Comedian Jason Byrne was completing a game show for Sky One when Limerick Post caught up with him to find out about his new touring show ‘20 Years A Clown’ coming to Limerick this weekend.
Not a “greatest hits” show but an opportunity for Jason to reflect back on his early days in comedy.
After one false start early on, Jason at 25 was eventually persuaded by a friend to try comedy. He never saw himself as a standup comic but he got his chance at the comedy club run by Barry Murphy of Apre Match
Jason remembers Murphy standing there with a blue book and Barry said, “I’ll give you seven gigs, and if you’re shite after that you can just give up.”
Jason brought loads of props with him which made his standout from the crowd of comic hopefuls.
Today he has brought these props back into his act for ‘20 Years a Clown’. There are Duck Callers, Owl Callers, Rubber Ducks, Stuffed Owls … the list goes on … like a junk shop stock take. And the crowd get to participate with Jason in the show , “they are the heroes on the night” , he says.
Jason is the biggest selling comedian at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where he brings a new show every August which has won the highly coveted Perrier Newcomer Award Nomination and the Perrier Award Nomination.
Jason’s inspired brand of high-energy intelligent lunacy has seen him regularly guest on UK television and radio. Such as, Live at the Apollo (BBC One), The Channel 4 Comedy Gala (Channel 4) and Just A Minute (BBC Radio 4).
His experience in performing live on stage and on TV has given Jason a high profile outside of Ireland, but at home audiences are sometimes surprised that his shows are so good sometimes telling the comedian,
“I’d never seen you before because I thought you were shite, BUT last night, you were brilliant.”
After twenty years on stage, Jason has his share of disaster stories too. Our favourite one is “I was doing a gig in Antwerp and nobody in the audience spoke English.”
We had to get one guy from the side of the stage who spoke a bit of broken English to stand up beside me basically translated 40 minutes of material … and it was f*ckin hilarious, but my God, the pressure.”
Jason’s television show Anonymous is due to make comeback on our screens. The show that disguises celebrities and gets them to make mischief in public is regularly repeated on RTE.
Up until now Jason made no more new episodes.
“We had to stop doing it because we ran out off celebrities. For a finish we were disguising and revealing Michelle Heaton and people didn’t know who she was!”
The good news is that Jason reckons that there is a fresh batch of celebrities out there and he is about to start the series again.
Jason has completed recording of the second series of Sky One’s ‘Wild Things’ game show which he hosts with Kate Humble.
The madcap show puts competitors in animal costumes racing to win a fortune in gold coins buried deep within the woods. ‘Wild Things’ won a Rose d’Or 2015 for a TV Game Show so the budget is bigger and the production has expanded and will definitely be one to check out in 2016.
Jason Byrne brings his new show ‘20 Years A Clown’ to Lime Tree Theatre this Saturday March 5.
