Dave's One Night Stand

Stand-up comic Andrew Maxwell talks to British Comedy Guide about headlining Dave's One Night Stand, why Ireland is conducive to creating stand-up comedians, having a gun pointed at him at Area 51, and his plans for 2013...

Hi Andrew. You're headlining Dave's One Night Stand, but not from your home town?

The whole premise of the show is that it's meant to be your home town, but I have the good fortune of growing up in a city that produced a lot of funny men. Dublin had already been used twice before in the series - Jason Byrne in Series 2, and Ardal O'Hanlon in Series 3...

I've been living in London for 18 years and my first ever gig in the UK was in the Hackney Empire, so I've always had a particular ambition to go back to the Empire and try and record something there. So when Dave came along and asked me if I'd do it I was 'yeah, no problem - I'll jump through your fiery hoop', ha ha.

What did it feel like to walk out on the Empire's stage again?

Sublime. Just really great, you know. Sometimes you can be really nervous about to do a big gig, you know... and then other times you're like 'shit I deserve this'. 'I'm already on the podium, I don't care what medal it is'. It was a very happy night!

So what is it about Dublin that it's produced so many top-flight comedians?

'Nonsense'. Laughter is a reaction to institutional nonsense - the North has produced all the nonsense of sectarianism, and the South has produced all the nonsense of the Catholic church running a parallel state. Irish people always have that thing, like 'why are we poor?'... Pretty much no other Western country - if you want to use that term, 'white' if you want to be more crude - no other white people have had to ask themselves that as a nation and individuals. 'Why the hell are we poor?' - do you know what I mean? They are the sort of questions that are inside Irish psyche... and then there's Guinness, which will fuel a lot of nonsense banter. Plus the fact you've got a higher population demographic - everybody grows up in a full household. You've got to get a word in edgeways.

Every culture prizes people who can talk, people who are conversationalists, but in Ireland it's a necessity. You've got to be able to get a word in edgeways, and when you do you've got to be able to hold a conversation down. Even now, in an Irish pub there'll be nothing but cheers and boos. Larger suburban pubs might have a screen to put on the big game, but there aren't fruit machines, there aren't dart boards; there isn't a pool table in most pubs - there isn't stuff that men can do instead of talking. There's just a lot of shite talking to be done in Ireland, and if you've got enough people giving it a go...

When you're a comedian you've got to be funnier than the people already having a good time. Vicar Street, the big theatre in Dublin where I've recorded DVDs - it's quite intimidating because you're behind the curtain and there's 1,000 people already having a great evening - you can hear them, it's loud - you better not interrupt that already pretty good evening - you've got to bring a cherry because they've already got the cake!

That's quite a competitive atmosphere! Which makes us wonder if you got to pick who performed alongisde you on One Night Stand?

Er... There is a list from the station of people who they'd like to have on, and they're looking for me to then pick a couple of people who I've worked with recently and I've got a rapport with. There are, in fact, three guys who support you on the show - there's now a thing called the third spot, which isn't in the TV broadcast but is on Dave's website.

Chris Ramsey and myself were both nominated for the Edinburgh Comedy Award in 2011, and I've done some gigs with him since. I just found him a really nice lad. Really upbeat, funny, and he can do his job. He's a real nice guy and has that sort of open heartedness that people from the North East can really bring to a party.

Pat Cahill I'd seen do some groovy little alternative rooms and I liked his quirky stuff. I particularly love his dog with the lumps song/rap. It is something really interesting and a little bit left field that he is bringing to the party, so it was a delight to have him on the bill.

And then, like I say, there's this third spot... I run this comedy festival out in the Alps called Altitude. We brought this guy out for that - he's an Aussie comic called Benny Boot, and he came to the mountains as a complete unknown but by the end of the week he was like a hero of the festival. All the regulars who were coming on the festival were like 'who is this guy? He's fantastic'. A couple of his punchlines became the running gags of the entire festival. So it was a delight to get him to the telly door, as it were. On the night Benny absolutely smashed it - he really, really took the house down. It's great when you can introduce someone that 99% of that audience would be totally unaware of, and give somebody who is a good guy a break.

