Dylan Moran talked with Lizzie Enfield

There’s an edge to Dylan Moran’s live stage show, which comes from its unpredictability. As he wanders distractedly around the stage, accompanied by a packet of cigarettes and several bottles of wine (which disappear at an alarming rate) musing on anything from modern technology to global diplomacy, he veers off on seemingly unconnected tangents, before returning to the point - or not.Sometimes the point, if there ever was one, is lost altogether - at times, in a myriad of words, on a new more inspiring subject which sees Moran pacing the stage, spitting his words out and brandishing his drink - at others, it’s simply lost in an uneasy silence which quells the audiences raucous laughter, replacing it with a knot of anxiety.He’s even been known to take a little lie down on stage, leaving the audience wondering if he’s ever to going get up again. Whether deliberate or genuine, this constant change in tempo gives a roller coaster ride. At one moment you’re laughing ‘till your sides split, the next sitting nervously, on the edge of your seat as Moran teeters at the edge of the stage, inexplicably at a loss for words. His new show is, according to his promoter, jam packed with new material, according to himself: “It deals with inter-governmental crisis in Corsica between 1986 and 1987 while, after the interval, I demonstrate the pitfalls of gargling with ground glass in a wind tunnel. There’s a good deal of strobe lighting throughout, hence the popularity of the show with the over eighty-fives.”

Technically, none of this is true but you get the picture. With two successful TV Sitcoms under his belt, How Do You Want Me and Black Books, and a major film role in the can, one can’t help wondering why Moran has chosen to spend the winter, flogging up and down Britain’s motorways in order to put himself through the ordeal of two hours in front of a live audience; “Being on screen is all very well,” drawls Moran. “But there’s nothing like roaring into a strangers face to make you feel alive.” The tour follows a summer spent filming The Actors, a comedy in which Moran stars opposite Michael Caine. The film is due to be released next spring and will no doubt prompt increased interest in Moran as a person rather than in his work, an interest which he has no desire to feed. He’s built a reputations as being notoriously difficult to interview: - “Misanthropic and arsey....” “A bit like getting toothache...,”

“His emotional range runs form guarded to reticent.....” but claims it’s all nonsense: “I love interviews. Anyone can interview me on my website at www.goaway.com.uk or simply jump off Beachy Head, where I’ll be waiting beneath on the strand.” Since he’s reluctant to give anything about himself away (he was once asked by a member of the audience if he was married to which he replied “I am,” and then, in a tone which suggested he was divulging an official secret, he added “to a woman”), it leaves you wondering if any clues to his identity can be discovered in his stage and screen personas. If Bernard Black, the drunken, dysfunctional, customer hating owner of a bookshop who Dylan created for his award winning television sitcom Black books is a version of Moran’s stage persona, then it leads one to conclude that the stage persona is not so far removed from the real thing. He has his own theory about this: ““Bernard equals stage persona squared, minus the Y (actual self), to the power of ten, to the variable Q, allowing the inverse of Q to be the vector of potentiality after eating too many prawn crackers...”

Moran certainly gives the impression, as he shambles around the stage, his mad hair and dishevelled appearance making him appear much older than thirty, of having strayed from the bar onto the stage and, having found himself there, thought it as good a place as any from which to launch his humorous missiles on the bizarre complexities of modern life - an impression he’s not at pains to dispel; “It started as a child, when I began to climb onto chairs whenever a question was addressed to me; “Where are all the biscuits etc.” I then progressed onto wardrobes and eventually roof elevations.....”This form of suburban mountaineering culminated in him conquering several peaks in the Stand Up Comedy range, including winning the Perrier Award in 1996 at The Edinburgh Festival, as well as the Channel 4 sponsored newcomers comedy competition So You Think You're Funny, in 1993. Black Books won a BAFTA for Best Sitcom in 2001 and a Bronze Rose at The Montreux Festival in the same year. Following these achievements have come various attempts by hapless interviewers and media studies students, hell bent on deconstructing comedy (a contradiction in terms if ever there was one), to define Moran’s particular, inimitable brand of humour.

He’s very very funny in a bizarre unquantifiable way but is he trying to make any social point with his jibes at the way we are?“No,” he says laughing at the very idea that someone like him might have a point to make “I’m absolutely not....”