manchester
entertainment
comedy
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Thursday, 20th
February 2003
Dylan
Moran's monster
Marissa
Burgess
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Dylan
Moran |
DYLAN Moran’s tour
manager finds him difficult to get hold of. Moran, despite living in the middle
of nowhere in Scotland, has no telephone, mobile or otherwise. He gets in touch
from a phone box where Moran’s final words are usually (adopt a soft Irish
burr), “Feck, I’m running out of change, I’ll call you back.”
Moran’s
belligerent rejection of conventional forms of communication is typical of the
comedian. He rarely does interviews, not in a fit of primadonna pique but simply
because he doesn’t like them. He’s a very private man.
However we can
glean something about him. He grew up in the small town of Navan in County
Meath, Ireland, which is, coincidentally, the same town as Tommy Tiernan (maybe
it’s something in the water supply).
He began stand up
1992, the following year won Channel 4’s So You Think You’re Funny competition
then three years later won the
Perrier.
Telly
Since he’s hit the big time, his
telly projects have been chosen carefully. His own project, co written with
Graham Lineham of Father Ted fame, is the gloriously off the wall Black Books.
Playing the
misanthropic bookshop owner Bernard Black, you couldn’t help but wonder how
biographical Moran’s character was, though maybe without the bit where he
bullies Bill Bailey.
When someone else
wrote a part for him, it was Simon Nye in his whimsical How Do You Want Me?
where Moran once again appeared to play himself, a bumbling, mumbling
Irishman.
His shows are, inevitably and delightfully, as random as the
man himself. Usually fuelled by a several bottles of Chardonnay and numerous
packs of B&H, the interval is for him to refuel rather than the audience.
Like the best in the business, he will muse for hours on absolutely anything.
On the occasion
that I saw him last, he ruminated on an unconventional but far more
practical spec for the human body and as ever it was difficult to see where the
ad-libbing stopped and the pre-planned material began – that’s if he actually
had any in the first place.
Dylan Moran brings his Monster Tour
to Bolton Octagon on Thursday, February 27.
