Graham Norton and Aisling Bea on their new TV show LOL: Ireland
Aisling Bea and Graham Norton in LOL: Ireland
What happens when you lock 10 comedians in a room for six hours with one simple rule — laugh, and you’re out? An exhausting experience for the comedians involved in LOL: Last One Laughing: Ireland, but a very enjoyable experience for the host, Graham Norton.
“I think when you hear the concept, that it's going to be people not laughing, you imagine that is going to be very dry and not funny,” the West Cork native says. On the contrary, he says, it makes for “hilarious” viewing.
"One, because these are top class comics trying to make people laugh. So what they are doing is very, very funny. But also, watching people trying not to laugh is very funny. And then watching comedians, not get laughs, is also very funny.”
The LOL format, which has been successful in other territories like Canada, Italy, France, and Germany, aims to bring together some of the country's top comedic talent, asking each one to make their peers laugh — without cracking so much as a smirk themselves. Whoever can outlast their competitors will be crowned the champion with a €50,000 prize for the charity of choice.
Here, heavy hitters like Deidre O’Kane, David McSavage and Aisling Bea have been recruited for the show — the latter of which appears offering me a vegan donut and effusive compliments on my nail art when I nab her for a chat.
The draw for Bea — who has been busy starring in, writing and producing a swathe of TV projects in recent years — was in part Norton himself.
“Knowing Graham was hosting was the stamp of approval,” she says, adding that she liked the concept of the show and a pal of hers, Mae Martin, had done the Canadian version.
The first to enter the room in the house, Bea says only about half the people who tippled in after her were an actual surprise to her (contestants were kept a secret from each other prior to the show’s start).
"It's Ireland, there's about 17 [comedians],” she says. “All of us had either worked with each other or at least knew of each other."
For her, the experience, which fellow contestant Amy Huberman described as being like “a Leaving Cert nightmare on repeat” made her realise her branch of comedy was not quite as high brow as she’d like to think.
"I forgot how like Jason [Byrne] I was... I think I thought I was the thinking man's comedian, after watching this show, you're like, 'ah god bless you...’ “There's a part of me that will never do panto or children's entertainment, because it's what I am supposed to do in this life,” she says with a sigh, “It's my true calling."
Elsewhere on set, I pass a white rabbit being escorted out by show runners on my way to chat to Deirdre O'Kane.
The whole experience was “exhausting” she says with some drama. “I knew it was going to be mad, but nothing could have prepared me,” she says, “I am delirious.
“It’s like when you get an over-tired, over-sugared child. Desperate.”
“It was like being in Big Brother... without the sexual tensions,” fellow contender Martin Angolo adds. “Speak for yourself,” O’Kane fires back.
“It doesn't matter what we all do on stage,” Bea observes. “It's how you make your colleagues laugh. It's a different challenge. You're not trying to make an audience laugh at home. You're trying to make your colleagues laugh, which is very, very different.
“Anyone doing set bits, rarely broke people, it was the little asides...” As to who was the “dark horse” in the room full of Ireland’s jokesters, the name Amy Huberman (the only one without stand-up experience) keeps coming up.
“She’s so fucking funny,” Jason Byrne quips, “and she just doesn’t break.” “She was like an Oscar winner,” Tony Cantwell says, though “she looked like she was about to cry for the [full] six hours.” For Norton, it was a “pleasure” to watch the comics work, many of whom he has interviewed in various capacities over the year. As for who made him laugh the most?
“The unnamed winner deserved to win,” he says cryptically.
“My biggest surprise in the room would have been Tony Cantwell. I didn't know him very well, I'd seen some of his Instagram videos and thought ‘they're funny’. He does some set pieces in there that are so, so good. There are probably two Edinburgh shows out of what he did in there. I was really impressed by him."
“There is also some really stupid, stupid stuff. Jason Byrne just messing around with props, giving inanimate objects silly voices and stuff. There is also some clever, quite cerebral stuff,” and unsurprisingly with a gang of Irish comedians some “very dark” humour.
“I am not sure some of that will make it past the edit” he quips.
