Des Bishop will play shows in Brisbane, Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney and Perth as part of his Aussie tour.

They say laughter is the best medicine, and nothing could be closer to the truth when it comes to Des Bishop. The Ireland-based New Yorker has joked his way through the most difficult of times and come out the other side smiling, as he told AARON DUNNE.

Back in 2000, after being diagnosed with testicular cancer, Des Bishop went on to make his own personal battle the centrepiece of a hugely successful tour – a banner reading “In Memory Of Lefty” fluttering defiantly in the background throughout.

Nothing could be more difficult than that, you might imagine. And yet here he is, in Australia, back in the full of his own health, bringing a wry smile to the face of tragedy once more.

His latest show hits closer to home in many ways than even the one based on his own ordeals. His father is now suffering from cancer, and in typical Bishop style, he is dealing with his anxiety through comedy.

“The show is largely about dads because of that,” Des explained when we caught up with him at Sydney’s Mercure Hotel.

“To be honest it’s all stuff I’ve wanted to talk about for years, but it’s just now come to a point where it’s happened naturally because of all that’s been going on. I’ve been spending so much time with him and he’s just been so good about it all.”

Like most of Bishop’s material, the theme of this show is something that will hit home with a lot of people. His dad is his hero. It’s something he’d always really known, but perhaps never fully realised aloud until adversity once more came knocking at his door.

In a funny twist of fate, and something clearly not lost of Des, his dad was actually quite nearly a hero for millions of men around the world.

“The show doesn’t really have a title, but if it was to have a title now I’d probably call it My Father Was Nearly James Bond.

“He’s from Midleton originally, but he actually spent a large part of his life in London, where he was a model and an actor. The James Bond bit comes from a story he tells about when he was there.

“He says he was up for the role of Bond along with George Lazenby, and if you saw pictures of him at the time you’d well believe he’d been sent for the role. He definitely auditioned for it.

“So the show is about him and the fact that he’s sick now, and about heroism and how we perceive it. It’s about the fantasies that men in general look towards for their own identities, figures like James Bond.

“It’s almost as if the normal man, the normal father, is not enough of a worthy thing to look up to as an heroic figure.

“James Bond is not real and Miss Moneypenny doesn’t cure cancer. It’s about the real things in life that we need to put up there as heroic. It’s really a story about turning your father into a hero.

“So it is a bit of an emotional show, but it’s funny too. In a lot of ways it’s much easier to be funny about these kinds of things.

“Many people deal with the fact that their parents or someone in their families is ill. It’s quite an intense thing, but a lot of Irish people tend to deal with these things through humour. My father is the perfect example. Short term, he’s doing better than we expected.

“At the very beginning I thought we’d be heading towards the end pretty quickly, but that’s not the case. He’s doing better than we expected at the moment and he’s loving the craic we’re having with the show.”

It’s been a trying few months for Bishop, as one can well imagine. And it’s a long way from his father’s home in Queens that he’ll be spending the next three months. However, a decent stint in Australia offers a sort of relief from it all.

It’s also somewhere that’s been a wonderful breeding ground for comedy, especially now Australia is the destination de jour for young Irish.

“I love Bondi, despite the fact it’s full of Irish,” he laughs. “I joke around with the Irish a lot but actually it’s really great to have them there. It’s different when you’re playing to Irish people abroad too.

“They’re having a unique experience being away from home, and I grew up with Irish people abroad, so it’s almost like Irish people living abroad begin to understand my perception of Irishness that bit more because they’ve been away.

“I think Irish people are quite dismissive before they travel abroad about other people’s perceptions of Ireland. But I think once they get out of the country and travel they really begin to appreciate the power of the Irish community abroad.

“A lot of my show here 18 months ago was pretty much improvised based on my experiences here, and a lot of that stuff became part of my next show – stuff like where I talk about people being sponsored to stay in Australia actually ended up on my next DVD. A lot of that stuff began in Brisbane and Sydney, so Australia has certainly been great to me.”

It’s clear that Bishop has developed a real affection for Australia.

“I was asked by The Sydney Morning Herald what the luck of the Irish was. After spending time on the beaches in Sydney I realised that the luck of the Irish was breaking the law in the 1800s and being sentenced to a life of penal servitude in a country infinitely nicer than the one they were sent from in the first place!”

For a full list of Des’s tour dates click here.

Des Bishop will be one of four Irish acts at the Sydney Comedy Festival.

Four Irish acts will appear at this year’s Sydney Comedy Festival which gets under way on April 19.

Dublin comics Jason Byrne and David O’Doherty will be joined by Des Bishop and comedy group Dead Cat Bounce at this year’s event which runs until May 9.

For more information log on to www.sydneycomedyfest.com.au

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Irish acts at the 2010 Sydney Comedy Festival

April 23 – April 24 :: Jason Byrne :: Enmore Theatre

April 30 – May 1 :: Des Bishop :: Enmore Theatre

April 30 – May 1 :: David O’Doherty :: The Metro

April/May :: Dead Cat Bounce :: TBC

Tommy Tiernan will tour Australia from April 13.

Navan funny man Tommy Tiernan kicks off his first major Australian tour on April 13 when he lands in Perth to play the Octagon Theatre.

It’s been a trying few weeks for the Meathman who recently lost his mother, but tour organisers have told the Irish Echo that the tour will go ahead as planned.

Check out our interview with the Irish comedian here.

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Tommy Tiernan tour dates April 2010 ::

April 13 :: Perth :: Octagon Theatre

April 15 – 16 :: Melbourne :: The Palms at Crown

April 19 :: Brisbane :: Tivoli Theatre

April 21 :: Sydney :: Enmore Theatre

April 24 :: Sydney :: Enmore Theatre

Tommy Tiernan kicks off his Australian tour in Perth on April 13.

