‘There’s these little kids in a park eating candy. This old man comes up to them and says: “You shouldn’t eat candy, it’s bad for your health.” This one kid says: “Yeah my grandfather lived to be 100 years old.” The man says: “Did your grandfather eat candy?” The kid says: “No, but he minded his own fucking business”.’
Buda bing, buda boom — Dom Irrera is full of them. Short, quick, dark funnies that transport you back to the old school. His delivery reminds you of George Burns or early (funny) Allen, but his Italian-American drawl has seen him hailed as the ultimate wise guy stand-up, a label he finds slightly bewildering. ‘lt’s funny, it's probably because I’m Italian. I have this thing in my act where someone says to me: “Gee, you should be in The Sopranos!” And I’m like: “Gee, I never thought of that! What you mean instead of working in Chuckie Chuck’s Chuckie Hut? What’s your name? When I get the job l’ll cut you in for that brilliant insight.”’ Laughing now, Irrera knows he has been shoved in his ethnic box but he’ll be damned if he’s going to stay there.
Last year Irrera came to Edinburgh after the Kilkenny Comedy Festival and split sides deep in the sauna-like bowels of the Teviot building. He is hilarious: the very definition of lean, toned stand-up. This year Irrera is compering Best of the Fest at the Assembly. His fans may think this is slightly demeaning for a comedian who is clearly such a master of his craft but Irrera doesn’t see it like that. ‘You can bow out if it’s going bad or stay on if it’s going well. “Hey folks, I’ll bring on the next act and you’ll realise how good I was.”’ (Paul Dale)
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22 THE LIST FESTIVAL GUIDE
Lock u p
He may not curse in his show, but deadpan funnyman SEAN LOCK still swears by the little things in life. Words: Brian Donaldson
hen a journo colleague was flicking wearily back
and forth through the Fringe brochure during the
programme’s launch in early June, his face instantly lit up on page 39. Having opened the glossy publication with a youthful vigour, that pre-August enthusiasm steadily waned as page after page revealed the same-old~same—old in the stand-up field. But there, on page 39, tucked between Live! Girls! and Loose Ends was a comic of some renown. ‘Yeeeessssss!’ he exclaimed between slurps of his Buck’s Fizz. ‘Seeeean Lockkkkkk.’
A few years back when I was interviewing a Glasgow crime novelist, who herself has scripted some comedy, the subject moved away from charred corpses on Gamethill to dissecting the rotting body of stand-up. Her most fervent praise was directed at Mr Lock. I’m sure she called him a ‘class act’. So, while the discerning outside world gets in a right old till about Sean Lock, the man himself gets on with business in his merry deadpan way.
‘I went cycling in the countryside the other day and that put a smile on my face.’ reveals the 39-year-old comic on the phone from his London office. He ponders some more. ‘If I find an obscure ska or northern soul record, that’ll get me excited.’ Another pause. ‘Oh, and very rare orchids. Sometimes I womI that I haven’t got any real passions in life. And. even worse, it’s becoming glaringly obvious that I don’t have skills or interests.’
Those who have followed Sean Lock’s comedy career have seen him go from being a Rubber Bishop beside Bill Bailey to his Perrier—nominated show in 2000, which featured him in Michael Flatley mode, proclaiming himself to be the Lord of the Dance. That show (in which he somehow succeeded in bringing fresh angles to routines about hair loss and answer machines) proved he was closer to being the King of Comedy.
A break in performing has allowed him to write and star in a forthcoming BBC sitcom. l5 Storeys High. the grainy. downbeat story of a London tower block and the lives of those living within. He describes it as ‘distinctive but not necessarily accessible’. And don’t tune in expecting Jessica Stevenson. Ralf Little or Simon Pegg in the cast.
‘I didn’t want to use the familiar faces of TV comedy acting. even though some of them are friends of mine. We spent a lot of time casting as many unknown faces as possible. We had the bloke from the Ronseal advert who plays a fishmonger and you don’t see him in many things. And I wanted to find a different way to do jokes, because when you do gags in sitcoms people react to it; they go: “No, don’t try and do jokes with me: oh, you’re trying to make me laugh aren’t you? Yeah, thanks a lot, mate; thanks very much for trying to make me laugh.”’
And now, at last, he has got down to making us laugh genuinely by writing his 2002 show. Well. nearly.
‘This year, I’ve got routines about stress.’ he deadpans. ‘I find it very amusing that people get worked up about those little, inconsequential things. And, of course, I’ll be slagging off America, like a lot of comics I imagine. But I’ll be doing it in an ineffective, unfocused way which won’t damage the state of the union at all. And there’ll be stuff about Hundreds & Thousands and a rant about David Blaine. And I’ll talk a lot about swearing, because I hardly ever swear in my act or in life but I’ve become interested in how and when we use swearing and when it’s appropriate.’ Trust me, this man is fucking funny.
Assembly Rooms, 226 2428, 1 1-26 Aug, 9.15pm, 210-21 1 (£9430).