Comedy

Irish comedian Andrew Maxwell has a very firm handshake. He’s short and wiry but strong. For no apparent reason, I wonder if I could beat him in a fight. I couldn’t. Not only because I’m a complete wuss, but also because, as the interview develops, I realise I am talking to the man with the biggest pair of balls in comedy (figuratively speaking).

Maxwell hasn’t always been the darling of the press that he is now. Over the last couple of years he’s transformed himself from an over-excitable, amusing featherweight, jabbing away with a reasonably good strike rate, but few knock-out routines, to being one of the circuit’s true heavyweights, able to trade blows with the best of the best. His new-found critical popularity even garnered him an if.comedy (comedy’s Oscars) nomination at last year’s Edinburgh festival. So what does he make of his critics now?

‘I’m a clown. I go out there and I want to make the audience fucking laugh. I couldn’t give a fuck at that moment what the critics think. You know?’ He nods, so I nod back. ‘It doesn’t matter who it is, whether I’ve been paid to do a fuck-off big corporate thing or I’m in some shitty little club, it doesn’t make any difference. I have an almost demonic fucking will to make them laugh. That’s what’s important. It’s like being a porn star, right, when you’re in the orgy, all that matters is the other people in that room. It’s only later, you think: Fuck me, what will people think of this on the internet?’ Feature continues

But what’s he changed to win over his former doubters?

‘Shit, I don’t know, man. I mean, in the end, I’m just a highly sexed, intellectualised, fucking dangerous, little working-class fuck. I’m not in this for the bourgeoisie, you know?’

However, he has evolved as a performer. He exudes a laidback confidence. He’s also slowed his delivery down, giving his audience time to catch up with his lightning-fast mind. His set has moved on as well, no longer filled only with youthful tales of getting stoned and running amuck; there’s more politics and social commentary in his routine – though this hasn’t come at the expense of laughs.

‘It’s still about things that happen to me. I come from a deeply political family going back many generations. So it’s always been there. But there’s this ratio you’ve got to keep up. You have to be making the audience laugh every 30 seconds, no matter what you’re talking about.’

As we chat, Maxwell is a ball of enthusiastic, fidgety energy. Perhaps it’s this short attention span, combined with his fierce desire to take on new challenges, that explains why he’s constantly caught up in some new comedy adventure or other. His latest took him to Belfast, working across the sectarian divide.

‘I was appearing on this TV show in Belfast, and after it I started chatting to these guys who were from west Belfast, which can only really mean one thing. We ended up drinking, having a great time,’ he smiles. ‘We were chatting away, and the conversation turned to what they do. Apparently they’re Sinn Féin “community activists”. What the fuck is that exactly? Anyway, they asked me to do a gig in west Belfast at some arts festival. In my pissed state, I said that I wouldn’t do it unless I could also do one for the other lot as well. So the next day, I get a text from them saying it was on. We found out both sides were working with each other on the ground. Both sides are fucking sincerely trying to reach out, and are really concerned about their youths, and comedy can reach out to anyone. So that’s how I ended up doing a show on the Shankill Road in a loyalist bar.’

Were you nervous?

‘I was shitting it, literally. Stinking with fear. Terrified. There was not a bar along that road from where something dark had not been commissioned. On the day, they said I should go out and do some flyering around the place. Shit, I’d be loath to go out and flyer at the Edinburgh Festival, let alone outside loyalist bars on the Shankill with a broad Dublin accent.’

And how did the shows go?

‘The Belfast people are like a potent, heady mixture of Scousers and Glaswegians. They don’t go in for “earnest”. So I wanted to make sure it didn’t turn into some love-fest – not some love-across-the-barricades kind of thing: bollocks. So I just did my thing. It went down really well; both sides gave me a standing ovation.’

So what’s the next big challenge? Who could he possibly play to next to top that?

‘I don’t know, I mean, I’ve played to all kinds of people. I’ve played in maximum-security prisons and even played one gig to a bunch of hookers from a famous massage parlour who were out on a works do! I guess maybe I’d like to do a gig for the drug squad. Now that would be a challenge. I mean, who are they?’

Andrew Maxwell’s show, ‘Waxin’ ', is on at the Soho Theatre from Jun 30-July 5. He returns there with a work in progress July 10-12.