Circuit Training 73: Bouncing Back, with Jason Byrne

It was around this time last year that Jason Byrne's sitcom, Father Figure, ended its now infamous run on BBC One. Take a look back at the (generally pretty excruciating) reviews for it and there's often a bewildered confusion about how such a terrific stand-up could make something so... well, it hasn't been repeated or recommissioned, let's put it that way. Such debacles do tend to happen in the choppy waters of TV comedy, as Byrne elaborates lengthily below.

Not that it's done him much harm. The effervescent Dubliner is back with a promising new show on Irish TV that you wouldn't be surprised to see popping up on UK screens sometime soon, such is the splendidly simple, making-proper-use-of-his-talents-this-time premise. And there's a UK tour, of his latest Edinburgh hit, You Name The Show, which as the (lack of) name suggests, has an entertainingly novel twist.

I got hold of Byrne in Harrogate, as he mooched around pre-gig, looking for food...

It must be an odd change of scene, doing a show in Edinburgh with all your mates around, then these slightly lonely tours?

It totally is. But I'm having almost quantum leaps this month: I'm recording a TV show in Ireland Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Then Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, is the tour and also between all that I've got to train for the New York City Marathon on the 2nd of November.

Ouch. So what's the TV show?

It's called Jason Byrne's Snaptastic Show. I did a show in Edinburgh years ago where I just had pictures of myself as a kid, and I did stand-up on it, it was just great. So this show is like a chat show, I bring in my pictures as a kid and do stand-up on it, three celebs bring in their pictures as kids, and I interview them about their photos. They never talk about their books or their gigs or their television shows. They just talk about themselves as kids, and what they did when they were younger, and we just fucking have such a laugh.

That's the basis of it, but there's a live audience there, and they bring in pictures of themselves, and we go through them, so I might get a photo of an audience member and go 'do you remember what happened in the background there?' and they say 'no', so we have a sketch group that re-enacts what happened, dressed exactly the same. We have games as well, that I play with the audience and celebrities. It's like Graham Norton meets Don't Forget Your Toothbrush.

With a bit of Who Do You Think You Are?

Yeah, but no tears, we don't really give a bollox about that. But it's interesting, when a celeb comes in and sees themselves blown up on the big screen, they start to see more stuff in the picture, 'I never noticed that.' It's one of the favourite shows I'll ever do on television because it's letting me be who I am, pretty loose. Hopefully we'll bring it here, because it's a very simple idea.

So did it evolve directly from that Edinburgh show?

I did that Edinburgh three or four years ago and what I did, the boss of TV3, he was calling in loads of people saying 'what type of show would you like to do?', I put my picture down as a five year old, my first school photo, my glasses are crooked, my eye is turned in, and my hair's on one side. And he said 'I don't give a fuck what your shows about, if it's anything like that, you can have it.'

Blimey, that was easy. So what sort of guests are you getting on?

Andrew Maxwell's gonna do it, John Bishop, Sarah Millican, Johnny Vegas. It's in Ireland so it's quite hard for them to get over, they're busy, but they've all been very good. I'm calling in all the favours.

Could you show it in the UK as it is, or would it need to be remade?

I think it could definitely stand alone, the English may choose to make it again only on the basis that they could probably get me bigger guests, but the bigger the guest, the least funny they are I always find. If they wanted to bring in soap stars and all that - I don't fucking know who they are.

It's certainly been up and down with you and the broadcasters: didn't the radio show get a nice award a few years back?

We got a Sony gold award for The Jason Byrne Show. I wanted to move from there onto the television, do that show: it was themed, so we did sketches and stand-up in front of the audience and it just worked really well. So then they said 'oh, would you write a sitcom instead', so I wrote a sitcom for the radio and that went really well. Then we put it on telly and it blew up! Ha!

I didn't ever catch it, but remember thinking what a great cast you had: Pauline McLynn, Michael Smiley, Peter Serafinowicz...

Well, yeah - the unfortunate thing was, I think there were just too many bosses, and I was given too many bad directions. They kept saying it was for family, and then they said it wasn't, then it was, so on set we were almost changing lines to suit families, then not suit families. But then what they did was put it out at half ten on a Wednesday night and said it was for the family!

Whereas you were now aiming for the pre-Doctor Who Saturday evening slot?

Yeah, and basically it was a brand new sitcom so all it needed was a second series, correct a few things, do this and that. They never repeated it, they just didn't let it grow. I don't really understand why not. That's just television. The guy who was looking after our show moved onto a different position.

That's a fairly common factor in series that don't work out. Still, at least you got it made...

Yeah, I did, and I loved elements of the show, they just should've let me go more mad. They reeled me in a bit, they didn't want another Mrs Brown's Boys, or anything racy at all. That's what kind of did us in as well: 'we need it to be completely clean, and nice, and BBC,' and I was like 'ah, for fucks sake, ok.' But my plan is to revisit it again, get famous and successful in a different TV show, like Snaptastic, and then go back.

You can take heart from a few other things that had bad first seasons - Blackadder, Only Fools And Horses, Sir Alex Ferguson...

Ha! But yeah, I learned so much from the first series, I learned that we needed more writers in, who'd done sitcoms before, more producers. You just need a bigger team. Like The Simpsons do, a lot of help. And the second series we would've gone, 'we'd do that again, we won't do that again.'

I've just been reading Rupert Everett's second book of memoirs, which includes a great chapter on his disastrous sitcom. The process can really drive you nuts.

If you look at Mrs Brown's Boys, which is basically 1970s jokes in loads of those episodes, what happened was the whole public just decided that they were gonna like it. Because the BBC had no intentions of it being that successful. The clever thing that Brendan has done, he's got loads of 1970s jokes, the people who used to tell them are all dead, the people who used to listen to those jokes haven't heard them for 30 years, and all the young people, they've never heard them. So they're all going 'this guys a genius!'

I know Brendan, and he should just wear a t-shirt saying 'I don't give a bollox' - he just doesn't care. Would you care when you've got that all that money piled up in front of you?

Back to the tour then - how did this new show come about?

I've been doing stand-up for 20 years and you get bored, so this is so dangerous, this idea. I've got a wheel with loads of different stand-up on it, and stunts, but I've no idea what order it's gonna come in. So you know when you do stand-up, a lot of your stories, it's best if this story follows that story. But that's not the case with this.

So how are you finding it?

I'm loving it, it keeps me on my toes, and the audience - it's chaos in the room! I have an encore, and sometimes I have it at the start of the night - so it says encore, I go off, 'more, more,' and I come back on - there's loads of silly things like that. But, no, it's working really well, because they can see where the improv is happening, where the stories and stunts are.

Plus I give you whiteboards, so three members of the audience will write down a title for the show during a gig, and at the end we choose one name, that goes up on the board, then at the end of the tour I pick my favourite and they win a few bob.

What was the best one from Edinburgh?

One that got a round of applause was 'We thought it was Ed Byrne - Gutted.'

So how do you find these regional gigs? Dara O Briain's round-Britain book was interesting, how it's difficult to get people going in some places - do you find that?

Nah, I've chosen this tour really carefully. Last night I was in Sheffield, and Ross Noble was on in the other room, and because our intervals were at the same time, I said 'Here Ross, go into my audience when I introduce myself.' So I said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, Jason Byrne' and Ross ran on, stood on the stage and went, 'Hiya, it's good to be... oh fuck, wrong room!' and ran out.

For more details of Jason's tour, visit www.jasonbyrne.ie