BERNARD O'SHEA BECAME A comedian after triumphing in a stand-up competition as a student. Admittedly, this was made easier by him being the only entrant.
"My friend Danny had organised a comedy week, culminating in a contest with about 120 peop
le in the audience," O'Shea says. "Everyone who said they'd do it chickened out but he'd booked the theatre for an hour and a half. He did ten minutes, then brought me on and I had no idea what I was doing. I just tried to fill the time as best I could and was terrible, but people laughed because they were my friends. I got through it, won a crate of beer, 50 Irish pounds and a support slot for a local comedy night."
The 29-year-old from Laois, in rural Ireland, used to be a guitarist in a traditional Irish band with his father. Touring with his dad throughout Europe stood him in good stead when he eventually chose stand-up over music, he says.
"We'd always played really traditional stuff, nothing bawdy, and I was young, so I hadn't been doing the banter. But from an early age, I knew how to set myself up on stage. Occasionally with comedy you don't feel like it, but I'd already learned to simply get up there and get on with it. And I was used to people staring at me, which sounds stupid, but it's something many open spots aren't expecting.
"I've found comedy harder, because on a bad night, if a band is enjoying themselves and the music is pumping, the audience could be eating f***ing candyfloss, they don't care. But the audience, more so than the comic, is always the most important factor in how a comedy night turns out."
Introducing himself as the red-haired "baboon boy" of his village, the splenetic O'Shea has retained a distinctive rhythm of delivery. On stage he is mildly barking, in every sense, to the extent that he can capably rant without a microphone. He wasn't the funny kid at school, he says, yet whenever he strove to be serious, "people started laughing".
"My three-year-old niece is exactly the same," he says. "She takes everything to heart, gets really annoyed and starts crying because she thinks it will make them stop, but it only makes it worse. I've tried moving towards comedy where I'm making a point, but I've given up because people don't take it that way. So now I use it to my advantage. I talk about things that really annoy me and that usually sets them off."
O'Shea has his first Fringe show next month, Do Not Adjust Your Mind, Reality is at Fault. After giving up drinking two years ago, he feared he was going insane, then concluded that, actually, it was just the world that "was mad, like people who go round with plastic bags and shout crazy things". He plans to reinforce this epiphany with a selection of colourful knitted neckwear, a high-visibility jacket and a guitar named Susan, after Irish country and western singer Susan McCann.
"I used to hug her like a safety blanket," he says. "I wanted to be a singer-songwriter but failed miserably because I couldn't get depressed enough. So that's why I wear all the scarves, because it gives you a mystique, an aura of Frenchness and performing in coffee shops. They can sing about the moon and stars and audiences think it's glorious, but nobody understands my songs. Still, I know they're practical.
"It's like my fluorescent jacket. If someone tries to stop cars on the motorway to explain Jesus is coming back you'd think they were a lunatic, but put on a high-vis vest and they stop immediately. These clothes are designed for life, they're practical and they keep me safe and warm, yet for some reason they're not fashionable. And when you wear them all together you look like a f***ing maniac."
O'Shea can also be seen at the Stand during the Fringe, in An Englishman, Irishman, Scotsman Now With Added Welshman. It's a superb line-up of upcoming talent featuring O'Shea, Henry Paker, Kevin Bridges and Lloyd Langford. "Edinburgh is the best place to be on a bill like that, because the audience understand that Ireland, Scotland and Wales are modern countries," says O'Shea. "Whereas in Montreal and outside Europe, they have a tendency to think we don't have electricity and we're getting water from the well, so it's much harder to represent your country properly."
Nevertheless, he's not above playing the big eejit. After starring in the video for Orange, comedian David O'Doherty's intentionally dreadful ballad, O'Shea recently joined a host of Irish stand-ups to shoot Jason Byrne's short film Paddy Muck, in which a bunch of rural idiots try to trick a busload of rich American tourists out of their money to buy a new church.
"On the first day we were trying on costumes so for the laugh I put on a dress, then a paper bag on my head with holes in it. I thought it was a dress rehearsal but the camera was rolling. So if you watch Paddy Muck, I'm the guy wearing a paper bag throughout the entire film."
• Do Not Adjust Your Mind, Reality is at Fault is at the Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, 30 July until 25 August. An Englishman, Irishman, Scotsman Now With Added Welshman is at the Stand Comedy Club, Edinburgh, 3, 10, 17 and 24 August.
What other people are saying …"O'Shea's comedy doesn't always follow a set plan. He likes to leave things open to interpretation so he can indulge in weird flights of fancy. It comes as no surprise to hear that his favourite comedian is the totally insane Dubliner, Jason Byrne."
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Irish World"He may have been a slow starter, but lately O'Shea has been surging forward… Not that (his] singular brand of comedy – dysfunction-riddled midlands gothic with surreal asides and blackly comic songs – is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser. The free-associating approach that allows inspired ten-minute routines on unlikely subjects can result in equally erratic performances."
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Times The full article contains 1052 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
