Books

Stand-up comedy was my Achill heel (a weakness in spite of overall weakness)

Karl MacDermott, ‘the Gummo Marx of Irish Comedy’, on his comic novel 58% Cabbage

Karl MacDermott: 58% Cabbage is about a specific place. My very own Heimat on the Corrib.

Karl MacDermott
Wed Aug 11 2021 - 06:02

If I hadn’t left home in Galway 34 years ago, I know, deep down, I would have just vegetated, drifted and become a failure. Instead, I moved to Dublin where I spent the next thirty-four years vegetating, drifting and becoming a failure.

In my new comic novel, 58% Cabbage, I re-examine my life, through alter-ego Roddy Bodkin, to see if a different outcome might have come to pass had I remained in Galway. Would my premonition, signalling decades of slothful pointlessness and futile endeavour, still have borne fruit, or would I, possibly, have made a roaring success of things?

After 240 pages I have arrived at a definitive conclusion.

The words ‘roaring’ and ‘success’ do not appear.

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Where did it all go....not quite right?

That well known expression, Achilles’ heel, denotes a weakness in spite of overall strength. A lesser-known expression from the west of Ireland, Achill heel, denotes a weakness in spite of overall weakness. Stand-up comedy was my Achill heel.

For over 20 years I attempted to be a stand-up comic. My ex-wife (now happily remarried to a Fergal from Fermoy) stressed repeatedly that I should try something else. Being a legal practitioner, there was a highly impressive methodical approach to her analysis.

“Firstly, Karl, you are not particularly funny. In all the studies over the years, conclusive evidence overwhelmingly confirms that if you are not in the least bit funny you should not attempt a career as a stand-up comedian. So I think, darling, that is something you should bear in mind.

“Secondly, you don’t like going out and leaving the house. Most, if not all, stand-up comedy gigs happen in a location that isn’t this house so if you are not too keen in exiting our front door every once in a while, a career in stand-up comedy is not to be recommended. So, maybe that should be factored into the equation as well.

“And, thirdly, I know I’ve brought this one up many times, but you’re not great when forced to respond to a heckle during a performance. Passive aggressive sighing, eye-rolling or at times helplessly bursting into tears is never the right way to deal with an unruly heckler.”

But I didn’t listen.

I hear Fergal is a good listener, though. And excels at DIY.

So 58% Cabbage is about struggles in the world of stand-up comedy, the illusion of laughter, husbands and wives and failing marriages.

Primarily however, 58% Cabbage is about a specific place. My very own Heimat on the Corrib. James Joyce once said that “if Dublin one day disappeared from the face of the earth, it could be re-constructed from Ulysses”.

Well, I can confidently state that if Galway one day disappeared from the face of the earth it too could be re-constructed from 58% Cabbage. Not because my book is a topographical masterpiece but because, let’s be honest, there is very little to my home town. What would there be to re-construct after this imagined vanishing? Eyre Square? Shop Street? The Spanish Arch? Galway city centre is a bit like that Gertrude Stein remark about LA. There’s not much there there.

Beside the point, naysayers might claim. It doesn’t matter if you are not impressed with a place. A place isn’t solely about landmarks. It’s also about the people. Valid point, naysayers, I might retort, but to be honest, there’s a lot of people from Galway I’m not that impressed with either.

Janey mackers, Karl, this all sounds a bit of a downer, I hear you say. Ruinous career choice. Permanent estrangement from your place of origin. Cuckolded by a guy called Fergal.

But, dear reader, spoiler alert – much of comedy is a downer. That old Foxrock Funnyman Samuel Beckett once opined “there’s nothing funnier than unhappiness” and let’s not forget American humorist SJ Perelman’s quote “misery makes copy” which I once had printed on a T-shirt. The print shop messed up though and I still recall vividly the many perplexed expressions that greeted “Miser Makes Cop” during that summer of 2003 while I strolled through St Stephen’s Green.

The book also touches upon a matter that has been largely ignored by the commentariat. The, in my opinion, slightly sinister correlation between the growth in the number of coffee shops and the growth in the number of comedians in this country over the last 25 years. Before 1995 there were hardly any coffee shops or comedians in Ireland. Then suddenly, over the last quarter of a century, both sectors proliferated like Gremlins in the throes of fertility treatment.

Now, I’m the last person to be considered a far-fetched, unhinged conspiracy theorist (although, years ago, I swear I did see Lord Lucan on Shergar piloting a UFO just outside Kinnegad) but I strongly feel this whole exponential increase in both local coffee shops and local comedians demands further investigation.

58% Cabbage is aeons away from the zeitgeist (at moments, a slight influence of that latter-day Pol Pot of Comedy, Woody Allen, can be discerned) and is the polar opposite of life-affirming. Nevertheless, that doesn’t necessarily make it wholly dated or uh.....death-affirming.

Its lugubrious sensibility is, however, underscored by Roddy Bodkin’s awareness of the unabated passing of time. No longer young, he gradually realises that with middle age, a person becomes tinned fruit just out of a can. Completely drained.

He also observes ultimately that life is just a beginning, a muddle and an end. A series of diminishing marginal surprises. And that the actual riddle to life is like an interview with Boris Johnson. There'll never be a straight answer.

58% Cabbage is published by Eyewear