Happy-go-lucky Scottish comedian Danny Bhoy turns to the dark side for his upcoming Australian tour.
“I’m in my flat, it’s pissing with rain here. It’s just miserable … that’s not a good way to start the interview, is it?” offers Bhoy. “I don’t want to venture outside because it’s full of drunken Christmas parties, messing up the street.”
The Scottish comedian’s curmudgeon-like attitude is surprising, but there’s still a sense that he’s only half serious, especially when he adds the throwaway line that “it’s making me wish that Germany had won the war”. His onstage persona is well known to Australian audiences — boundless energy with much leaping around the stage with an infant’s grin. But just for a minute, let’s cultivate his inner grump by recalling the ghosts of office Christmas parties passed.
“The office Christmas party is tragically the red light fuse for comedians,” he continues. “We get paid to entertain these people for Christmas, and they are easily the most horrible gigs of the year. Everyone’s getting absolutely wasted, and you have to go out and try and make them laugh. Plus everyone thinks they’re the funniest person at the Christmas party. And you’re dealing with a bunch of work people whose loyalty is more to their boss than to you. So it doesn’t matter if you’re technically, and in every other way, shape or form, a better comedian — if he heckles you, they’re always going to go with the boss.”
Everyone knows Danny Bhoy the joker, the jester, the merry prankster cracking jokes on everything from the benign to the taboo. His latest show, Dear Epson, fuses the obtuse observational work of previous tours with the Larry David-esque sly rage you’re reading about right now.
“The impetus of the show is Epson, the printer company. I wrote to them, asking how they get to the ludicrous cost of their ink, how they arrive at that sort of price which I guess is the type of letter that people want to always write but never get the time. That was the first letter, and writing it felt so good. I read the letter to my tour manager and he was pissing himself laughing and told me I had to write more of them.
“It got me thinking about other places and people. I started off writing to companies about little things, but halfway through preparing the show I thought ‘well, I can’t just do this for the entire show’. I started writing to old schoolteachers, people from my past that pissed me off that I never got around to haranguing. So the show starts with me attacking these little things which moves on to bigger things which then moves onto personal things. It’s incredibly enjoyable.”
If Bhoy spent his time condemning acts that only ever impacted on his life, Dear Epson would come off like a self-indulgent moanfest. But the hotel with draconian checkout policies, the guy holding up the queue at a coffee shop with his convoluted requests, the inane chatter that occurs in elevators — these snippets of annoyance are both personal and universal. Are we losing our patience or is the world actually getting more annoying? Danny doesn’t take sides, but his intentions seem noble.
“I wrote these letters on behalf of a generation of people that don’t have time to, and these things piss us off on a daily basis. Nine times out of ten I get a letter back get a letter saying ‘we are very sorry to hear about this and we will take this very seriously’ and it’s all typed and some guy just puts a signature on it. Quite depressing, really.”
Depressing, yes, so let’s change the subject. For a break between tours, Bhoy treated himself to a short holiday in New York City at the end of 2012. Nominally to witness firsthand the presidential election circus — he admits to being “kind of obsessed with American politics” — Danny arrived at the tail end of Hurricane Sandy, which cranked up the surreal-o-meter into the red.
“I got in when the worst of it was over. And actually, the year I last toured Australia was the year of the big floods in Brisbane and it was the same sort of thing. I got in a few days after. I’m not saying there’s a theme, but I’m basically a benefit comedian in reverse. If I’m doing a show, you should probably get out of town.”
Danny Bhoy Dear Epson Tour Dates
Tue Feb 19 - 22 — Astor Theatre (Perth)Thu Feb 28 — IPAC (Wollongong)
Sat Mar 02 — Civic Theatre (Newcastle)
Mon Mar 04 — Theatre Royal (Hobart)
Wed Mar 06 — Albert Hall (Launceston)
Mar 11 - 12 — Thebarton Theatre (Adelaide)
Fri Mar 15 — Canberra Theatre
Mar 18 - 23— Brisbane Comedy Festival @ Brisbane Powerhouse
Tue Mar 26 — Arts Centre Gold Coast
Thu Mar 28 — Empire Theatre (Toowoomba)
Apr 02 - 14 — Melbourne International Comedy Festival @ Playhouse (Arts Centre Melbourne)
Apr 23 - 24 — Sydney Comedy Festival @ State Theatre
