Grumpy young man takes on the world
(Filed: 30/01/2003)

Dominic Cavendish reviews Dylan Moran touring at various venues

At 31, Irish stand-up Dylan Moran has a perverse and hilarious tendency to talk as if he's as old as the hills. His tousle-haired good looks, which have so far adorned two TV series (How Do You Want Me? and Black Books) and will shortly get the big-screen treatment in a new Michael Caine flick, The Actors, may yell "rock-and-roll rebel". His views, however, have much in common with those of a grumbling armchair reactionary.

Consider the dyspeptic material he's peddling on Monster, his latest UK tour. How he shrinks at the youth of today, with their aggressive rap music and their suicidally sharp piercings. How he despises modern culture, mourns the passing of subtlety and fears for the future, when "music will be so loud, you'll only hear it when it stops". While the rest of his generation hastens to embrace technology, Moran can't even fathom the workings of a microphone stand. Drugs? He doesn't need them. ("If I want a rush, I just get out of the chair when I don't expect it.")

 

It's this easy-going, self-depreciating wit that explains why he's packing out houses across the land rather than sitting at home firing off indignant letters to the papers. His curmudgeonliness goes hand-in-hand with native charm. Fogeyish sentiments are simultaneously sharpened and undercut by a combination of nimble intelligence and a wayward delivery that veers between being fearlessly slow, even faux-tipsy, and theatrically indignant. Everything stands 'twixt irony and genuine ire.

 

Anti-yoof though he is, he retains a child's-eye view of the world - manifest in bravura flights of surrealism - as well as a student fondness for poncy words ("quadrangulate") and the showily inventive turn of phrase (a fat American becomes a "manslide"). His putdowns are priceless: "You're a classic Scottish drinking story," he informed one tedious heckler at Brighton's Gardner Arts Centre.

 

Just how disconcerting his approach can be is illustrated by an extraordinary section when he signals his approval for the war in Iraq. "Do you think you could run the United States? You'd be useless," he tells his stunned audience. Stand-ups are so expected to toe the liberal line that right-wing views - even in satirical jest - provide a refreshing shock to the system. Watch out: in stand-up, conservatism looks like becoming the new radicalism.

 

'Monster' continues until Feb 27, including Newcastle Opera House (0191 232 0899) tonight, and Camberley Arts Link (01276 707 600) tomorrow.