Culture That Made Me: David McSavage picks his comedy heroes 

The Irish comedian selects Fawlty Towers, Alan Partridge and The Cosby Show among his touchstones 

David McSavage comedian

David McSavage, 56, grew up in Blackrock, Dublin. He is the son of David Andrews, a former Minister for Foreign Affairs. After returning from a stint living in Tokyo, he became a well-known street performer in Dublin city centre, which led to a career in stand-up. In 2009, RTÉ television broadcast the first of four acclaimed seasons of The Savage Eye, a satirical comedy sketch show. 

In 2014, he played a bishop in the film Calvary, one of several acting credits. He will perform at Cork Opera House, Saturday, October 15.

Just William

I loved a TV show called Just William as a kid. It’s about a misunderstood kid who’s always getting in and out of trouble. Most kids could identify with it. This kid who saw adults as a bit dopey and stupid.

When you’re a kid, you’re rooting around, you’re jumping up on things, you’re climbing trees. That seems to be so much more exciting than adults who are quite static and boring. All they do is say, “Don’t do this, don’t do that, stop that.” A kid is like, “Just leave me alone.” 

The best thing you can give a human being is a good childhood.

Fawlty Towers

Fawlty Towers is a classic. I loved it. I remember sitting with my dad and him just laughing hysterically at it. I wouldn’t normally see him laugh that hard at something. That stuck with me. Just the premise of the thing: this snobby hotelier who didn’t like the people staying in his hotel.

He has a bad relationship with his wife. He’s a very dysfunctional character. It was the perfect storm for great comedy.

The Cosby Show

The Cosby Show in the 1980s was a watershed moment in sitcoms. Obviously it’s unfortunate because of what Bill Cosby turned out to be. But The Cosby Show was great at the time.

Sitcoms before it were a bit stuffy, a bit less loose, the acting was a bit stilted. We could identify with these characters in The Cosby Show. It was much more closer to real life. It brought the form on an extra bit, something new. 

The next great iteration of the sitcom was Seinfeld and then, say, The Office. They keep getting closer and closer to what we are really like.

Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge Picture: BBC

Alan Partridge

Alan Partridge’s chat show, Knowing Me Knowing You, just the awkwardness of it. It’s a classic. It captures that Richard and Judy hotel foyer TV kind of thing where it’s not reflective of how we are in our day-to-day lives. It was quite ground-breaking. It’s something that will last for a long time. It moved the whole genre along.

The League of Gentlemen

The League of Gentlemen is a fantastic TV show. Where I live in Portobello in Dublin, there’s a lot of neighbours walking around and they’re so boring. They communicate in platitudes. They don’t seem to have a curiosity. They follow a well-worn path that’s been trod by thousands of people. There’s a frightening banality to it.

That was what The League of Gentlemen captured: people stuck in ruts. Some characters in it were brilliant. Like the two shop owners: “Are you not local?” And they’ll kill you if they find out that you’re not local. They’re so fearful of the rest of the world, completely xenophobic.

The Thick of It

Armando Iannucci is the greatest satirist. The Thick of It is one of the best shows ever.

When I was doing The Savage Eye, I watched the DVD extras from it. In it, they talked about the writing process. They had four or five writers, going through fourth and fifth drafts of their scripts. They’d read them to each other. They’d continuously rewrite.

Then the actors themselves – and great actors, obviously – sitting on chairs would start improvising, with the scriptwriters taking down notes. They kept on improving it. It’s this incredibly tough process to get to where it’s ready. 

Also, Peter Capaldi as Malcom Tucker was brilliant. Comedy is a deadly serious business if you want to do it properly.

Phil Kay

When I was starting out, doing the comedy circuit, traveling around, one of my favorite comedians was Phil Kay. When Phil is in flow, when he is in the pocket, when he’s in the mood and he combines his physicality with making connections with things you couldn’t imagine, there’s nobody better. He’d blow everybody else off the stage.

He’s very of the moment. You could never recreate what he does. It’s almost like if you look at it, it disappears. That’s what’s so horrifyingly beautiful about somebody like Phil Kay. He’s in a different league.

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest

A film that stayed with me when I saw it first was One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I saw it about five times. Now I can’t watch it anymore because I can’t handle the ending. It’s horrifying.

The characters are brilliant. You basically have all the personalities in society there in the mental hospital. I identified very strongly with Jack
Nicholson as McMurphy fighting against whatever is in front of him.

People who find it difficult to go along with society’s expectations of what you should be or what you should do. It’s a brilliant film.

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Science fiction kept me going in my childhood. I adored Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books. I read them all about 30 times. He predicted an awful lot of things.

The premise of the books is that Vogon aliens are the constructors of the galaxy. A journalist for The Hitchhiker’s Guide befriends a guy called Arthur Dent.

The day of the destruction, they hitchhike onto the Vogon Constructor Fleet so they are taken off Earth before it gets destroyed. Then they travel around the Galaxy having adventures. To me, as a 13-year-old, I’m on that ship. Take me out of Blackrock. Take me into the universe. I’m outta here!

The Truth About the Irish

There is this book written by Terry Eagleton called The Truth About the Irish. It’s bang on. 

I used it as a reference for some of the ideas in The Savage Eye. There are some good sociological points made in it. It sounds like one of those jokey types of books, but actually it’s very well written. I’ve given the book to a few people over the years