Tommy Tiernan’s knack for attracting controversy is matched only by his propensity to put bums on seats. Are the two connected? Does it matter? AARON DUNNE spoke to the Meathman on the eve of his biggest Aussie tour to date.

Tommy Tiernan doesn’t court controversy. Or at least he says he doesn’t. Yet, everywhere he turns, it seems to lie in waiting just around the corner.

Last September we had the latest ‘incident’. At the Electric Picnic Festival in Co Laois, the Navan man went off on one about the Holocaust.

Not your traditional topic of conversation in a comedic arena, but then again, the 40-year-old isn’t exactly your traditional comedian. It was a 20-second throwaway line, he says. Those of an easily-outraged disposition look away now.

“[Being on a comedy stage is] about allowing whatever lunacy is inside you to come out in a special protected environment where people know that nothing they say is being taken seriously,” he began, preluding the knockout punch that was to follow.

“But these Jews, these f**king Jew c**ts come up to me. F**king Christ-killing bastards. F**king six million? I would have got 10 or 12 million out of that. No f**king problem! F**k them. Two at a time, they would have gone. Hold hands, get in there. Leave us your teeth and your glasses.”
The press reaction was damning.

“Tiernan crosses line with Holocaust rant”, announced the Sunday Tribune on its front page. “Look-at-me antics,” decried The Irish Times the following day. Slews of comments flooded into radio stations and calls for his arrest for inciting hatred followed.

And yet it was nothing new to Tommy, who first incurred mainstream ire when he made a gag about the crucifixion on the Late Late Show. Six months later, Tiernan can look back on it all with some perspective.

“I seem to get myself into trouble in September every year. Some people have SAD. – seasonal adjustment depression, I think it’s called – where the decrease in light actually makes people sadder.

“I think I have something similar more along the lines of SAS – seasonal adjustment stupidity,” he jokes down the phone from his Galway home, rather tragically just a day before the sudden death of his mother, Helen.

“I get into trouble once or twice a year, it’s nothing new to me really. But it’s not something that I set out to do. It was a bit different this time in that it went international – I made it onto the front page of the Jerusalem Post. That was certainly a first for a Tiernan!

“I don’t take it very seriously, though, and I think those who do are poorer for it. The people who were actually there didn’t have a problem with the material at all. It’s never the people in the room listening to the material who object. It’s the people who hear about it afterwards that seem to get disgusted.

“It was put on the front page of the Sunday Tribune a full two weeks after it actually happened, and I can tell you this, the motive behind reporting the story the way it was reported was a bad bastard motive.

“I mean the headline in the Jerusalem Post was something like ‘Irish Comic Mocks Holocaust’. I almost felt like sending them an email saying that the clue there was in the job description.

“It [his comments] was actually part of a much longer thing – the thing about the Holocaust took all of five seconds. It was part of an on-stage interview thing where I was taking questions from the floor and someone asked me had I ever been accused of anti-Semitism.

“I just felt that things were beginning to get a bit too serious at that point. I said something ridiculous and outlandish as a way of shocking people into laughter at the stupendous outlandishness of it. And that’s what got reported.

“I’ve no problem talking about it, and I think once people are in the room with me hearing about it they’ll realise the lunacy of it all.”

Tiernan is stung by the criticism that he is a headline-chaser but cheerily admits to being reckless. Part of the job, mate.

“It’s not my job to be serious or sensible and it’s not my job to be straight or careful. I don’t go looking for these controversies, that would be foolish. To go looking for them would be false, and I couldn’t do that. People would think I’m just being sensationalist for the sake of it, but I’m not.

“I go out with a spirit of recklessness about everything, including myself. But I think when you become a well-known comedian in any country there are always serious people who want to take you down a peg or two.”

Tiernan’s popularity doesn’t seem to have been  adversely affected by it. In Ireland last year only U2 put more bums on seats.

He seems to thrive on the moral outrage of others. It’s something we’ll be hearing all about when he kicks off his Crooked Man tour here in April.

The ‘Holocaust’ kerfuffle is just another good yarn to share with his audiences.

“I think Irish people value stories very strongly. There’s nothing like the excitement of hooking up with a friend to whom something fantastically bad or something fantastically brilliant has happened.

“People just love stories and yapping to one another, so I’m hoping not only to arrive in Australia with a few stories but also to come back with a few as well. I can’t wait to get down there properly for the first time.

“I was last there in 2003. I just did the Melbourne Comedy Festival, but I’m really excited about getting to tour the whole country this time. I hope it’s the start of a long love affair.”

Tommy Tiernan kicks off his Australian Crooked Man tour in Perth on April 13, before going on to play shows in Melbourne (April 15 – 16), Brisbane (April 19) and Sydney on April 21.

See What’s On for venue and booking details.

Dublin comic Jason Byrne returns to Australia in March.

Direct from a sell-out international tour, Jason Byrne returns to Australian shores for the fifth consecutive year as he hits the comedy festivals in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney early in the new year.

Best known for his crazed and hysterical performances at the last three Melbourne International Comedy Festivals, this time Byrne will spread his wings to take in shows in Brisbane, and for just the second time ever, Sydney.

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Jason Byrne Tour Dates 2010

March 18 – March 20 :: Brisbane :: Powerhouse Theatre

March 23 – April 18 :: Melbourne :: Athenaeum Theatre

April 23 – April 24 :: Sydney :: Enmore Theatre