Gary Delaney – the undisputed king of one-liners – is returning to the Granite City to entertain his north-east fans.
After performing no fewer than 160 shows on his last circuit of the country, the Live At The Apollo star and longstanding Mock the Week special guest cannot wait to kick off his new tour later this month.
We caught up with the comedian to find out more about his new show Gary In Punderland, why he decided to write a book during the pandemic and whether there is a show he’d rather forget about.
Check out our interview with Gary Delaney below:
What would you like everyone to know about your new show?
It’s just loads and loads of proper jokes. No stories, no sad bits, no themes, it’s not about anything and you definitely won’t learn anything, but if you want a show with 250+ jokes in it, then this is for you. Thanks to the pandemic I had much longer to write it than any of my previous shows, so I had thousands of new jokes to pick from which I think makes this my best tour show yet.
Are you looking forward to coming to Aberdeen?
Yes, I did two nights there on the last tour at a smaller venue and they were great fun. Really up for it crowds who enjoyed a joke and didn’t get offended by anything. A treat.
What was the best crowd you ever performed for?
I was doing a summer afternoon gig in a big tent for a load of hairy bikers. It was going really well. Then about 20 minutes in it went ballistic. I was getting the biggest laughs and cheers ever – the crowd were on their feet. I thought I was a genius and had finally discovered the secret of comedy. I hadn’t.
The sunlight was bright on the tent wall behind me. Unknown to me a drunken biker had slipped out of the gig and, seeing the queue for the portaloo, had craftily popped round the back of the tent to relieve himself. He didn’t realise that with the sun behind him he was making the perfect shadow puppet of a weeing man on the canvas right behind me.
If you’ve ever seen the Manneken Pis in Brussels it was like that, but 6’2 with a beard and leather jacket. Still well done to him, he nailed that gig, in fact, I think he’s going to be on the next series of Britain’s Got Talent.
And which one was the worst?
I once did a gig in English to a crowd in Berlin who, I was assured, had excellent English. It was a cabaret night called Blaue Montag, in maybe 2001? I was following a group of schoolkids who sang a medley of Beatles’ hits whilst bobbing up and down and holding torches over their heads. The crowd loved it. They also loved the German stand-ups. I watch from the sides thinking ‘If they think these German comics are funny, then I’m really going to nail this gig!’.
Narrator’s voice: He didn’t.
I died really, really badly. I got two laughs. I don’t mean two jokes got laughs. I mean two people laughed at two different points in my entire set, one was a laugh when I acknowledged that I was dying, the other was a man from Luton who genuinely did like one of the jokes. Just one. It’s one thing to speak English but another to grasp the subtleties of wordplay.
At the end of the show, it was customary for all the acts to come out again for a bow, so that was fun. After the gig the guidelines for visiting English comics were updated to say that you should probably avoid wordplay. Now that’s death. If I was telling this as a story, I’d probably say that I ended with a line about how, like my Grandad, I have now also bombed in Berlin, but that’s not true. He really did bomb Germany, but I never made the joke as I was scared they’d hate me even more. I just said goodbye and quietly walked off to sulk.
You’re embarking on a large UK tour – what’s your favourite thing about touring?
I love touring because of the people who come to the shows. I don’t mean that in a schmaltzy insincere showbiz way, ‘Hey your town is the best town’, I mean that audiences self-select so as to be the people in that town who will most enjoy my show.
The most accepting of all aquatic mammals is the seal of approval.
— Gary Delaney is on tour now (@GaryDelaney) January 27, 2022
As an unknown club comic, you’re often playing to people who aren’t necessarily fans of what you do and in not great venues and conditions so it can be hard. As a touring comic people know and like you already, they’ve seen you on TV, or more likely nowadays in clips online.
People who come to my shows love one-liners. They like silly jokes. They like rude jokes. They like dark jokes. They’re not easily offended or taking any of the things I say literally. They’re not expecting stories, politics or opinions. They just want to laugh a lot, and that’s what I try to deliver. When someone says after a show that their face hurts from laughing, I think ‘that’s what’s supposed to happen! What’s everyone else doing?’.
What’s the last thing you do before you go on stage?
About three last-minute nervous wees. Then check my flies. For tour shows, I also have a load of extra warm-up jokes on the screen as people are coming in the theatre for the show and during the interval. I listen in from the wings before the show starts. If my computer gets a laugh every 12 seconds before I’ve even said hello, then I know it’s going to be a good night.
You come across as very confident – do you still get nervous?
Yes, nerves are good. They keep you focused and make your brain think faster. But once you walk out there onto the stage and get that first laugh, they all disappear.
What motivated you to write your book Pundamentalist?
The pandemic. To be honest, initially, I was lukewarm on the idea when it was first proposed to me in January 2020. I didn’t fancy the idea of spending months trawling through 20 years of old notebooks, recordings and boxes of scribbled on scraps of paper and beermats to compile it.
I wanted to be out there working live and telling new jokes. Then I started hearing about this new type of pneumonia that had broken out in Wuhan and it sounded bad. In early February I told my agent to snap the publisher’s hand off as our whole industry was about to disappear. A month later the tour I was currently doing came to a premature end and I suddenly had plenty of time on my hands to compile a book and write a new tour show for when the world got back to normal. Thankfully it did.
The book can be purchased here.
My wife says she loves to be wooed so now whenever we have date night I have to dress up as a ghost.
— Gary Delaney is on tour now (@GaryDelaney) January 20, 2022
As you say, Covid-19 significantly affected the live entertainment industry. But has there been anything you enjoyed about lockdowns?
Mostly it was a case of learning to stop and smell the roses. After gigging for 20 years and writing for longer than that you can sometimes find yourself getting a bit jaded or frustrated at some aspects of the job. Having the whole industry disappear and not knowing if you’ll ever work again is a great way to make you appreciate what an amazing job this is to do. It was always my dream job and I get to do it every day. Also, if I wear a mask in shops no one can recognise me so that’s handy sometimes. You don’t want to be buying some bum cream from the chemist and have someone ask for a selfie.
And lastly, is there a question you’ve always wanted to be asked? If so, what is the question, and can we know the answer?
Q: Gary, we are two really hot supermodels. Would you like to sleep with us both at the same time?
A: I’m sorry to disappoint you ladies but they’re expecting me in Aberdeen.
Gary Delaney will bring his show Gary In Punderland to Aberdeen’s The Tivoli Theatre on March 24. Tickets are still available and can be purchased here.
He’ll also play Strathpeffer Pavilion on March 25 – tickets can be booked here.