Jason Byrne interview: If you do Edinburgh you will come out a black belt comedian
Jason Byrne is on fire with 30 Years Byrning at this year’s Edinburgh Festival as he returns to the city that started his career.
Even by Jason Byrne’s standards, this Saturday night gig on Edinburgh Fringe is joyfully chaotic. The comedian famed for his energetic live shows that feed off the audience has outdone himself by bringing most of the front row up on stage for an impromptu game of spot this mother’s children from a line-up of cousins with the audience as judges, then there are members of a group he’s calling ‘five men with the same head’ who join him for a game of identifying images of badgers with the chaos ramped up as one of the five abandons the stage then attempts to crawl out of the auditorium to escape audience banter after he identifies himself as an ‘architect from London’. We’ve already met Callum ‘The Highlander’ as he attempted to exit for the toilet and a member of a party from Rosslyn or Penicuik, nobody’s sure, who assisted Byrne in his grand entrance in grey underpants astride a giant plastic ‘wrecking ball’ to a Miley Cyrus soundtrack.
“What’s happening?” shouts Byrne at one point. “The audience has taken over and is making up their own games! No, you all just carry on!”
In reality Byrne knows exactly what’s happening and has the audience in the palm of his hand as he skilfully choreographs the chaos and manages the mayhem, always one-step ahead, drumming up audience input, allowing the improv to flow and the craic to crack, then reining things in with new material, set pieces, stunts and a slideshow of his life and career as he celebrates 30 years of Fringe shows.
Ever since the 54-year-old burst onto the scene as runner-up in the Gilded Balloon’s So You Think You're Funny? awards for unsigned amateur acts at the Edinburgh Fringe 30 years ago, went on to be nominated for the Perrier Best Newcomer Award in 1998, the same year landing a role in TV hit Father Ted, launching a career that’s seen him gigging all over the globe, he’s been back in the capital every August with his warm interactive shows, full of observation, improvisation and zigzagging tangents. Nothing says Edinburgh in August like a silent disco, travel chaos, unpredictable weather and Jason Byrne.
Earlier in the week I had interviewed the Irish comedian about his 30 Years Byrning show and in person he is everything you would expect if you’ve ever caught one of the shows - chaotic, energetic, prop-driven and feeding off his audience - as he told me what we can expect in Edinburgh and on his live UK tour.
“I have my big set pieces and need to talk to the audience to weave them into the set pieces,” explains Byrne as he tells me how he does it. “I like to include them all in the whole show so that actual show can never happen again.
“It’s the same with the stunts; they’re always going to be different. For the 30th anniversary tour I asked what the fans wanted back and they said the wrecking ball, a game called Badger Not Badger and The Bohemian Rhapsody finale.
Not that Byrne would be content with serving up the same version, as he constantly edits and updates as he goes his merry way.
“The wrecking ball’s different from 14 years ago, more age-appropriate to me, a 54-year-old, with a sideways entrance, not out over the audience. In those days there was no health and safety, it was brilliant. I just walked in with a rope and ball and said ‘can you hang it from the ceiling so I can swing towards the audience?’ They went, ‘yeah, we'll just tell them not to stand up’. No harness, just holding on, I would pull the rope towards me, jump in the air, put my legs around it and go right out over the audience and they were like ‘Jesus!’. We’re not allowed to do that any more.”
Not that the front row escapes. See above. And the finale, where various now-familiar audience faces join Byrne and his torch in a performance of Queen’s anthem that sees the entire room on its feet in a celebration of silliness.
“It’s as silly as it was in 1997 but I've learned how to make silly a bit more pro. I use the punters and it’s very highly choreographed. The punters are props for me.”
Did he ever think I shouldn’t be doing this as he swung about on his wrecking ball?
“No, no. I was always fit,” he says, and these days he’s even more so.
“When I’m in Edinburgh I run around The Meadows and now I go into the pilates class. It was hilarious when I started that last year because I’d never done any in my life. It was one man and all women. I grabbed a mat and sat at the front and a woman came up to me immediately and said ‘that's my space’ so I had to go back about 45 spots, watch, copy and put the mat the right way.
