missed a year and I think if any comic went that many times he'd be the most popular comic. It’s like saying “I’ve been collecting Pokémon cards for twenty years and I’ve got the most cards.” Oh really? That’s because it’s twenty years. I have the most amount of tickets sold because my venues got bigger and bigger, and now the Scots just love me. So my year is January, February, March, April, May, June, July, Edinburgh, October, September – so I’ve never been anywhere apart from Edinburgh in twenty years. The thing is that with TV and radio that’s when they all go on holidays anyway, so I’m always hoping for that movie or that big TV job, but in August it’s not going to happen, so every year it’s like "I might as well do Edinburgh." And I love it.
Do you work all year?
January, February, March is always the Irish gigs, then I go to Australia for six weeks. I do the Melbourne comedy festival. I’m doing Canberra and we’re doing Tasmania this time because the Tasmanians are always hassling me going, "You never fucking come." Tasmania’s right beside Melbourne!
What age are your two boys?
Fifteen and eight.
It must be hard going away for so long.
 Oh yeah, I’ll never be away for a minute longer than that. That’s the longest of the whole year, and they normally come – but, with school now, it’s getting more and more difficult because my 15-year-old is learning proper shit. Because that’s Easter, they get two weeks off, so they’d only miss about two or three weeks – but just this time it was too much, so maybe next year we’ll go again. Then we’re going to work on the second series of the TV3 show Snaptastic – they want us to shoot that again.
So the entire first series is already in the can?
Yeah! Fucking hell, I did that in October, November, which was exhausting because that’s when I did a British tour. So Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday I was shooting that, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday I was travelling in Britain and I was trying to train for a marathon. It was just too much.  
Does it ever get repetitive?
 Yeah, it’s mental. I don’t actually like going away; I actually like being at home! I don’t like being away from my kids and my wife. I’m such a homeboy.
Your current stand-up show involves you spinning a wheel of random words on the stage and then riffing on whatever word comes up. Do you like doing improv?
 I think on my feet quite a lot, but then I write loads of stuff as well and I would always mishmash them. I don’t really know how I do it a lot of the time – but the more pressure I put my brain under, the more stuff I can come up with, so then I thought, "Why don’t I write loads of topics on the wheel and the wheel will predict what way it comes up?" When you’re a stand-up, you pick your strongest material, weaken a little bit then go strong again, so I have to control this fucking mad pattern that’s going on and the wheel – I call it 'the wheel of fate' because it dictates what happens. One of the words on the wheel is ‘encore’, so I can get an encore at the very start of the night and walk off and come on if they’re still cheering.
Has it ever gone wrong?
Yeah, the pace can go all wrong. But that’s what keeps it interesting. I have a really short attention span and I need lots of shit happening in a show to keep my brain going. I don’t like safe comedy, that’s my problem. I could easily throw on a suit, go up there, tell ten stories and go home. But I always put myself in the audience’s seats and I look up and go, “I don’t know if this is good enough for my money.” So I want people to leave going, “Holy Jesus, did you see all the shit he did?”
Did you see the recent TV documentary about Tommy Tiernan’s improv tour of Europe?
I didn’t see it all, but whenever someone asks who are my favorite stand-ups I say Tommy and Dylan [Moran] straightaway. Tommy can’t do what I do, and I can’t do what he does, that’s what we always say. I couldn’t stand there and have people in the palm of my hand with them all leaning in and doing that thing that he does. They’re all going, “What is he going to say?!” My brain would just kick off going, “They’re not laughing? Shit!” So he’s got the patience of an actor. He’s brilliant. But then when he went around trying to do the improv, he just doesn’t do that. He can’t do it! I’ve done it for years, so for me to stand up there and have no material, that wouldn’t frighten me at all, I just do it. But I use the audience to give me my raw material and he wasn’t even doing that. He’s just standing there going, “I think I’ll try this.” I just watched it and went, “That’s just Tommy being bored the same way I get bored.”
You’ve toured together...
Yeah. I remember Tommy would do that when I was touring with him. He went on and he said, “I’m going to try this, self-destruct myself onstage just for the craic, see what happens!” And he went on and he was talking about childbirth and he went, “Oh, you women, fucking whinging when you’re pushing. Look at you, you whinging fuckers!” They’re all like (pulls face and gasps!). Twenty minutes later, they’re in tears laughing. He just wants to knock himself right down to the very bottom and then start it back up again. But Tommy’s so loved in his country. People just took it on as another Tommy experiment. If that was me doing that and I died on me hole on the telly, my venues would be empty! I reckon they’d have to build an extra fucking room in Vicar Street for him! Because they would’ve went, “Did you see that thing Tommy did? Died on his hole? Brilliant!” He’s the only cunt that could get away with it. I couldn’t get away with it! If I went on like, “You see that thing Jason Byrne did? Died on his hole? I’m not going to see that prick!” It’s just a different love.
What’s off-limits for a comedian?
Well, I have kids so I never talk about sick kids, handicapped kids, handicapped people. Race, I only ever attack or use if there’s somebody there, that’s the black guy who’s done something or said something, then I can play with him on that. In Edinburgh I’ve had Chinese, people from Peru, but I only have fun with them by using my Irish culture mixed into their culture. But off-limits? You can’t look at someone and go, “You’re a fat fucker!” I could never do that. The nature of my show is to go the other way, to make everyone feel good afterwards. I don’t understand why comics, and there’s not many who do it, who would go, “You’re a prick, look at you, you fat fuck, fuck you, you’re horrible, you’re a dozy bitch.”
