Colin Murphy: 'I've always worked for myself'

This Much I Know: "My proudest achievement is that I’ve been pig-headed enough to still be doing what I’m doing, 30 years later"

Colin Murphy: "You hear the words coming out of your mouth and you think ‘I never thought I’d say that’."

I grew up in Downpatrick in Co Down. It was just me, my mum, my dad, and my sister. I was a shy child, very withdrawn.

I was an ugly sister in the panto when I was about seven. It was an all-boys school and we were in our mums’ nighties. My earliest memory is playing in a cowboy outfit; I watched a lot of westerns and war movies. It’s all about the circumstances. You might have a wee “performance bug” but you know, I came out this way, I could have come out another way. I believe in people being encouraged to do certain things — positive reinforcement helps.

I was brought up in a very religious background. Everybody was in the 70s, I suppose but no, I’m not at all spiritual.

I went to art school to do illustration and I was a freelancer from the minute I left. So I’ve always worked for myself. When you’re young, you just do these things (badly paid freelance gigs). I didn’t worry about anything. I never planned ahead. I just took things as they came along and worked really hard.

Apart from bringing up two healthy, seem-to-be well-adjusted fellows, my proudest achievement is that I’ve been pig-headed enough to still be doing what I’m doing 30 years later.

I understand that frustration when you want to do something and it just doesn’t happen. There comes a point where either you move on or keep it bubbling away and then do something to pay the bills. I don’t give up. I won’t sell out.

I’m grand in my own company. I like being around lots of people but I’m also quite content on my own. Being solitary is the nature of the job. I thought about having a place that you go to [office/workshop space] and then I thought, “Would I go?” It’s just an extra pressure on yourself to turn up every day and set yourself up for failure if you don’t. No, that is the one good thing about my day job — I can do it anywhere.

The person I’d turn to most — that’d be my wife. Nobody else, that’s it. She’s nothing to do with [my industry]. We’ve been together 26 years.

The thing I drummed into the kids when they were at school is when they’d say “what’s the point” or “I don’t need a job” was that the most important thing in life is to have choices. Unfortunately, a lot of people are in a position where they don’t — that’s the thing I fear most. Education is the thing that gives you those choices.

I would have wanted to be a bit more laid back as a parent. You hear the words coming out of your mouth and you think ‘I never thought I’d say that’.

Colin Murphy: "I built my studio down at the bottom of the garden. I think in pictures, actually that’s my greatest skill. Even when I’m doing jokes and stuff, I have a little sketch I see happening in my head."

The greatest advice I’ve ever been given is: “When gigging, never rent a hotel beside a train station.” Bill Bailey told me this. We were doing a college tour together years ago and I could only get this place near a train station. I stayed in one in Sheffield that had the tea bags in — you know the clear plastic money bags you get from the bank — yeah, those. They had Nat West Bank written on them. And a candlewick bedspread with cigarette burns.

I was offered a job once in England just after I left college. I was living in a dingy flat in Bristol. I’d applied for various jobs dishwashing. One guy contacted me from a Chinese restaurant and said, “I don’t have any dishwashing positions but I do have a vacancy for a Szechuan chef”. I said “but I’m not a chef” and he said “I’m also not Chinese but I’ll train you”. I’ve always regretted not taking that job — even just to go and try it out.

We do all the things, recycling and using the energy-thingy lightbulbs. We’ve turned the thermostat down. We’ve had a hybrid car for about six, seven years there and we only just got rid of it because it died. I’m much more aware of [climate change]. I just received a pair of trousers that are very fancy but because they’re pre-owned, they’re a quarter of the price that they should have been.

I’m good at DIY, building things and painting and decorating. I can cook more than one dinner. I have an eye for colour. I just sort of give things a go.

I built my studio down at the bottom of the garden. I think in pictures, actually that’s my greatest skill. Even when I’m doing jokes and stuff, I have a little sketch I see happening in my head.

Other people’s gullibility surprises me. It amazes me that so many people are so willing to believe patent lies — a minimal amount of research can prove all of it wrong.

My dad is terrified of people stealing his money on the computer but he doesn’t even use an ATM card. Until recently, he used to go in and cash a cheque in the local hardware shop near him until that closed down.

Illness is the thing that scares me the most. As we get older, I start to panic about everybody. A friend of ours is going through stuff but fingers crossed. Most men are a bloody nightmare. I do go to the doctor — but only when I have a lot of issues. What is that line? “Women go to hospital in a taxi and men go in an ambulance.”

If I took a different fork in the road, I could have been the first ginger Szechuan chef.

• Colin Murphy appears on BBC One Northern Ireland’s The Secret Artists February 8 and brings his comedy tour Whatchamacolin to Dundalk’s Spirit Store, March 24-25 and The Braid Theatre in Ballymena March 31.