How Jason Byrne's childhood inspired his new book
Gill Books - Photos by Ruth Medjber
A mad scientist plots away on a mysterious new project. The residents of the local nursing home are acting very strangely indeed, and just to add to all this intrigue, men in black have suddenly turned up around the place. It all looks like a job for the bould Onion O’Brien and his crack team of juvenile (mis)adventurers, in — the third instalment in comedian Jason Byrne’s series of irreverent yet accessible children’s books.
Drawing on his own youth in Dublin for inspiration, as well as the kids’ media of his own time, Byrne has wrangled some of the informing factors in his adult comedy work and parlayed them into a series of tales that encapsulate the daring-do and vainglory of pre-adolescent’ imaginations, gently subverting the old Stories-For-Boys tropes with a dash of humour.
Byrne is an energetic talker, moving from point to point with a wholesale enthusiasm that’s clearly survived the transition to adulthood.
He discusses how it’s all come together this time around, and in particular, the inspiration behind his latest yarn: “We used to have a parish youth club, we used to go and do different things in the community. One day, they made us go down to Simpson’s Hospital in Dundrum. We were 12, 13, and we were like ‘you’re joking? What? Oh my god, people? What’ll we do, will they just sit there?’ This was the 80s, it was quite dark, and we went around talking to them, and then, the fascinating thing is, they reminded me that old people used to be young, which is what you forget.
“You see an old person and think that’s how they’re born, but we sat down with them, and we found one of them was in the Rising, another was in World War I, and there I was going ‘wow’, and we were running down the next week to talk to them. So that’s why we set this book around a nursing home, and after lockdown, with the over-70s being vulnerable, it’s a great thing to show — they're not as vulnerable as you think they are.”
Writing kids’ books was a whole other space for Byrne to have occupied in terms of creativity and process, following a stand-up career spanning over two decades and a consistent presence in genre media.
But at this stage, with Onion and crew now inhabiting a fully fleshed-out version of Dublin suburbia, Byrne finds it a lot easier to transition between audiences: “It’s mad. Your brief is, ‘make it simple, but not too simple’. Don’t patronise the child, but mind the language. You’re on a very thin line there. I thought it would be pretty easy, and everyone’s after the young-adult goldmine.
“But I’ve been in writing school for the last three years, now. I knew how to write comedy, I don’t have to do it word-for-word, they’re ideas for stage — loads of little songs with beats and rhythm. With comedy, it can be a bit looser, but with children, it has to be a lot tighter. Comedy can be a song; kids’ books are more like a maths equation where everything has to resolve and make sense.
“And if children aren’t engaged when reading a book, they drift off, and I was definitely guilty of that when I was younger. So you’ve to keep them engaged — but not be too exhausting. Holy s**t! I was back and forth to my editors loads, red pens everywhere.”
A youth spent in suburban Dublin has its sticky fingerprints all over Byrne’s work too, from concept to execution. A childhood reader of the Hardy Boys and the Famous Five, as well as a James Bond obsessive, a taste for action has informed the direction of the Onion O’Brien series, by way of his own recollections.
“I did a book called for adults, and it was about growing up in Dublin, from ages five to 15, with me glasses and me eyepatch, and loving to go outside and create adventures. Onion O’Brien is me, with his glasses, and his love for the outdoors, and always wanting to be in a gang. In Ballinteer now, a gang would be knocking on doors and running away, or collecting firewood for Hallowe’en. That’s as dangerous as it got, but that’s where it comes from, all the stories.
“Our first book, The Great Ape Escape, was about a baby orang-utan that the gang tried to save from a circus. That was based on the time the circus came to Top of the Road in Ballinteer. We went out the back afterward, we saw lions and tigers in cages. A man came around and tried to get rid of us by showing us the elephant. He opened up this tent, and a female elephant was shackled to the ground. We asked could she not break free, and he said, ‘she’s been beaten so much as a calf, she’d never do that’. So we had this idea that we’d go up that night and take the elephant out of the tent.
“I always look back on what we did as a kid, that’s where it comes from. I still have stories to draw down from. My 13-year-old is jealous of my childhood, with all of these stories and things we got up to, building things for ourselves.”
Outside of the realm of world-building and word-wrangling, Byrne’s time in lockdown and amid its extended restrictions has been busy, as the wider arts sector continues to react to changing circumstances in various ways. Online sketches for social media, podcasting on mental health for Mind Your Loaf, and shaping up O’Brien’s future excursions have been occupying his time.
A big highlight for Byrne himself, though, has been organising one of the first live in-person events in the country (‘the first comedian in the world!’, he emphasises) as it emerged from national lockdown. An August stand-up show at The Venue in Ratoath, Co Meath, implemented social distancing for attendees, and was live-streamed, raising funds and awareness for mental health service,
Ah we're loving it @Gill_Books @OisinMcGann https://t.co/j5ECKdoO21
— jason byrne (@thejasonbyrne) September 25, 2020
When discussing ‘what next’ as the circumstances continue to fluctuate in counties around the country, Byrne reveals he’s been dipping the toe into the tech world, with the launch of iLaugh, a comedy app that will allow content creators to find an audience and monetise more effectively: “So, the idea is that you’ll buy tickets for gigs, there’ll be a subscription for comedians and ordinary people can post their funny stuff there too."
He laughs: "So hearing that TikTok might be banned in America is great news.
“It’ll look like Instagram, TikTok, etc. We’re working on that with a lad called Brendan Murphy, an entrepreneur in Kildare. He’s driving that with me, and I thought when you build an app, it’s a teenager, a couple of days and a Choc Ice! He’s going ‘no’, and showing me all the background work, it’s insane what goes into it!”
He explains why he's doing this: “I’m doing it out of anger as well, because Facebook and YouTube, we put up all our stuff, and they make millions, and we don’t get a penny from our material. They say with YouTube, if you get a certain amount of hits, you make money. Jason Manford, the comedian, saw Joe Wicks got 70, 80 grand for his lockdown content — and it should have been seven or eight million for what they made off him. [Manford] started doing a quiz, went live online, got thousands of followers… and YouTube only sent him 12p. He went ‘you can f**k off if I’m doing that again.
“Foil, Arms and Hog are great, and they live online, to fill the venues, or so Facebook and YouTube tell us all. How does that work now?
“So, we’re going to try and do cheaper ticketing, with a better split to the artist, and when they put up stuff… they’ll get paid for it! I’m just trying to create a world that’s more fair, in that sense.”
