WHY AM I here? It is a question philosophers, theologians, and scientists have asked since time immemorial, but few will answer it in the surreal, rambling, original, and hilarious manner of Kevin McAleer.
McAleer, who first came to attention on RTÉ’s Nighthawks in the early 1990s, and has been on our screens more recently as Derry Girls eccentric Uncle Colm, performs two shows at this month’s Galway Comedy Festival.
McAleer’s style is neither observational, nor a stream of one line jokes, instead he tells free flowing, oddball, stories, full of eccentric characters, situations, and incidents - the absurdity of everyday existence, as if told by a Seanchaí, contemporary rural Irish life with the mirth, mischief, and strangeness of folk tales.
The Omagh man is truly a genre unto himself, as Galway will see when he presents his new show, Why Am I Here in the Róisín Dubh on Saturday October 29. He will also be part of a mixed bill show in the Black Box Theatre on Sunday October 30.
As well as attempting to answer the mightiest of questions, Why Am I Here will showcase many of McAleer’s best loved routines, and is named after one about him being a philosophical teenager.
“I was looking up and asking, ‘Who am I?’ ‘Why am I here?’” he told The Irish Times. “And then this British army patrol came around the corner…and the British soldiers were asking me the same questions.”
Uncle Colm and Derry Girls
Many will recognise McAleer from Channel 4’s hit comedy series Derry Girls, and will have gotten a taste of his style from his character, Uncle Colm.
McAleer admits he gets a lot of scripts “thrust in my direction”, but as he told The Irish News, when he was presented with Derry Girls, he “knew it was going to make a big impression”.
“Good writing just stands out a mile,” he said. “Every word of that character was written by Lisa McGee and when I read it I just thought, ‘I wish I'd written that’. I couldn't have improved a word of it, it's just so spot on.”
McAleer acknowledges that Uncle Colm is “not that far removed from my own style of delivery”, and at shows over recent years, he often does “a few lines clarifying that I'm not Uncle Colm”.
“I explain in a very droll, tongue-in-cheek way exactly how different we are,” he said in that same Irish News interview.
Indeed it appears that from early on in the creation of Derry Girls, Uncle Colm had been earmarked for McAleer.
“I wrote Uncle Colm and then my exec producer said, ‘Well, obviously that’s Kevin McAleer’,” Derry Girls creator Lisa McGee told The Irish Times. “And I said ‘Oh my God, of course. It’s so clearly Kevin.’ So we asked Kevin, and he filmed himself and it was absolutely hysterical.”
Inspirations
McAleer’s comedy is indeed hysterically funny, not solely because of its absurdism, but also because of how deadpan and matter of fact McAleer’s delivery is. In his stage persona, the Tyrone man seems to believe that what he is telling you is absolutely true, and a perfectly natural, everyday occurrence.
He cites his comedy inspirations as Monty Python and the eccentric Scottish poet, songwriter, and humorist, Ivor Cutler. Not surprisingly, the Irish absurdist comic novelist, Flann O’Brien, is another key influence.
The roots of McAleer’s stand-up began in school, with the comedy routines he and a school pal used to make up.
“Me and him used to exchange these surreal bits of stream-of-consciousness stuff,” he told The Irish Times. “I remember the English teacher, a very straight-talking Christian Brother, but not one of the psychopaths, he picked up one of these and he looked at it and went ‘Hmmm.’ That was my first review.”
From Nighthawks to today
McAleer began his comedy career in 1981, playing venues throughout Dublin and London, but things really took off when Anne Enright, then an RTÉ producer, now a Booker Prize-winning novelist, saw him perform and snapped him up for Shay Healy’s Nighthawks show - which many older comedy fans at this year’s festival will remember, and which was probably the first place most of them saw McAleer.
For younger audiences, Derry Girls was their introduction to the man, and indeed many of them were surprised to learn of his ‘living legend of Irish stand-up’ status.
"With Derry Girls it was fantastic to get noticed more, and for more people to come to the gigs,” he told the Belfast Telegraph. “That's really my bread and butter, but Derry Girls was highly enjoyable too and it's a very easy character for me to play.”
The 2022 Galway Comedy Festival is where McAleer’s fans from across the generations will be able to enjoy his eternally funny and timeless brand of pure balderdash, and Galway is a place McAleer likes coming to. As told the Belfast Telegraph:
“Galway will feel like a holiday. You couldn't call that working by any stretch of the imagination, there's too much fun going on.”
Kevin McAleer : Why Am I Here in the Róisín Dubh on Saturday October 29.
Kevin will also be part of a mixed bill show with Reginald D HUnter, Colin Murphy and others in the Black Box Theatre on Sunday October 30.
Tickets are on sale via www.galwaycomedyfestival.ie
