David O'Doherty: Pioneer Spirit

It’s the last night of a poorly-run comedy festival in Ireland when we catch up with David O’Doherty. Schedule shuffling and cancellations have put him on stage nearly three hours late and he comes out to a hostile crowd; but a few minutes of his lo-fi charm quickly win the audience back. Afterwards, he’s exhausted and despite the gale-force laughter from the crowd, he says he won’t be sure if the show worked until he listens back to a recording.

“I have no idea what other people find funny, that's my greatest weakness. Sometimes I write a joke and think 'That’s it, take the rest of the month off, O'Doherty.' Then I do it onstage, do it, maybe smugly take a sip of water at the end. Then there's silence and all I can hear is the sound of my own swallowing.”

This isn’t self-deprecation, but the thought process of a guy who’s battled hard to get to where he is. O’Doherty’s success has been a long time in the making, especially at the Edinburgh festival where he became an overnight success after years of abject failure.

His first Fringe ended in triumph when he won the 1999 So You Think You’re Funny prize, beating fellow finalists Josie Long, Andy Zaltzman, Russell Howard and Jimmy Carr. “I still lord it up over them a bit, like when I’m sending Josie a birthday card I’ll sign it ‘Winner of So You Think You’re Funny 1999’. The five of us were sharing a flat together for the Fringe. We were only kids, I was 23 and Josie was just 16. After that, I was offered me a solo show for the following year. I said, ‘Yeah sure, I’ve got six minutes of material. Why not?’”

The resulting show was The Boy Who Saved Comedy, an hour-long spoken word piece about Christmas crackers. O’Doherty cringes a little when it’s mentioned. “I listened to a tape of it recently and it’s terrible. It’s quite brave in what it tries to do, but it bombed about fifty per cent of the time.

“The night I’ll never forget is when there were only five people in. They had all won tickets on Forth FM and they all walked out, as a group. I didn’t know what the etiquette was of playing to an empty room, should I go on or should I stop? I just burst into tears on the stage. The soundman came down and gave me a hug and took me for a pint.”

The show wasn’t a total waste of time, earning O’Doherty a Best Newcomer nomination and introducing him to people like Flight Of The Conchords, Ross Noble and the person who he regards as the greatest comedian of all, Daniel Kitson. He returned in 2002, playing keyboards for the Conchords while hanging around with people like Kitson and John Oliver. “We were all a bit lost and we were all kind of doing our own thing, but by sticking to their guns all of those people built up a following.”

His 2002 show, Small Things, set the template for every Fringe show he’s done since then, but it did have one thing in common with his debut – empty seats. O’Doherty can laugh about it now. He leans back and says in his best Steve Coogan impression, “In 2000, no-one came. In 2002, no-one came. In 2004, someone did come, but then in 2005 no-one came again. You know, I laugh when I hear some people saying ‘Oh, I’ve had a tough year in Edinburgh’. I played the same room for three years to nobody. It’s hard work and you’re either in it for the long haul or not at all.”

Playing to empty rooms at the Fringe is a rite of passage for every stand-up, but there are other factors that could have turned O’Doherty off comedy. In the 90s, his brother Mark was at the forefront of the vibrant Irish stand-up scene and star of cult sketch show Couched, before deciding to walk away from comedy altogether. “Back then,” says O’Doherty, “I used to go to comedy clubs in Dublin and be inspired by people like Barry Murphy and Kevin Gildea. There was a door-split culture in those days, so people could experiment without worrying about impressing some promoter. I think when you’re taking risks like that, you’re more prone to getting these long, dark nights of the soul where you wonder just what it is you’re doing. And you either say, ‘Nah, fuck this’, like my brother did or you think, ‘No, I’m going to do it’.”

O’Doherty did stick with it, carving out an audience for himself one fan at a time. His Fringe show evolved, sticking to the same basic format of stand-up mixed with whimsical songs on his trusty Casio keyboard. Finally, in 2008, the show reached critical mass as Let’s Comedy beat Rhod Gilbert, Russell Kane and Kirsten Schaal to the if.comedy award.

Normally that’s the point when people bail out and try to land a sitcom, but O’Doherty has kept returning. “The show develops every year,” he says. “My keyboard can really only do two things, slow jams and up-tempo funk, but I still find a lot of interesting things to do within that. I'm torn between these polar opposites, wanting to write something that moves people like an Arab Strap song, but also wanting to write really stupid jokes like Mitch Hedburg. I've been trying to figure that out for the last 8 years.”

In 2011, O’Doherty is also planning a second show which will bring him full circle. Rory Sheridan’s Tales of The Antarctica is “the thing I’ve done that’s most like The Boy Who Saved Comedy” and sees him play a not-so-intrepid explorer recounting the story of his 1917 expedition to the South Pole. It was inspired by his admiration for Ernest Shackleton who grew up just a few streets away from O’Doherty.

“I used to play football in Herbert Park which would have been Shackleton’s park. I used to wonder, what would make a person growing up in a boring part of Dublin say, “I think I’ll go to the South Pole.” My show is about a man who didn't want to go to Antarctica but did it to impress a girl. Through a series of deaths he ends up becoming a leader, knowing nothing about it but sort of bluffing.”

He talks about the Antarctic show with the enthusiasm and nervousness of a Fringe debutant and you can see how glad he is to be taking a risk. “The point of Edinburgh is not launching yourself to the industry,” he says. “It's pushing yourself to do stuff.” At a time when the Fringe is starting to resemble a giant panel show audition, those are inspiring words.

Before we go, he gives us his top tips for the 2011 Fringe. “I gigged with Hannibal Buress in the States recently and I cannot recommend him highly enough. His presence will raise the whole festival. Joe Wilkinson is doing his first show, and then there's Claudia's [O’Doherty – no relation] show What is Soil Erosion? They're all going to be brilliant."

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More on David O'Doherty and Edinburgh Fringe Festival:

Come Flyer With Me: David O'Doherty / David O'Doherty: Let's Comedy / David O'Doherty: David O'Doh-Party / David O'Doherty: Rory Sheridan's Tales Of The Antarctica / David O'Doherty: Seize the David O'Doherty / David O'Doherty at Edinburgh Fringe Review / David O'Doherty at The Fringe