“A lot of men I speak to have this weird thing in their head that pilates is easy and I’m like, ‘what are you talking about? It’s the hardest thing I've ever done, and I do circuit training in Ireland. Women are way more flexible and better at looking after themselves.”
Byrne bigs up the women in the audience, preferring to skewer men’s discomfort in his audience interactions.
“The women in my show are praised, and the men, I think they’re confused when I talk to them. I don't do it on purpose. I'm not sure what they're going to say, but the men are like children when I'm talking to them.”
But Byrne makes sure the joke is always on him in the end.
“I always make sure the audience are heroes. I never talk to anybody who doesn't want me to talk to them and I never get anybody up on stage who doesn’t want to.”
Ask Byrne a question and he launches into a story, meanders into another and circles back with an answer. According to him, his successful international career was all down to chance after so You Think You’re Funny? at the Fringe in 1996, saw him headhunted by an agent, leading to a role in the Father Ted TV series and John Boorman’s 1998 film The General, more TV and a lifetime of international comedy tours.
“I was such a laid back kid. I would do anything. If somebody had asked me to go and live in Bali, I would have. But it was the comedy. I was doing gigs, being surreal, using props and doing mad s*** and wasn't afraid of people staring at me. I had no idea what I was doing. I just liked getting better at it.”
“I started getting bigger in Edinburgh in the 90s after we did some comedy on Channel 4. I was never wanting to be famous. I was just happy doing what I was doing then I got on Countdown, and it grew from there.”
Byrne had grown up watching comedy with his dad Paddy, a cooper at the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin.
“Tommy Cooper, Dick Emery, Monty Python, everybody on TV. And Kenny Everett Spike Milligan, I loved their oddness. The first comic I ever saw was Billy Connolly in Dublin in 1990 or 1991, my mate and I bunked in and got into one of the boxes where I could watch him and the crowd too, see what he was looking at. I was crying laughing. It was absolutely brilliant. I said to my mate ‘I could never do that.’ Then a mate put me up for a couple of open mics and it took off.”
Over the years Byrne has weathered divorce, heart surgery after a hereditary condition required the insertion of six stents, and the arrival of social media and AI. With two now adult sons, he keeps up to date with the times and on his pre-Edinburgh tour has been challenging AI to a joke off.
“I tested AI to see if it was funnier than me. There was a plumber in the front row so I asked ChatGPT if it had any jokes about him and they were dreadful: ‘bet he was late cos plumbers are always late’, stuff like that.
He’s also spent months patiently teaching his Alexa to respond to ‘Alexa, shut the f*** up’ and it’s one of the essentials he has brought to the Fringe, along with his bike, golf clubs, running gear, resulting in the fit, happy and healthy Byrne we see before us.
“I had six stents put into my heart in 2022 because I had a hereditary condition and my arteries were blocked up. I felt a pain and got it sorted. They’re open now and I can move and run faster so that's been amazing as well.”
According to Byrne after the Father Ted and The General experience he decided to pursue comedy because he couldn’t trust himself to remember his lines.
“People come up to me and quote the Father Ted line, ‘they’re fake hands’ - he had fake hands hanging out of his jacket. I was meant to say ‘are those real hands?’ but I couldn’t get it right. It was the same with The General. I only had to say one word to Brendan Gleeson, but couldn’t get it right and John Boorman had to keep coming down on his cherry picker to speak to me. The third time Brendan was saying ‘he’s going to f****** kill you. And he grabbed me by the shoulders, so the fourth time I got it right. Brendan was hugging me tight and saying ‘thank god, thank god’.
A director once said, ‘I know your brain's a bit, you know. Here's the lines, say them whichever way you want’. But I could never do that with theatre. So I chose stand-up because my son was born in 2000 and acting wasn't going to pay. I could get money gigging so I chose that route. Otherwise I think I may have kept doing the acting.”
Did he make the right choice?
“Yeah, I did. In the acting, I got the lines wrong.”
So his brain is hard wired to improvise?
“Yeah, I don't understand what the hell happens with my brain. I think stand up was a more free forum for me.”
