But doing stand-up began to feel like a treadmill. So he branched out into acting and co-wrote Black Books with Graham Linehan, the co-creator of Father Ted. Then came The Actors. ‘I enjoyed the fact that I had so much less responsibility. I could go home at night, just switch off and think, “Right, I have to run down a hill tomorrow or I have to dress up in that silly clobber.” At this point there’s another great fit of coughing and he takes up his Marlboros and lights a cigarette and comments on how ‘very, very rude’ it is of the tobacco companies to have “Smoking Kills” in thick black type across the box. He looks wide-eyed and says, ‘Urban myth, you know.’ Then, after more coughing, adds: ‘I’m trying to be healthy. I’m available for all kinds of stunt work.’
From his casual delivery, you might think that Moran just shuffled his way through his twenties and miraculously found himself famous. But he admits that ‘there are periods of intense activity – and then there is wandering eating cheese toasties for a couple of months.’ And when he is working, he becomes entirely engrossed. ‘You can’t not think about it all the time. It’s completely consuming. It has to be.’
He also has, it seems, a certain inner drive. After filming The Actors Moran began to miss doing comedy. ‘Something was annoying me and I had no idea what it was. I was walking round the house and opening cupboards and staring at them, or forgetting what it was I went outside for. It took me ages to cotton on to the fact that I hadn’t done stand-up and that that was what I needed to do.’
So he went back on the road, touring everywhere, except London. He doesn’t seem to like London. In 1998 he moved to Edinburgh where his not-to-be-discussed wife comes from. The Scots, says Moran, are very akin to the Irish, and he enjoys the quirks of the city. ‘There’s the Morningside lady contingent – it’s absolutely hysterical. People complaining about the price of pots of tea in hotels and so on and storming off in high dudgeon with their purple cats under their arms.’
And living up north has the added bonus of irritating others. ‘People don’t want you to live anywhere else but London. And they like to have your mobile phone number so they can check wherever you are, and they can ring you at 11 pm to talk drivel about whatever it is you are supposed to have done for them and say, “Why are you late?” or “Where is it?” That’s all people use mobile phones for – to complain at each other.’
He pauses. He looks – as so often – as if he is about to burp. Then he says, a little portentously: ‘Nowadays I’m very aware of my demise.’
At first I mishear – Moran’s
pronunciation is a little bleary. He repeats the sentence and this time I disbelieve
him. How can this fresh-faced young man have such a worry? ‘There was a
time when you could fling a curry in first thing in the morning, then go for
a ten mile jog. All that’s over. Not that I ever jogged.’ He smiles
beatifically, and says, ‘All my organs seem to scream in a unanimous howl.
My body is revolting on me. It is mutiny. The hangovers have become far more
devious. In the old days you at least knew you had one, because it used to wake
you up and you’d feel like death all day. But then you get a bit older.
You wake up and you think you feel OK for about ten minutes. And then you go
into the kitchen, and the hand of pain slips into your bowels and grips you
with its icy fingers and then it’s much, much worse. It’s unimaginable.
Suddenly it sidles up to you and puts its arm round you and gives you this frozen
kiss. You are there – f___ed. All day. Several days.’ Moran is now
animated, ending his peroration with a triumphant smile. There is nothing like
sickness and dissolution – particularly his own – to bring a bloom
to his cheeks. He thrives on recklessness. So, too, does his career, for there
is a certain appeal to dissipated, iconoclastic young men. Of course, in the
real world, they lose this when the hard-living takes its toll. But Moran has
ten, maybe 15 years to burn dangerously. Fewer, if he doesn’t get rid of
that cough. As Moran gets up to go I ask if he sees himself
becoming an actor. No, he says, he definitely a comic. He can’t unbecome
a comic. As for the big screen, he’s not that bothered. ‘I dunno,’
he shrugs, ‘I could get sucked in and blown out rapidly. Or this might
be a huge success and I could be the reigning prince of cinema for the next
60 years. Somehow I doubt it.’
And then he shuffles out the door. Cough, cough, cough.