A stand-up guy

HOMETOWN GIG After a sold out performance in May of last year, Ger Staunton returns to his hometown of Castlebar for a solo show special on September 8.

Interview
Ger Flanagan

PICTURE the scene. It’s Ger Staunton’s first-ever stand-up comedy gig. He’s wanted to try his hand at the art for the past 15 years, but never possessed the confidence to break the duck and step on stage.
He’s in Fairview, Dublin, at The House Presents event in Annesley House, a monthly gathering for all interested in the disciplines of performance, such as poetry, storytelling, music and comedy.
His nerves are tingling. The prompt notes scribbled on his arm are beginning to smudge from his perspiration, and to make matters worse, the act on before him is an author reading an extract from his own book about his wife who had passed away from cancer.
Needless to say, when it’s Ger’s time to step on stage, the atmosphere in the room is slightly subdued.
“I had never really got nervous like that before in my life … I literally walked up on stage to the sound of my own footsteps and people crying, so it was an interesting start,” he tells the  The Mayo News. “But I got through it, and amazingly people laughed and said ‘you should do another one’, so I did.
“At the end of the gig, I said to my girlfriend at the time, ‘I think that went ok?’ And she replied: ‘Well, at least they stopped crying’.
It was that same ex-girlfriend whom Ger credits for introducing him to the comedy scene. “She got fed up of me being a smart arse to her and couldn’t take it at all, so she went out, booked me a gig, and said, ‘Go out and annoy other people and not me’,” he laughs.
Fast forward four years and Ger is now busy performing at the 25-day Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the world’s largest arts festival. He still returns to The House Presents every year to play a gig, and it remains his favourite venue of all.

The homecoming
It was 5pm last Wednesday when The Mayo News spoke to Ger, after he had just finished another 15-minute performance in Edinburgh. He was on his way to meet another comedian to grab a bite to eat and have a quick scan over some material as he prepared for his daily 45-minute-long show that begins at 7.15pm.
The timing of the festival is perfect, helping him prepare for his much anticipated home-coming gig taking place in the Linenhall Arts Centre, Castlebar, on Friday, September 8 – which, in his humble opinion, will be a night not to be missed.
“I’ll have a lot of new material, and there will be more of an arc to the show, rather than doing a ‘best of, here’s all my jokes one after the other’,” he says. “It’s more of a show with a start, middle and end, and I am really happy with it … I’ve been doing bits of it here in Edinburgh every night, making tweaks as I go along with the Castlebar show in mind, so it should be fun.”

Early days
Ger hails from the town of Castlebar, where he once taught at the Castlebar College of Further Education. He is the son of local barber Ger and Agnes Staunton and has a background in art, even doing some illustration work for these very pages in the past.
The 38 year old is the first to admit that a career in stand-up comedy is not something he had ever envisioned in his younger days.
“I never considered myself funny,” he says, candidly. “I was always quiet, in the back of the class or in the pub amongst other people … every now and then I would say a funny comment that people would laugh at.
“But I used to write down all the funny stuff that I thought of, thinking that some day I might do a sketch or pitch it to some TV company for a sitcom. I never thought I would end up doing stand-up, but when I did, I had loads of thoughts written down … I had so much funny stuff accumulated over the years.”
Ger describes his style as ‘conversational’. “There isn’t a huge amount of pressure to laugh, and there isn’t any audience interaction, so I am not going to ask a couple whether or not they met on tinder.
“It’s kind of storytelling and an atmosphere like, ‘Listen, go to the bar and grab yourself a pint and I’ll get one myself and we’ll chill out for the next 45 minutes.”
Comedy is now almost Ger’s full-time job. A couple of days a month he works as a freelance video editor for Sky Sports and RTÉ, compiling live action replays and montages from GAA and rugby games.
But his journey hasn’t been all plain sailing. He’s quick to highlight the difficulties of starting out as a comedian – especially the first couple of years, where you are travelling the length and breath of the country, gigging for free in all sorts of pubs and clubs, building your audience and developing a style of voice. These years ‘will make or break you’, he says.
“You are going into rooms where you might be out the back of a pub with a load of drunk people and it is like doing the interval at the darts,” he laughs. “You are trying to sell your jokes and nobody is listening.
“You have got your seven or ten minutes to try and impress them for your life, really, and you can’t always expect everybody to get you or to care about what you have to say.
“They can be difficult rooms, but you have to do them. And I am still doing them. I am not above any gig at the moment.
“But I am willing to do it. It is a graft, and you could be doing worse things than literally standing on stage, telling funny stories to people about things that happened to you…. And now they pay! So it is not that bad.”
Thankfully, however, his career is now really taking off. The Irish Examiner labelled him ‘incredibly funny’, while The International Comedy Club, Dublin, said: ‘One of the best comedy writers in Ireland. An absolute stand out’.
It sounds like pretty soon Ger Staunton will be able to wave those drunks at the back of the pub goodbye forever. Or perhaps they’ll be turned into material for his show, and he’ll have the last laugh.

Ger Staunton will perform at 8pm in the Linenhall Arts Centre, Castlebar, on Friday September 8. Ballina man Bob Hennigan will kickstart the show. For tickets (€14/€12 each), contact the Linenhall Arts Centre on 094 902 3733 or visit www.thelinenhall.com.