With his busy brain, has Byrne ever wondered about being neurodivergent?
“I think everybody's neurodivergent. What’s the definition? Thinking in an abnormal way so you don't fit into society? Nobody fits into society. Mine doesn't even have a title.
“I have three voices in my head. When I do stand up, the left one is scanning the room, it's going left right, ‘pick him, talk to her, watch him’, the right side is going ‘what about all this stuff we've written, I'd love it if we could get to that, stop talking to them’ and the middle one is going ‘you don’t know what you're doing, you're s***, what do you even do?’.”
What there won’t be is jokes.
“I've never had any joke jokes. I wrote one by accident last year. Someone said ‘you can’t joke about cancer and I said ‘you can, sir’. That’s the only joke I've ever written in my whole 30 years.”
So what is it about the Fringe that keeps him coming back?
“Edinburgh’s a beautiful city. It’s brilliant. And you’re in one venue and don't have to travel around gigging in different cities, so you can rock down on your bike, work for an hour, all the props stay there, the staff set it up, then after you can rock out and watch loads of other shows. I love the comics here. I make some money as well.
“So it's unique for comics that are constantly moving around. Here I get to live in the city for a month and know it really well. I go up Arthur’s Seat, to Portobello, I’ve been on the Alpine Coaster at Hillend. I do all these things.
“If you do Edinburgh you will come out a black belt comedy comedian, because you're gigging every night and your brain is trained. I tell the younger comics Edinburgh is like a comedy gym.
“And I just love hanging out with Scots. It’s mostly Scottish people for the whole month, and some come more than once to see what’s going to happen on a different night.”
Does he recognise repeat attendees?
“I recognised a guy last night that was there last year. Terry the Protestant from England. And there's a group of posh kids that always come. They’re from Cambridge, putting on a posh play, and they all go hiya! And Huddersfield has up to 30 people I need to remember.”
What Fringe essentials does he always bring?
“I drive here now, get the ferry to Cairnryan, and have my bike, golf clubs, and me pillows or I’ll have a cricked neck, and props like the wrecking ball and xylophone sticks for playing people's testicles, which is crucial.”
What's been his best festival experience?
“Being nominated for the main Perrier Award in 2001. That was a great nod. And an Edinburgh People's Choice Award was lovely as well. Also singing on stage with Leo Sayer, being on with Ross Noble, Adam Hills and Daniel Kitson and I wrapped David O'Doherty completely in bubble wrap one year.
“Once in the 160-seater, a girl left to go to the loo so I said to the audience let’s hide outside, through the exit at the side of the stage. She came back, sat down and didn't panic because everybody's coats were there, went back out to look for us and in again. Then I kicked open the door and we did jazz hands, surprise! She didn't even flinch, thought it was part of the show. Also in that venue I picked a guy up - he was annoying me - dropped him out the exit door and closed it. You couldn't do that now.”
What unfulfilled ambitions would he like to achieve?
“Strictly, because my mother was a professional ballroom dancer and used to teach me when I was a little kid. She's 82, and I have done Royal Variety shows, live shows, acting, everything, and she always goes ‘Oh, would you not do Strictly?’ So I'd love to do Strictly for my mum.”
What of the future. Will he be back next year?
“Yes, but I'll probably cut back and just do two weeks.”
And what will always be in the show?
“The improv will always be there. I’ll never just do my set pieces, then leave. Because my audience are like children and they’d be ‘well, you never said hello, you need to talk to us’ so I'll always include the audience. Every time I get anybody up there, I watch them leave down the steps and people are grabbing them, getting photographs with them, and they love it. It's never nasty. That's the key.”
Never nasty, always funny, Jason Byrne?
“Never nasty, always funny. And I'm good at the waltz.”
Jason Byrne 30 Years Byrning, Assembly Mound: Assembly Hall, 6 – 30 August at 7.10pm (no performance on 17 or 24 August). Tickets here
Jason Byrne 30 Years Byrning - UK Tour 2026, 15 November, The Pavilion, Glasgow, 20 November, Alhambra, Dunfermline. Tickets here
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