The Big Interview: Michael Mee

Ahead of his co-headlining appearance at The Hardy Har Comedy Club on Thursday, April 21st 2016, Michael Mee revealed his comedy inspirations to the Greystones Guide…

And he took a shot too at explaining how the hell he fell into the ridiculous line of work like stand-up comedy.

In terms of my back-story, I did Law in U.C.C. and qualified as a solicitor. Then I lectured in law in the University of Limerick. I kind of fell into stand-up comedy. I had taken a year off as a career-break, hoping to get a break as a writer. Then I saw an ad for a stand-up comedy competition organised by the chat show, Kenny Live. I entered and reached the final. One of the judges said, “You should do a gig in the Comedy Cellar” – so, I rang the number he gave me, and the Comedy Cellar booker told me that there was a heat coming up of So You Think You’re Funny, a newcomer’s competition for the Edinburgh Festival. I did the gig, which was MC-ed by the previous year’s winner, Tommy Tiernan. Tommy liked my stuff, and asked me to gig with him at the Galway Arts Festival. I got to the semi-finals of SYTYF, and, in very short order, I was a stand-up comedian. And I’ve never looked back!

The Influences

Monty Python
Growing up in Cork, in two-channel-land – and before that, one-channel-land – I never saw the Monty Python TV series till I was in college – but I heard the Python LPs (all of which shows my age, I’m sure).
I suppose these records were pretty much of a souvenir of the television series from which they were taken, but for me, they were stand-alone experiences. I wasn’t sure how many were in the group or what they looked like, though I knew John Cleese from Fawlty Towers. Seeing the sketches subsequently, it was often a surprise to see who was speaking which lines, and also that the non-album sketches were often a bit patchy. To be honest, I still kind of prefer the records, which I still listen to to this day.

Not the Nine O’Clock News
Not the Nine O’Clock News was a topical satirical BBC programme featuring Rowan Atkinson, Griff Rhys-Jones, the late Mel Smith, Billy Connolly’s future wife and psychologist, Pamela Stephenson, and, for a while, Chris Langham. This is a sketch based on the reaction of certain commentators to the Monty Python movie, Life of Brian. Again, I heard this first on an LP.

The Goon Show
For those who don’t know, The Goon Show was a ’50s BBC radio show starring Harry Secombe, Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers, written mainly by Spike. As with the previous two, I borrowed their LPs from Cork City Music Library. It’s hard to just dip into The Goon Show by listening to an excerpt – it can sound like random chaos – but once you get into it, and begin to know the cast of characters, you can see why it was such a big influence on the Python generation.

Woody Allen
While I secretly dreamed of writing film and TV scripts, stand-up comedy wasn’t really on my radar when I was growing up. Nonetheless, I aways loved Woody Allen’s stand-up. Brendan Balfe used to play comedy cuts on RTE radio (again from comedy LPs – a theme is emerging here) and I heard him there first. Woody did stand-up in the 1960s, and then went into movies and pretty much left it alone after that, but I think the three records he made contain some of the cleverest, funniest, most inventive stand-up you’ll ever hear.
When I started doing stand-up, I was trying to do something in the same vein as him, and of the reviews I’ve had as a comedian, the one I prize most (and which goes on all my posters) said I was ‘Woody Allen with a Cork brogue’. I was grinning for weeks after that.

The Complete Upmanship
One thing that really inspired me when I was a teenager was a series of books by Stephen Potter, collected as The Complete Upmanship. Potter was a English literature professor who coined the terms gamesmanship and one-upmanship in these books, which purport to be a guide to help you be “top man” in conversation, sports, life, etc. I played a lot of tennis when I was young and the guide to gamesmanship (defined as ‘how to win at sports without actually cheating’) detailed a lot of the psychological ploys that I was encountering from my young opponents.
The thing about the books is they’re written tongue-in-cheek as observation of how people behave, but some readers have missed the subtlety of that. I was at a literary/comedy night a few years ago and the host (whose blushes I will spare by not naming him) produced a book which he had found in a second-hand shop and which he proposed to read in extract. The cover was (fatally) missing. “I’m going to read from this book I found,” he told the audience. “At first I thought this was tongue-in-cheek but the author clearly believes this stuff – he’s absolutely vile.” He then read an extract, showing what he saw as the author’s total lack of a moral compass. Afterwards, I told him that I knew the book, and it was a modern humour classic published by Penguin, and filmed as School for Scoundrels. He was pretty embarrassed about it. Interestingly, the audience had laughed where Potter intended them to. Anyway, this clip is from that film, starring Ian Carmichael and the incomparable Terry Thomas.

Eddie Izzard
Eddie Izzard was on top form in the ’90s, and I saw him live a number of times in various venues. He has a surreal, highly imaginative style, very influenced by Monty Python and the Goons, so this seems to tie things up nicely.

Ireland’s answer to Woody Allen, the great Michael Mee will be co-headlining  -alongside another GG favourite, Tommy Nicholson – the Hardy Har Comedy Club on Thursday, April 21st at The Harbour Bar. More info on the Facebook event page here, whilst you can find out more about young Micheal Konigsberg right about here.