David McSavage sometimes does that!
Yes! That’s a good one because McSavage is expected to do it. I am not expected to do it, in the same way Tommy’s not expected to do all that improv stuff. I think that’s the thing. So if Dave was a happy/nicey comic and then went mental on Jewish people or something, like “That’s terrible,” but, “Ah, it’s just Dave.” He does this thing on Emer which is fucking tearful. Did you ever see him go on about Emers? “Fucking Emers!” We did this show in the Iveagh Gardens and there was an Emer in the front row, an Emer cunt is what he called her, and that’s not her name. She was just going, “Oh, I think you’re an idiot,” and he’s like, “Oh my God, it’s an Emer cunt!” and that was hilarious, we were crying. She kept going at him and he’s going ‘EMER! Fucking Emer, you’re a CUNT!” The thing with Dave is that he self-destructs as well, so he’d call you a cunt, he’d call himself a cunt. None of that sits well with me. I can’t do it. I’ll try it, but my audience, because they know me so well, they’d go, "Why did he say that? Why did Jason just say that?" I’d probably have to start apologising! I was brought up with Tommy Cooper, Kenny Everett, all those lads, kind of nice, fun comedy type of thing, that’s what I watch and that’s probably what happened to me! I’d love to be a political Bill Hicks type, because it’s kind of cool, but I couldn’t pull it off.
Do you enjoy the radio and TV stuff or do you mainly do those things in order to maintain your stand-up profile?
The Snaptastic show is my most favourite thing I’ve ever done, because it’s more or less the nearest thing to my live show. Last night’s episode was one of our mildest episodes that we thought we should put out first, then they get madder and madder and people join in and there’s more shit going on. I love the discipline of television because you have to really structure yourself. But then I love the looseness of stand-up because what I do on that night I can never repeat unless I record it and show it – so it’s like that’s football and that’s golf. And radio’s another one. I did this BBC show and I won the Sony Gold which was just amazing. I couldn’t believe it, I didn’t even know what that was! It’s like the Oscars for radio over there. So that was one of my proudest achievements.
Are you going to pay your water charges?
Oh yeah, I’d say, “No, fuck them!” and then I’d just pay, because I’m so like that. I’ve got a bio-cycle system in my house so I get half-price anyway. I travel around the world a lot and nearly all of them pay water charges, so I think we kind of should pay it... but not yet. I think it’s bad timing. People have massive mortgages from the fucking recession, people with bills coming in that are mad and they can’t afford them – to stick a water charge on there now is just fucking evil. That’s all I’d say. Fuck them for that. If someone says, “I don’t have the money to pay a fucking water charge,” they should just go, “OK, it’s cool. We won’t charge you.” But anyway, I don’t think it’s going to fucking happen because those fucking idiots have put out so many water meters – there was a guy on the radio the other day saying, "My water meter says I’ve used 200 gallons a day. The fucking thing is whizzing around like a mad yoke, but there’s no water going through." So they’ve cost themselves a fortune installing them. They should have just got a load of Germans over here to install them and run the fucking system, or Scandinavians. But we had a load of fucking yahoo fuckers installing it, sticking them in and just going, "Well, best of luck!" And that’s the problem with this government, they never fucking listen to each other. It’s like they’re not a group, they’re not a team. It’s like this person’s doing that and that person’s doing this and you’re going, "What the fuck is going on?"
Can you enlighten us?
Here’s a great example. I was in Sweden just before the marathon and my Swedish nieces said, “You’re running the marathon?” I said, “Yeah, for charity” and they said, “Which charity? Is it like for Africa or something?” I’m like, “No, it’s for Temple Street,” and they went, “Oh, is that a hospital in Africa?” “No, no, that’s an Irish children’s hospital.” “You need to do charity for your children’s hospital? Why?” “Because the government won’t give them money.” “For their fucking children’s hospital?” They were just going, “What?!” So in Sweden they pay massive taxes but they get it all, the roads, the health, the colleges. We don’t get that.
What do we get?
We just get a load of fucking dildos that fucked up in the recession, gave out all these millions of loans, didn’t watch anything, looked after themselves. They fucked it up and we have to sort it out and it’s not fair. We’re bailing out the banks – but no one’s bailing out us. There should be debt forgiveness. I know people who’ve got like 400 grand mortgages in these fucking four bed houses; they just can’t do it. I think what they should do is bring all the houses down to what they’re worth now and wipe the rest of their mortgage and just let them away with that. but that’s chaos. That couldn’t happen either, and those water charges are just introduced as a secret, other bailout. That’s all it is. If they didn’t do it on water they would’ve thought of something else but they’ve spent so much money on it now. We’re going to have to keep paying more taxes to pay for that, to pay for this. But anyway, fuck that, there’s me passionate fucking political rant! I better get a prop and put it on me head!
Do you have a motto in life?
Yeah. Never say ‘yes’ when you mean ‘no’, because that happens a lot with Irish people. We’re very like that. “Give us a lift into town.” “Yeah, OK, yeah,” but you know they’re really going (grumbly) “Fuck off!”