Fast and funny: Welcome to the world of Tim Vine

The British stand-up is coming to Cork with a rapidfire show that doesn’t even give hecklers a chance to interject, writes Richard Fitzpatrick.

It’s the guts of 20 years since Tim Vine last did a comedy tour of Ireland. He was touring with the Irish comedian Dermot Carmody.

They did many of the venues — including Cork, Galway and Waterford — Vine will visit on his upcoming Irish tour.

When he landed in Galway that time back in the 1990s, Vine got a startle.

“I looked out the window of the taxi and there were these posters that said ‘Jim Vine’,” recalls the Londoner.

“When I arrived at the gig I thought to myself if this gig goes well, I’ll tell them my name’s ‘Tim Vine’ and if it’s terrible, let’s keep it as ‘Jim Vine’.”

Vine, who won a Perrier Newcomer award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1995, was used to dealing with all sorts of heckles in those early days.

“One of the most confusing ones I got was ‘Go hang yourself, Blondie’,” he says, “as the use of the word ‘Blondie’ is weirdly affectionate.

“I remember another time, I was compering a show, bringing people on and off. I’d just started doing comedy; it was all a bit rubbishy. Someone shouted out from the audience who felt he was fit to speak on behalf of the whole crowd. He said: ‘We like you but you’re not funny.’ ”

These days, Vine’s show doesn’t really lend itself to hecklers — there’s no space for them to operate. His gags are rapid fire. His monikers include “the punslinger” and “the joke machine gun”.

In fact, Vine once held the Guinness World Record for the most jokes told in an hour. His PR people were looking for a hook to publicise his show so he found out the parameters of getting into the famous records’ book. The show had to be recorded in front of a paying audience. Each joke had to get a laugh.

“There was this very mysterious thing also where each joke had to have a beginning, a middle and an end,” he says. “That’s a bit strange.

For example, at one point I held up a garden shears and I go, ‘shears,’ and put them down again. That’s it. A joke’s a joke. It’s difficult to have it with a beginning, middle and an end sometimes, with three sentences.

“Another joke I had was, ‘I ate this chess set. It was horrible. I took it back to the shop and I said, ‘That’s stale, mate.’ He said, ‘Are you sure?’ I said: ‘Check, mate.’ To me that’s two jokes, but you could have someone argue that’s one joke.

“On the night, there were about three or four people counting and because the previous record was 362, we took the lowest one, which was 499. A couple of other people counting had about 530. It’s hard to know.”

Vine has mastered the art form. He won the prize at the Edinburgh Fringe a couple of times for best joke. In 2010 (“I’ve just been on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday. I’ll tell you what, never again”) and in 2014 (“I decided to sell my Hoover … well it was just collecting dust”).

Not everyone has the ability to tell a good joke. For example, Vine’s older brother, Jeremy Vine, the BBC radio and television presenter and Strictly Come Dancing contestant, doesn’t always do justice to his younger brother’s material.

“We operate in slightly different spheres although he does this BBC Radio Two show,” he says, “which is a magazine-type show. Every now and again he’ll try and tell one of my jokes.

“I always tell him not to because he normally murders it. He’ll get one word slightly out of place. I always tense up when I hear him going, ‘You know, my brother’s got this joke’. I think, oh, no – here it comes.”

Tim Vine’s Sunset Milk Idiot is touring comedy venues in Ireland, including Cork Opera House ( Wednesday,

September 10).