Circuit Training 8: Post-Fringe Benefits

Having bagged himself a coveted Best Newcomer nomination at this year's Edinburgh Comedy Awards, Carl Donnelly is already enjoying the extra foot-in-the-door status such an honour brings. Sadly most judges would probably have been safely tucked up in bed while Donnelly was pushing the comedy envelope further during several late-night shows at the Fringe's infamous caves, or he might even have won. Or been stripped of the nomination altogether.

"I wasn't really in the mood for more jokes, so normally I'd get to the late show and just see what sort of mayhem I could come up with, often to the detriment of the other acts," admits the Londoner, from a hotel room in Leeds (and let's hope no hotel proprietors are reading this, lest he finds himself blacklisted). "There was one night where I set off a fire extinguisher in my own face, into my mouth, because somebody dared me to do it..."

Indeed, Circuit Training watched him whip up some spectacular chaos at the caves one Sunday night at the fest, encouraging one popular young comic to berate another about his sexual proclivities via the public address system, and eventually being forced to intervene as the drunken fools prepared to do battle on stage with items of metal furniture. Rock 'n' roll stand-up? Well, Donnelly does have a bit of metal on his CV, and a dash of hip-hop too...

Have things changed since the Edinburgh nomination?

Yeeeeah, its one of those things where all of a sudden a few more people know who you are in the industry, you just suddenly will have meetings. Whereas before if you had an idea you wanted to pitch for, say, radio, you're pretty much a nobody and you've just got to pitch it, now they're aware of your name, so it's a lot easier, it opens up doors. The downside is, it does mean you have to be funny all the time.

Isn't that your job?

Well, when I started out I won a few new acts competitions, but every time you win something like that, the people that book you off the back of it, you have to really deliver. The old thing's gone of roughing up and being a bit shit and nobody will say anything - the moment you've got some sort of credits then you have to live up to it. It adds a bit of pressure, keeps you on your toes.

It says here you were once on Kerrang Radio...

That was a comedy interview which was an absolute shambles. It was a regular thing where they got some comedians to come in and sit in on the show, with a guy called Tim Shaw who's now on Absolute Radio and I think that programme Balls of Steel. I dunno if anyone likes him but, er, you know those radio shows that pretend to be 'edgy' but the fact is that you can't swear, you can't do anything? The fact that it's supposed to be edgy is them ringing up people and hanging up, and so it's billed as this real late-night edgy show and then it just wasn't at all. I didn't really gel with Tim Shaw.

What about the music on there?

Again, that was a disappointment, because Kerrang Radio you'd think would be real heavy stuff and it was just Foo Fighters - rubbish.

No bursts of Black Sabbath between the gags?

That's what I thought, and then I got there and realised very quickly that it was gonna be an awkward couple of hours.

Now you're supporting a hip-hop/scratch DJ on tour - how did that come about?

My agent, Brett, I think he came up with it as an idea. He sort of knows DJ Yoda and all his people - it was just a wacky idea that was thrown around a few times, and I think, if you've seen Yoda's stuff, there's a lot of comedy in there, so we thought it'd be a great idea to see if it'd work.

Some comics hate doing gigs that are going to be tough, but I've always had this thing since I started out - if someone offers me a gig that could go horribly, in my head I think "I've gotta do this, just to see what happens." Someone will ring up and say "do you want to do a gig at a funeral" and I'll think "I've got to try it, just to see if it could work." You can get a bit lazy.

Any interesting telly experiences yet?

I did a weird show for Comedy Central called Grouchy Young Men, and I wasn't very good on that. They filmed it at nine o'clock in the morning at my house, so literally woke me up, came in and started asking me all these questions. "So do you hate women, how long they take in the bathroom and stuff?" and I was like "er, not really." It was all these things they were trying to make me say that I didn't agree with, so I ended up just being really miserable.

Is it very different, writing your stage stuff compared to writing for TV or radio?

It's quite a hard transition because my stand-up is all based on true stories, and they're almost not written. Something funny will happen to me, I'll go to a little gig and I'll just tell the story on stage having never written it down. Then I'll work back from there, work out the funny bits where people laughed, so it's backwards writing. Writing a sitcom idea, you'd have to actually sit down and write down a narrative. It's such a different thing.

So what have you been pitching?

Little radio bits really. Radio's something I prefer over TV, just for the fact that you don't have to worry about what people think of you: with TV you've got to worry about how you look and I don't really like that feeling. I wouldn't mind doing bits of stand-up on TV but I don't think I could be a presenter, I wouldn't trust myself, because I would definitely say something wrong if it was live. I don't think I'm that sort of comic.

For those DJ Yoda versus Carl Donnelly tour dates, head to Carl's website