Red-haired comic Jason Byrne mumbled in his 'typically Dub' accent on his handsfree set while driving to his North Dublin home between Swords and Ashbourne when I called for the interview.
After we cleared up the initial confusion about who I was and why I was ringing him - even though he asked me to call him at 3pm and I did - he calmed down and started into his tirade about how journalists always assume that his shows are 'off the cu
ff' but in fact he sits down for hours and carefully scripts them.
"I always get four stars instead of five for my shows in Edinburgh because they think I just do it off the top of my head and use the audience to make the show funny. I do use the audience to get in and out of stand up but the majority of my shows are pre-written," he explained.
The man who has been described as 'an atomic bomb' on stage says that he loves playing up North because he can just "hop in the car and bang it up the M1."
"The audiences are different up North, they love it when I talk about the area where they come from. The last gig I did up in Belfast, I was moving funny on the stage and I happened to say out loud, 'I look like Elvis having a stroke'. The crowd loved it and it just snowballed from there so it can be really exciting for me when I take something off the cuff and keep going with it for a laugh like.
" If you think of something brilliant you can't go 'I'm not going to put that in'.
"A lot of my stuff is very loose anyway, I always get the front row audience involved when I think they're up for a laugh, but if I see some big head sitting there I won't bother with them.
"Northerners are more willing to talk back you during the show than down here, I was in Letterkenny and I said to them 'oh it's great to be in Northern Ireland' and they went off their heads shouting and roaring at me saying you're not in the f**king North, I just said oops!"
When Jason isn't talking to himself to drum up material he depends on his 7-year-old son to come up with the comic sketches.
"He is just so naturally funny. He told me the other day he was leaving home for a long time to go travelling around the world but I wasn't to get upset because he would come back with the best comedy sketches in the world.
"When I asked how long he was going for, he said: 'Probably about a week.'"
See Jason at the Alley theatre, Strabane on Friday, May 9th. For tickets call the Alley's box office on (028)71384444.
The full article contains 491 words and appears in Journal Friday newspaper.
