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Jason Byrne
- Hay Festival
- Hay-On-Wye
- 27th May 2007
Forget Glasto, Hay's where the mud really flies as Whirlwind Byrne touches down in Wales
To nick a phrase from tonight’s compere, Byrne is "fast becoming a Hay tradition" – a motor-mouthed whirlwind that rips through the festival, indiscriminately flinging artful expletives to furthest reaches of the site. "He’s very aggressive" says a lady next to me before the show starts, eyes wide with expectation. And she’s right, he is. In the same way as a kid who’s been allowed to stay up past their bedtime is – he’s just found that his parents will laugh at his juvenile jokes, knows he’s on to a good thing and is milking every minute of it.
True, the material Byrne uses to charm his supposedly "mature" audience isn’t exactly sophisticated (there’s a fair old amount of reliance on ‘The Staples’ – men and women, sex, class differences) but he has knack for twisting these wet lumps of comedy clay into cleverly crafted art. On any other night (like last night for example) a comedian relying on ridiculing stereotypes of their nationality for the majority of their laughs would have got a ‘stinker’ rating from ssp. In the hands of Byrne however such obvious work (e.g. imitating a hoity-toity toff with a ‘Paddy go home’ complex) is refreshed into original, energetic and exciting comedy.
Halfway through a bit on first-time fatherhood Byrne describes kids as "drunk little midget tramps who’ll just say mad shit and then leave". For a moment we’re not sure if it’s kids or himself he’s talking about.
Henry Barnes
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