LEE RANDALL
lrandal@scotsman.com
THERE’S a tendency, I find, to
conflate Dylan Moran with Dylan Thomas. Mention the comic in passing and a dozen
people spring forward volunteering the names of local pubs where he’s regularly
found tearing into the bevvy with gusto. I’m also told of a time when, fresh
from collecting a gong at a festival awards ceremony, Moran stumbled on to the
stage much the worse for wear. Instead of his usual act - a riff that’s been
likened to jazz improvisation - Moran hid behind the curtain, peering round
occasionally to giggle at the audience.
But if the Welshman and the Irishman are comparable, I suggest it’s not for their love of fermentation but because, like the poet, Moran holds language in high regard and wields words carefully. This is my explanation for Moran’s juddering speech pattern. He doesn’t so much stutter as stagger between words, worrying a syllable endlessly until his mouth catches up with his brain.
I say this with 20-20 hindsight. Legends being what they are, I expected to blow my expense budget plying him with drink and then spend hours trying to decipher slurred speech on a scratchy tape. But Moran choose a morning meeting and a blether over nothing stronger than coffee and nicotine (him) and peppermint tea (me).
Although I’m a fan, I was dreading it, having heard that like his most famous character, Bernard from Black Books, Moran is perennially morose, a reveller in Eyeore-esque gloom. And I’d been warned that, like a spy trained to resist interrogation, Moran anticipates questions with near-psychic finesse, dancing rings around journalists and mordantly pointing out the foolishness of our profession.
The gauntlet thrown down - in my head, if not literally - I decided not to pick it up, but to sidestep it. Questions? We don’t need no stinking questions...
Moran, 31, left Ireland and moved to London in the early-Nineties, but Edinburgh took him to its heart from the word go. In 1993 he won the So You Think You’re Funny competition, and in 1996 he became the youngest person to win the Perrier award. He moved to the city three or four years ago - for reasons he won’t disclose, but which might relate to his partner’s nativity. Moran never discusses his family, though. Moving swiftly along, what’s the best thing about living in Scotland’s capital?
"I can’t think of a more civilised
city," he replies. "It’s very funny as well - both ha ha and peculiar, because
you’ve got two towns, the Old and the New, and I find there’s an almost
Brahmin-like complexity to the snob system. There are so many different degrees
of what is ‘U’ and ‘non-U’ in people’s perceptions. I also think the denizens of
Edinburgh are good at laughing at themselves - Scottish people are in general.
It’s a pre-requisite for sanity, anyway," he says, shrugging.
If he’s not
performing, does he disappear at festival time? "Yeah. You become like any other
resident. You bitch and moan about everything that’s famous about the festival
because it has interrupted your normal beat. Tourists generate money but they’re
a colossal pain in the ass as well. Everybody who makes any money off them
complains about them as soon as they’re gone, but I think they enjoy it as
well."
I suggest there is an element of their taking joy from complaining, explaining that in New York if you don’t complain about how hard life is, you can’t congratulate yourself on surviving there. Moran smiles and runs a hand through his hair, a gesture he’ll repeat hundreds of times. "I read that the basis for survival in New York was - because everyone does complain - how do you entertain people with your complaining? Any four-year-old can complain, but you’ve got to hone it. You’re competing with everybody else."
Astonishingly, Moran’s never been.
"I want to go. I think it’s one of the places you’ve got to see, if you can." No
arguments from this corner, just surprise. Especially as it becomes clear that
Moran is an assiduous student of his craft, and a great fan of American humour.
When asked whose books he consistently re-reads, he immediately names humorist
SJ Perleman. "I’m a very big fan of his. He’s the master for me. I have
something of his in my bag right now.
"I think when people read British
novels now, they say they don’t have the sense of momentum or drama or
consequence. The stakes aren’t so high. America’s where the action is. It’s on
the front line in terms of modern living." It is? "Because the perception is
that life there is so accelerated and intense." Surely that’s only true in the
larger cities? "But the politics, the violence and the threat of everyday
life..." Moran counters.
"The threat of everyday living here
is that you might not be able to park where you want to go. Not that you might
get shot going out to buy a loaf of bread. Those huge American cities signify
the world that everyone in the West is gradually coming to - where you are
oppressed by your environment, or alienated from your environment and the people
around you. Where you’re pitted against one another rather than united in a
community with a common purpose."
Lots of people say Britain is becoming more
like the US, and they’re not paying me a compliment. Would Moran agree it’s true
of Ireland? "It’s a very good example. I lived in Dublin 10 years ago, when it
was referred to by travel writers as a second world country. Unemployment was
high, there was no money in the infrastructure. But there was an unbroken
tradition of community and it was completely homogenous - an island of white
Catholics. Which must have been, at that time, almost unique in Europe. I can’t
imagine what the percentage of ethnics would have been - tiny. Then," he snaps
his fingers, "it’s like any other European country, with people from all over
the world. You went to bed and woke up and your grocer was Chinese.
"Maybe it was the same in Britain in the 1960s, I don’t know. Irish people have an almost mythological reputation for being some of the friendliest people in the world, but they’re also stunningly racist now. It literally happened overnight." Thanks to joining the EU? "Ireland was a huge beneficiary. Where there were no roads, there are highways. Where there were no houses, there are estates. Everyone had money, a job, they were going out. But what had preceded it for hundreds of years was an agriculture-based economy. You had villages and towns, and everybody knew everybody."
