Banking on a lucky streak

Patrick Combs is enjoying a lucrative run with his monologue about cashing a junk mail cheque, reports Colette Sheridan

AMERICAN writer and performer, Patrick Combs, returns to Cork with his real life David versus Goliath-like story next week. Combs’s show, Man 1, Bank 0, which he performed at the Everyman Palace Theatre last year, is at the Cork Opera House on Mar 13 as part of a national tour. The show is Combs’ account of taking on a bank after depositing a junk mail cheque for $95,000 which was cashed to his personal bank account.

Man 1, Bank 0 has captured the imagination of audiences with its fantasy-like element of suddenly coming into a large sum of money. The windfall was timely for Combs, who had run up credit card debts of $45,000. But he only lodged the cheque as a joke. Instead of signing the back of it, he drew a smiley face on it, which he hoped would make a bank teller laugh. Having forgotten about the cheque, he was astonished when he checked his balance five days later. The $95,000 was there. What ensued was one man’s stand against the might of a bank, whose officials threatened Combs with ‘jail time’ and ‘death.’ He took on the bank on the basis of “the principle of the matter.”