On cats

From Live At The Apollo 2011

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Ed Byrne: Crowd Pleaser
Live Review

Crowd-pleaser is a double-edged sword. For a comedian, that’s pretty much the job description, but it’s not breaking any secrets to admit us critics often use it in a more backhanded way, to suggest an act who’s pressing the audience’s buttons but doesn’t do much creatively.

Well, Ed Bryne’s new offering is definitely a Ronseal show. But does it do what it says in the title with easy, unchallenging, observational shtick? Well, yes, a bit – but there’s also humour here that transcends the comfortable origins of the material.

Much of the show revolves around just three things that he has: a wife, a baby son and a pet cat. This is about as domestic as you can get, yet he manages to see new things in these much-analysed, universal topics. His take on the was his Missus demands household chores be done might not push the envelope, but he finds a nice hook on which to hang it all, while the routine about why we like cats more than people, unpromising as that premise might seem, actually produces a virtuoso routine even non-cat owners will identify with.

Babies are often seen as the creative kiss of death for comedians, and indeed Byrne’s talk of his seven-month-old is all puke, shit and piss – although he focussing on the pressure with which these secretions are emitted, rather than their foul content, so it doesn’t feel as if we’ve heard this particular angle before.

Yes, sometimes he doesn’t try too hard. After all, he gets a laugh by saying ‘Piers Morgan, who’s a cock…’ so why struggle for left-field insight? Some of the vaguely topical pieces about the Coalition government and the Irish attitude to immigration seem a little mundane, and he perhaps oversells a weird encounter with the now-dead Star Trek actor Paul Wingfield.

This comes as part of a section where he flaunts his nerd credentials – nerd as in liking sci-fi and video games, rather than actually understanding science – and there’s a nice flourish to the way he teases fellow geeks in the audience with the pedantry he knows they are feeling.

Talking of which, he applies such finicky principles to a T-shirt he saw a young teenager wearing – the second routine about age-inappropriate clothing he spotted in an airport in as many shows; but just as funny as the first.

Crowd Pleaser doesn’t have the benefit of the same strong, central theme that his last tour Different Class was built around; but it’s founded on robustly solid routines, with enough smart flourishes to avoid the predictable. You will be entertained.

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Saw Ed at 'Jason Byrne and friends' charity gig in Edinburgh. He started on his material, but tripped, which got a big laugh. So he then decided to ditch the rest of his material and spend his timeslot falling over. It was hilarious. He repeatedly tripped himself up, fell over a stool, off a table, some of the funniest physical comedy I'd seen. On a night full of superb comics, he still managed to stand out as something special.

Alsion, September 2004

Ed Byrne is a man with a hatred of stupid people, an abhorrence of violence (because he s not very good at it) a dislike of pikeys and a penchant for rudeness. Put all this together and you have a 32 year-old irate Irishman on stage performing some delightfully dark satire. Even when he s stringing together impressive numbers of expletives and obscenities I didn t feel that he ever lost the audience. But perhaps that's because Byrne quite simply exudes an effortless charm. Only occasionally did he stray away from lighter comedy into the territory of topical political humour. And when he did it was soft enough as to be accessible to all.

Kevin Stanley, September 2004

Topped the bill at Late & Live. Jokes made me laugh the first time but second/third/fourth airing over as many years...time for some new material? Imagine he'd be a great find for a new listener but would be good to see all the praise propel Ed toward a creative burst and spew up some new gags. It is his job afer all.

Janey, August 2004

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