An interview with Dermot Whelan from
Griffiti Magazine vol. 35
Dermot Whelan is more enigmatic than one might imagine. Despite his platinum selling Toll Troll albums, his best local DJ Meteor award and his regular appearences on RTE’s the Panel, he is still often cited as “your man off the telly”. He is currently preparing to fine tune the stand up string of his comedy bow by following in the foot steps of Tommy Tiernan, Dara O’Briain and Dylan Moran with a stand up gig at Dublin’s hallowed Vicar Street.
“I’m excited and every time I think about it I get really excited and then I feel naucious because obviously it’s my first big one and I want it to go well and I am furiously writing new material which I need to road test fairly soon”
Keep an eye out for Dermot in Dublin’s smaller clubs in the run up the March 26 gig as he tries to refine his material in smaller venues. “Anywhere I can get a gig where I can die on my arse and get away with it. The potential for dying on your arse never goes away, unfortunately, you just sort of get bigger gigs and there’s a little bit more pressure each time. But I’m really excited about it now. I can’t wait for Vicar Street. I just hope people come along and see me”
The fear of dying isn’t an unfamiliar phenomanon. It has been with him since his very first gig. “It was in the Internatonal. I did an open spot about five years ago because Des Bishop told me to, so I said “okay”, and I was so nervous I felt sick for about a week and a half before it. I was going up and adding a little comedy song and just as they were calling out my name my wife grabbed my arm and said “don’t do the song!”, so I went up onto the stage a nervous wreck. Haha, I’ve never forgiven her for that.”
“I did do the song and it went down well so it taught me an important lesson: never listen to my wife about comedy. Ever. Usually, I’ll run a joke by her and if she says it’s really good I ditch it.”
Clearly, the Whelans have a very open, communicative relationship and have no problems expressing their feelings. “I got heckled by my wife one time. Maybe she’s having an affair with another comedian and wants to see me go down in flames. Somebody was just shouting up at me and it was disrupting the gig and then when I actually got them to shine the lights on her it was my wife. I thought “What the fuck are you doing?”. So I had her removed by the bouncers.”
A big part of the stand up circuit in Ireland is the festivals and Dermot is hopeful of making appearences at as many as he can. “It’s kind of early in the year to get booked for them but I hope that I’m asked back to Kilkenny because I’ve done that for the last four yers and I’ve absolutely loved it, and the Carlsberg one in Dublin at the Iveagh Gardens is a great festival and there’s the Hallowe’en Howls now in Portlaoise which is great. I’ll always do the festivals because a) you get to do a comedy gig, and b) I get to go on the lash, which as a father of two is a pretty rare occasion.”
Of course going on the lash has its consequences, one of which is writer’s block. “If I’m hung over I definitely can’t write anything. Nothing is funny. I could probably write a sequel to Angela’s Ashes when I’m hung over.”
The writing process is a mixed bag for Whelan. “Sometimes I just come up with a routine off the top of me head while I’m on stage, which is great because it doesn’t really require any prep, and sometimes I can sit in front of my computer for six hours and come out with something that I think is genius and then it’s as funny as a car crash. It depends on the mood I’m in.”
When asked who his influences are, Dermot doesn’t hesitate. “I saw Dylan Moran last year and I thought he was just the best you can get. He gave a masterclass in doing stand up. He was in Vicar Street and it was brilliant, because it makes you think I really want to go and do another gig, but you also think I’m never going to do it again because I’m shit compared to him. He’s brilliant.”
Clearly Mr Whelan is a coneseur of Irish comedy, his favourite comedian is Irish, as is his favourite joke. “There’s a comedian called Michael Mee from Cork who’s very good. He has a joke where he says “Somebody said that you’ll never be able to love someone else unless you love yourself first. Which I did… but then I realised that I was just using myself for sex.” Which always makes me laugh.”
Dermot is most recognisable for his appearences on RTE’s the Panel. “Getting the panel is certainly a major thing for me because it gets your name out beyond your usual circle y’know. The people outside of Dublin will see you and you kind of get known as oh there’s that guy off the tele. Nobody knows my name yet they just go “oh look, it’s your man off the tele”, but that definitely helps. Any stuff you do on the television definitely helps.”
The Panel was once one of the flagships of the RTE schedule but the last two series haven’t been as strong as previous years, leaving the future of the show a little bit up in the air. “I think it went through a few difficulties when RTE kept changing the host. I think that’s what happened when it went to RTE One. RTE kept changing the host every week and it kind of made it very difficult for the comedians on it, y’know. I think when it was RTE Two it was on on a Monday night and that’s a great student night. We might have lost a lot of the student following when it went to Thursdays on RTE One, but I’m hoping that they’ll bring it back because it still has a lot of potential. I thought the last series was quite fun and it’s still a great show to do… and with Andrew Maxwell you never really know what’s going to happen.”
Comedians often have a reputation for being quite reclusive and socially awkward off stage. Dermot doesn’t fit this stereotype and has found Twitter to be a great way to connect with his fans. “I’m the eigth most influential twitterer in the country I’ll have you know - which means I use Twitter to shamelessly plug my gigs. I do love Twitter though. I despise Facebook. I think Facebook is just so difficult to read, it’s like trying to read a crash between a paint truck and a clown factory. I love Twitter because it’s just so simple. Graham Linnehan said, it forces people to think about what they’re going to say before they do it because you have to be concise so you have to be clever rather than just waffling on like you do on Facebook. “Here’s a picture of me having spaghetti yeasterday. Awesome”. Twitter isn’t like that. I follow everybody who follows me so I like just chatting to people on it. It’s good.”
Dermot hasn’t always been a professional wisecracker and many people would be surprised to know that he actually studied archeaology in Trinity. “I saw Indianna Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark when I was 10. I absolutely loved the Indianna Jones movies and I wanted to dig up old things (So we dug up Twink). I loved doing it”
Some loves are strong enough to last through the ages. This one wasn’t. “I began to hate it. I realised at some point, I’d have to have a long beard and be sitting in a wet ditch somewhere in Mayo scraping away at the ground hoping to find a piece of flint. So I went there’s probably better and warmer ways to make a living.”
After his stint as an Indianna Jones inpersonator, Dermot began a successful radio career – initially working with Dublin City FM in Griffith College’s studio. He now hosts Dublin’s 98’s breakfast show, a show which spawned the platinum selling CDs by the Toll Trolls. Apparently he keeps his plaques in a trophy cabinet along with his Meteor Award and the bronze medal he won for the long jump when he was nine. “I have lots of Toll Troll plaques actually. I got one from when they went platinum, and then one from when they went double platinum. I like to invite my serious musician friends around to look at my platinum discs so they can feel really sick that some bloke with some squeaky voiced characters managed to it and they couldn’t.”
