Culture That Made Me: Cork comedian Chris Kent on Peep Show, Mick Flannery, and the Wolfe Tones
Chris Kent is at City Limits in Cork on December 13.
Chris Kent, 41, grew up in Knocknaheeney, Cork. In 2009, he won the Bulmers Nuttin’ But Funny competition. He has since performed stand-up shows at comedy festivals around the world, while his screen acting credits include The Young Offenders and Women on the Verge.
He will headline a Christmas special at Cork’s City Limits Comedy Club, Saturday, December 13. See: www.chriskentcomedy.com
As a kid, when I first started consuming Father Ted, Father Jack was my favourite because he's animated, he swears, he's silly. As I got older, Ted became my favourite character. I loved the way Dermot Morgan, as Father Ted, was portraying that Dougal was always the stupid one, that he was the leader, but he was often the butt of the joke himself. No one in the show was zon, so he was fooling them, but you, as the viewer, went, “Sure, he's as bad as them. He's an awful eejit.”
Growing up, I loved the two lads from D’Unbelievables. They were my first taste of proper comedy. I remember watching their live show video and howling laughing. Me and my friends in school took them off, trying to reenact their antics. Their crowd work was genius. They weren’t mean to the crowd at all. Some stand-up comedy these days can be mean, looking to make fun of someone. But D’Unbelievables were using the audience as a sounding board, turning someone in the audience into characters, using them as part of the show, not insulting them, just having fun. I loved their sketch-based videos as well. All their stuff was in my wheelhouse.
Peep Show, the British sitcom, is so funny – the characters in it, the situations they get into. It's about two flat mates, starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb, with loads of amazing comedians in it too. One of them is a strait-laced office worker. He’s well-educated but he’s a mess. He shares a flat with another guy, Jeremy, who's hanging around the flat all day, along with other sorts. It’s so out there. They speak out this inner monologue, insight into what they're really thinking. I love it.
Tommy Tiernan’s first live DVD is a masterpiece. The material is so funny. It was so well written, so well-paced, like a machine gun. You can’t catch your breath. I loved his act outs, his characters. There are so many quotable bits in it. Like his friend, Declan Moffatt, entering the marathon on a whim and running against these elite runners from Africa. The way he can turn anything into a joke. He's mysterious. His own persona has changed down through the years. He’s almost come full circle. He’s brilliant.
I still watch the film every now and again. Everything about it I love. It was recorded back in 1979. It's incredible that it still stands up as one of the greatest comedy specials ever recorded. He walks out in that purple shirt when the auditorium is still filling up, which is something I only respect watching as a comedian now. You're behind the curtain, side stage, going, “I'm not starting yet because they're not all sitting down looking at the stage.” But he’s there, just taking the piss out of the people still walking in. His act outs, his story about Muhammad Ali and boxing – he's so unbelievably naturally funny.
I read Steve Martin's book a couple of times. When started off, it wasn’t working for him for many years. That was very alluring to me as a stand-up comedian that was trying to find my way. Stand-ups love it. It’s an easy read, a great memoir. He purely stuck to his own thing. What he was doing initially in stand-up was so different to what Richard Pryor and comedians before him were doing. He was a complete messer. He'd have a gig and there'd be 20 people in the audience, and he'd take them all outside on the street, down the road to something. Then his gigs started getting much bigger. He couldn’t really be taking them outside somewhere. By the end of it, he ended up being one of the biggest ever stand-ups in the world, playing actual stadiums, not arenas, stadiums.
My first ever cinema experience was It was in the Capitol Cinema in Cork, which is no longer there. There was no allocated seating back then. It had double seats for many years – later when you would be lucky enough to be “on a jag”, trying to get in early to get a double seat. It was the love seat; there was no armrest between you and your “loved one”. So many of those movies weren't watched. You were shifting away for the whole movie. Happy days.
I’ll never forget seeing Mick Flannery’s in the Everyman Theatre. It was a stage adaptation of his album, It's a concept album, which is my favourite type of album to listen to. I love an album where there's a story happening and everything is tied together in the songs. Mick was on stage with his band, but they're sort of hidden, over in the corner playing music. It had an amazing cast of actors acting out the story and singing the songs in between. It was stunning, an immersive experience. I was lost in it. I still think about it.
Something funny happened that night watching One of the brothers has a gambling problem, one brother is strait-laced. There's a love triangle going on – the guy with the gambling problem’s lover has a fling with the other brother during it. I was sitting down. I was captivated. There was someone sitting behind me, clearly very uncomfortable in the silence of it all and was probably not expecting to see this side of Mick Flannery. At this very tense scene, this guy behind me was like, “Please sing a song, please start singing a song.” I don't know if he was aware that he was speaking that loud, but he was like, “Oh God, please do something. Please sing a song.” It was beautiful.
When I was 15 years of age, my friend's dad took us to see the Wolfe Tones in The Arcadia, which no longer exists. It was across from Kent Station in Cork. I'll never forget it as long as I live. We were just drinking raza [raspberry cordial and water], jumping up and down and sweating for the whole night. It was incredible. A new obsession was born.
The Wolfe Tones’ music sparked my interest in Irish history. It was an amazing experience. For years after, I went to see them on numerous occasions around the place and made new friends because of them. I bought a Wolfe Tones T-shirt that night in The Arcadia. I wore it on holidays maybe a year later with my parents. This guy from Dublin clocked the T-shirt.
His name was Tony. He says, “How are you pal? Great T-shirt. Do you want to hang around with us?” I'm still in touch with those lads to this day. That guy Tony was the best man at my wedding. That all stemmed from that Wolfe Tones T-shirt.