We watched some of Conspiracy Road Trip, the TV series in which you took conspiracy theorists on a trip in an effort to tackle the truth about their beliefs. We couldn't work out if that was fun to film or not?

For three of the four it was 10 days and nights in a tour bus travelling around America in the heat, and in each case these people are really interested in the subject, and they talk about it 24/7! So there were incredible highs in each show and we did some amazing things... stuff that I would have never done: meet a chimpanzee, fly a tiny private jet through the Grand Canyon like Air Wolf, blow up a double decker bus... look how much we've all moved on by the way, the BBC trained an Irishman to make his own car bomb!

We also met lots of really interesting scientists and experts in each field... but yeah, overall, there were highs and lows. It was tough to make. They were definitely not easy to make.

You made the news when you were held at gunpoint visiting Area 51...

As we drove away from there not in handcuffs, then it became fun - but at the time it was a dance routine that had gone wrong, my friend. I don't know if you have ever found yourself in a situation where, as a choreographer, one of your dance routines has not been received by said audience in the manner you wanted to. Number 1, you're crushed creatively and Number 2, you're scared because you're sat in the desert with a machine gun pointed at you!

Basically the whole premise, the reason why we were there, is the theorists believed the military had put an alien in prison... I convinced them that there's no way that we were going to be able to meet any such aliens because of the ring of steel da da da, but we could communicate with the aliens through the universal medium of dance...
So we created our own geometric dance routines and we did them at the security gate of Area 51, and no one came out and we got ignored and, as you know, choreography cannot be ignored - dance is bigger than geopolitics! - so we got overexcited and danced under the barrier and then we were technically dancing on American military property and that's when it became a 'situation'.

Well you're back in one piece, so what are your plans for 2013? We hear you've got a new Radio 4 show in the works called Public Enemies?

I can only really tell you it's been commissioned, and we're going to be doing that for Radio 4. The idea is to spend some time with a certain section of society, get to know them, and then gig to them. It's something I've sort of done before with a project I did in Belfast, where I'm the only comedian who has ever gigged to both sides of the peace wall at the same time. I did a gig on the Shankill Road and Falls Road. I also did a gig in a maximum security prison, and it's sort of following on from those sort of projects. Different bits of society that are in the news right now, I hang out with them, and then do a gig to them.

In the meantime, obviously there's Dave's One Night Stand on Wednesday, and I've also just recorded an episode of Alexander Armstrong's Big Ask. I've also recorded a couple of episodes of Set List, the new show for Sky Atlantic, and John Bishop's new Sky1 show [John Bishop's Only Joking]. I've also just made a panel show series for BBC Northern Ireland called Monumental [Maxwell is team captain, with Adam Hills as host, and Jimeoin on the other team], and my comedy festival is on in the spring - Altitude in Mayrhofen in Austria, 18th to 22nd March 2013. So it's all go go go!

Sounds great. Set List - a format where you can't prepare and get obscure topics to joke about - is intense. How did you find it?

That was great. I've done Set List live at the Montreal Comedy Festival, Galway Comedy Festival and Edinburgh Comedy Festival a good few times, and in London at the Soho Theatre, so I knew the show and knew how it worked, and how to play the game...

I recorded an episode in London in Brixton in July and then I recorded another episode out in Hollywood about a month ago now. It's really exciting to play, because you're 'naked'. You'd better be able to come up with the goods because if you're not you're going to get caught really quickly. My comedian friend Simon Evans and I did a late show in Edinburgh this year and he said 'I think it might be Stand-Up Comedy 2.0. It might be the next level of stand-up', and I'm not entirely sure he's wrong. If Set List takes off, people will always want it to be like Set List. It can go un-mercilessly wrong, because you can't go back on your material, you've really got to throw yourself into it.

Andrew Maxwell's One Night Stand airs on Wednesday 12th December at 10pm on Dave.