What: Dylan Moran
Where: Farquhar Auditorium, University of Victoria
When: Sunday, 8 p.m.
Tickets: $37.50 (tickets.uvic.ca or 250-721-8480)
In the 2007 comedy film Run Fatboy Run, Dylan Moran plays a dissolute, rock ’n’ roll sort of character.
Portraying a friend to Dennis “Fatboy” Doyle (Simon Pegg), Moran is a long-haired, gambling rapscallion who fights like a girl and invites people to his flat while wearing no pants.
Famous in the U.K. for his sitcom Black Books, in which he played a drunken, chain-smoking bookshop owner, Irish-born Moran is primarily a stand-up comic. Reviewers note how his rambling style is reminiscent of someone blithering in a pub. Occasionally, Moran smokes a cigarette on stage; sometimes he clutches a glass of wine.
Moran is undertaking his first North American theatre tour. He’s promised not to smoke at Victoria’s Farquhar Auditorium on Sunday night after learning that’s a no-no in Canada. No word on the glass of wine.
“Smoking’s a stupid habit anyway,” Moran said over the phone. “Everybody who smokes wants to give up, including me. I’d be pretty adolescent to make a point of doing something to piss people off.”
Moran is one of those cerebral, yarn-spinning Irish comics, a little like Tommy Tiernan (both experimented early with standup while attending St. Patrick’s Classical School in Ireland). He muses on life’s absurdities, whether it be politics, or the annoyance of having eight waiters ask him how his breakfast muesli is.
The muesli bit was part of Moran’s June appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman. Hair askew, looking like he’d just woken up, Moran seemed distracted as he walked on stage.
“Hello,” he said. “I don’t appear to, ah … have a microphone.” The audience laughed. What a charmingly discombobulated fellow.
Moran, interviewed the day after that appearance (which is available on YouTube), admitted it was no joke.
“I was sort of expecting to f--- it up. I walked out and thought, ‘Oh sh--, I’ve forgotten to grab the microphone.’ I’ve been doing this 20 years; you would think I’d know the basics.”
For his Victoria show, expect Moran to riff on the differences between the U.K. and North America, which he finds fascinating. He’s also interested on discourse between the U.S. and Canada — “a cousinly relationship it seems.”
What’s his philosophy on standup comedy?
“I have things I want to do. I’m interested in doing stuff I find tricky and difficult,” Moran said. “It’s been called all kinds of things, including messy and wonky and diffuse. It’s a conversation, as far as I’m concerned. I just happen to be the one doing all the talking.”
As a child, he was a creative sort who enjoyed drawing. In his early teens, Moran started to write. He began doing standup at Dublin’s Comedy Cellar as a 20-year-old.
He was nervous — but somehow, it felt comfortable.
“I knew I was going in that sort of direction. Making stuff. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do was make stuff.”