Manus Mannion'scurmudgeonly diary entries from the year before he turns 40 concern his ongoing tribulations in the creative sphere, rants about his life in Dublin, tales about domestic glitches with his slightly neurotic girlfriend from Liechtenstein and bizarre memories of growing up.
He attempts to begin a career in comedy as a teenager, and in later years meets up with a disgruntled comedy colleague, in two extracts from The Creative Lower Being, a new comic novel by Karl MacDermott
FEBRUARY 10TH: 285 DAYS TO GO
. . . Where else could I learn the craft of stand-up comedy? The opportunities in Galway in the late 1970s were minimal. In those days there were no comedy venues and there were very few comedians. The odd dicky bow merchant who, in real life, sold insurance, might be able to wrangle a gig doing hoary old jokes and a raffle at his local golf club once a month, but that was it. And it was impossible to break into that circuit.
But what about the other circuit, I thought. In those days, for entertainment in more rural areas, people would sit in, invite a few friends round to their house, have a few drinks around the fireplace and listen to an old Irish storyteller called a seanchaí entertain them. Desperate to gain experience in front of a live audience I came up with a novel idea for work. I would become a warm-up man for the seanchaí. My uncle Jim, mother's brother from Loughrea, knew a distant neighbour who was planning to have a seanchaí around to his house the following weekend.
I pressurised mother to ask uncle Jim to ask his neighbour whether it could be possible for me to do five minutes of jokes before the seanchaí came out. Mother was very worried about my infatuation with the world of comedy . . .
Eventually, uncle Jim arranged everything. My very first gig was the following Saturday night. Mother would drive me there. I was set on my way. All I had to do now was come up with an act. I did not have the time to write five minutes so I would have to steal material . . .
This particular Wednesday afternoon, I went over to the comedy section [of the record shop]. Sadly, there wasn't that much to choose from. It was either Cheech and Chong, the Goons or George Burns. I decided against Cheech and Chong because I felt that hippy, drug-related humour might not work with a seanchaí's natural audience. I'd heard the Goons on the radio the odd time and liked what I had heard, but they were English, and there were still many unreconstructed Brit-haters out there, especially in rural areas. So it had to be the octogenarian Jewish-American humour of George Burns.
That night I listened to the record. It was very funny. I was thrilled. Before going to bed, I replayed it many times and started feverishly transcribing some of the best one-liners. The rest of the week flew by. Suddenly it was Saturday teatime. I stared at the mirror in my bedroom and said the line: "People ask me do I have trouble having sex standing, and I say, at my age I have trouble standing." Somehow it seemed funnier with George saying it. I tried delivering it a different way. It still wasn't as funny as George.
I then realised I had a serious problem. Ninety per cent of George Burns's act dealt with being 81.
I was 16.
Clutching at straws, I looked on the bright side. Some of my audience tonight might be 81, I thought, so they will be able to relate to George's routine. But he's old and from New York and Jewish, and they are old and from Co Galway and Irish. Same planet. Different worlds. Who am I kidding? I can't make these people laugh, I can't compete with Paudeen Dan, the seanchaí! They'll be expecting a certain type of thing. I was crazy to think I could succeed in the first place I've got to call it off. I'll get mother to ring uncle Jim. To tell him I can't do it. I became hysterical. I ran downstairs and into the kitchen. Mother was setting the table.
"I can't do it, ring them, cancel it."
Normally in a story like this, the mother would tell the cowardly son that he has to do it, he can't run away from things all his life. She would then add that it was his idea in the first place, and did he ever think he might be letting people down. Then she would say that at first she was against his dream of being a comedian, but now she realises it's what he really wants, but the only way he'll learn to be a successful comedian is to get out there in front of people, even if they are very old, deaf, senile people from Loughrea. Then she would finish her speech by telling him that she is disappointed in him and did he never hear the old adage "the show must go on". But that speech didn't happen. All she said was "thank God", and ran into the diningroom to ring uncle Jim.
*****
SEPTEMBER 26TH: 57 DAYS TO GO
I had headed into town to finally meet "the step-uncle of Irish comedy", Dinny Bruce, in a greasy cafe off O'Connell Street . . .
Dinny told me he had finally quit performing as a stand-up comedian. There are too many comedians today in Ireland, he claimed. It is a ridiculous problem. He wondered what can be done about it? How can we, as a nation, ensure that in 20 years' time their number hasn't multiplied even further?
Dinny wants to stamp out this scourge right now. He has obviously given the situation a lot of thought because he has even formulated a plan. Firstly, primary and secondary school teachers must play their part. All over the country at the start of the school year, members of the teaching community must be vigilant and root out the class clown in each of their classes. Once the class clowns have been identified in the individual schools, their names must be forwarded to the Department of Health.
The Department of Health will send these class clowns to a team of child psychologists. The psychologist will sit each individual child down and try to find the core reason for his or her need to create laughter, his or her need for approval and their craving to be the centre of attention. All of the time. After an intensive six-week course of therapy the child will be returned to class a perfectly normal inoffensive young person. The tab will be paid by the taxpayer.
But in the long run these psychotherapy sessions will enormously benefit Ireland as a society because, Dinny insists, we as a community will be spared future generations of Irish stand-up comedians on some digital television channel spewing forth their predictable puerile unoriginal comic observations. I nodded silently.
Or those same comedians, he continued, appearing on one of those interchangeable panel shows, at some future date, and engaging in "the Dubious Art of Disposable Sneering" as they labour to come up with something "witty" and "amusing" about the week's events.
I tried to change the topic but Dinny was on a roll . . .
Dinny then told me how glad he was to be finished with performing and started jabbering on about how wonderful it is to write for the radio, and how it was always something he wanted to do. Sure Dinny. Keep talking. I'll try not to laugh. He asked me had I ever thought about giving it a try. No I hadn't, I said. He wondered why not. I kept quiet. Didn't want to dampen his misguided enthusiasm by sharing with him my theory on writing for the radio. The fact that it is a "down the list" thing to do. It is something one does, for negligible money, while trying to do other things. More important things. It is never a priority. I have never heard somebody at 16 announce, "My greatest ambition in life is to be a radio writer!"
It is something unfulfilled, lonely accountants or mothers of five from Laois do, to cater for their "artistic" side.
Still enthused, Dinny began to tell me his radio sitcom idea. Dinny maintains that all great sitcoms have characters trapped in enclosed areas, and that the comedy comes out of how these characters relate to each other in that confined environment.
Dinny wants to set his radio sitcom in a nose. You cannot get more enclosed than that, is his logic. The two main characters will be nostrils, side by side. He is also thinking of bringing in a cantankerous next-door neighbour character called Mr Phlegm, who is always causing trouble.
It will be ideal for radio, he claims, because the listeners will be able to create the images in their own minds.
The Creative Lower Being, by Karl MacDermott, is published by Killynon House Books