This much I know: Gary Cooke

The insecurity of show business is not something that you objectively worry about, it’s something that you live.

I always had a strong feeling that I wanted to perform. It wasn’t confined to acting, I wanted to play in a band and at one stage even thought I might get involved in entertainment events management. I don’t know where I got it from. My dad was an accountant.

The fact that Apres Match was successful was pretty significant: it was a good platform for other things, although the downside with that sort of show is that you can become typecast.

I did think about doing straight acting, but I don’t think that’s where my true self lies. I have more freedom with comedy, being able to write my own material.

I was always a bit of a joker. From 14 or 15 I started to mess around at school and became ‘an entertainer’. Doing impressions of teachers and other students came naturally to me.

When I went to Trinity I decided to audition for the Fresher’s production. They used to put the cast lists up on this public notice board. My then girlfriend was going into town so I asked her to pop into Trinity and check the board for my name. She had to break the news to me that I hadn’t got a part. I was horrified.

I do think things happen for a reason, but I don’t believe that our lives are controlled by some God-like creature. I also believe you can change your reality by changing your perspective on a situation, even if it’s only by half a degree.

Some of the characters I’ve taken the piss out of over the years get it, others don’t. I don’t go after people personally. I just stick a pin in people and things that take themselves too seriously.

Being Irish, I think it’s hard not to be anarchic and irreverent. It’s probably a reaction to our colonial past.

My latest project is On The Couch, a very black tragicomedy which I wrote with Barbara Bergin. We play three sets of couples in therapy and the camera is the therapist. When we started, we story-boarded the whole thing, journeyed through each of the characters’ storylines and then got out a camcorder and recorded some of it ourselves as a type of pilot, to see if it would work.

Humour is about inverting and stretching things. I was very close to my mother and when she died I did go to see a bereavement counsellor for a while. Mum had cancer and a brain tumour and I didn’t like my final memory being of her going through the dying process. At her funeral, I remember wishing ‘if only she was here’ so that we could joke about it. She always enjoyed my humour.

The traits I most admire in others are humanity and grace.

To unwind, I play tennis. I played a lot as a kid in Sutton and then took it up again in my 20s. I’m quite good but I’ve a bad habit of tying to push myself too far, then I run around the court like a basket case out of breath, heart racing, and I keep feeling my pulse — to the extent that other players start to get alarmed and ask if I’m OK.

Any time you try to make people laugh and they don’t is a pretty uncomfortable moment.

Ideally you’d come up with some killer line that gets them going but sometimes your head just turns to mush and you feel like a pilot does, 19 seconds before they crash. But missing a cue is almost worse, as you are probably affecting someone else’s work. Some people are pretty cool about it. Others aren’t.

If I could change one thing in Irish society.... it would be that people be on time for meetings.

I think my biggest challenges lie ahead: to keep on going in an industry that doesn’t particularly tolerate older people.

On The Couch is created and performed by Barbara Bergin & Gary Cooke, Tuesdays 10.30pm, TV3 after the Champions League.