Irish comedian Ian MacPherson has been in voluntary exile from the comedy circuit. Now he's back on the stage with a theatrical show in which he recounts a personal Bloomsday - his 50th birthday in Dublin. But despite the show's warm reception he's still fretting, writes Brian Boyd.
A few years ago, Ian MacPherson suffered a nervous breakdown brought on by the stress of not being famous anymore. "But Ian," his doctor said, "you were never famous in the first place."
One of the great Irish comics, MacPherson has never had the sort of profile enjoyed by those of much lesser talent. Take a look at his CV though and you'll see glowing testimonials from the likes of Harry Hill, Bill Bailey, Patrick Marber, Frank Skinner, Arnold Brown and Arthur Smith, who testify readily to his greatness. Although something of a legendary figure among that first brigade of "alternative" comedy, MacPherson has been in voluntary exile for the past few years but is back on the Edinburgh Fringe this year with a show called The Joy Of Death, a work which demonstrates, yet again, why the Guardian once described him as "one of the most creative and intelligent comedians alive".
"So much talent, so much damage" he says of himself wryly, as he sits in the afternoon sunshine in the courtyard of the Pleasance Theatre in Edinburgh. Only a few days into his month-long run he's still fretting like a lunatic about the new show, a theatrically-based piece of work in which he recounts his own personal "Bloomsday" on a visit back to his native Dublin.
"The premise is I go back to Dublin for my 50th birthday. I've got a copy of my new book with me which I believe will be treated with the recognition it deserves, but I've arrived back in a very changed city," he says.
"I take one of my favourite ever journeys - the 130 bus route from where I'm from, Clontarf, into the city centre and then I go out to Dollymount - so it's the drama of that particular day."
Well-written, beautifully observed and falling down with laconic witticisms, The Joy of Death is being very well received, but MacPherson - who first played the Fringe back in 1988 - remains unmoved by the praise, as indeed he always has been.
"The sort of show I'm doing now is more to my suiting, than being behind a microphone," he says. "Temperamentally, I'm a writer - my only real influences would be P.G. Wodehouse and Stephen Leacock. This is more of a theatre-style work, which is strange because when I was growing up, my parents - who never believed in corporal punishment - would always threaten to bring us to the Abbey if we were bold."
Now 50, and originally a teacher, MacPherson got caught up in the first wave of "alternative cabaret" during the mid-1980s. A wordy and intelligent comic, his set would feature references to Joyce, Heaney, Yeats and gags about the "fourth wall". He took up comedy, as he used to describe in his set, because "a small child, threatened with violence, says something funny. As soon as I picked up enough good one-liners I left teaching."
Robbed of the 1988 Perrier award by Simon Fanshawe (who went on to work on That's Life - the karma of it all), he was described as "the thinking woman's Dave Allen" and "comedy's answer to James Joyce".
With the arrival of the big management companies and the agencies - as well as the "mainstreaming" of comedy - in the early 1990s, MacPherson became an early refusenik. "We had all come from a fringe theatre background," he says, "and suddenly you found yourself talking to people in leather trousers who controlled the circuit. If I was, as people said at the time, biting the hand that feeds, it was because I didn't want to be fed by that hand. Comedy was going one way, I was going another."
He has always valued integrity over compromise - sometimes to his cost.
When, a few years ago, a company put out a video which featured him, Sean Hughes, Michael Redmond and Owen O'Neill, he threatened to pull his performance unless the company changed the cover of the video. "They originally wanted a green cover with almost shillelagh things on it. I told them if they were going to put it out like that why didn't they give away a free potato with every copy - they told me I needed psychiatric help."
Similarly, a few years ago, he pulled out of a big publishing deal after the company tried to force editorial changes on him "It's not being stubborn, it's just like why I left the comedy circuit. I have a very low opinion of the lowest common denominator. I prefer the opposite - the highest common denominator. With the arrival of a certain type of comic in the 1990s, I felt that people like me, John Hegley and Arnold Brown were being asked to go after the lowest common denominator in what we did. I couldn't do it. Comedy, for me, is just tragedy with loose trousers."
Living in Britain for the past couple of years, he has had two books published: Late Again, a children's book, and Deep Probings, a comic novel about artistic self-absorption. He now writes plays for Radio 4 (one of which was broadcast from Edinburgh last week), does readings, and writes stage work such as The Joy of Death, which he sees as more "arts centre" than "comedy circuit" in the type of audience it appeals to. He is currently writing a sitcom with Magi Gibson, a Scottish poet. He hopes to bring The Joy of Death to Irish audiences in the near future, but for the moment he is glad to be away from the fuss and bother associated with the Perrier prize in Edinburgh - his show qualifies as "theatre" not "comedy".
"The Perrier is awarded, as they say themselves, to the 'bubbliest and frothiest act on the Fringe'," he says. "I'm neither bubbly nor frothy - and I aim to keep it that way."
The Joy Of Death is at The Cellar @ The Pleasance, Edinburgh, daily at 2.15 p.m. until August 26th.