A comic tale of failure that paved the road to success

EARLIER THIS year someone at Roisin Conaty's old secondary school found out that she was now working as a stand-up comedian. The London-Irish comic was promptly invited back to her school to give a talk to students about her high-flying showbusiness career, writes BRIAN BOYD

“I thought the whole thing was a big mistake” says Conaty. “I’m not the kind of person who should be giving advice to anyone – never mind school-leavers. Things weren’t going too well for me at the time. I had just moved in with my Nan because I was so poor. I don’t think the speech I gave was quite what they were expecting.”

She used the experience to form the backbone of her Edinburgh show this year. Called Hero, Warrior, Fireman, Liar,the show won the Best Newcomer Award (aka "the baby Perrier") at this year's festival – the same beginner's award won in years past by Harry Hill and The Mighty Boosh. Conaty now finds herself on the brink of bigger and better things and next week she's making her Irish debut at the Clonmel Comedy Festival.

“I can’t believe it’s actually going to be my first gig in Ireland,” she says. “I’m from a massive Irish family and actually went to school in Kerry when I was younger. My dad is from Limerick and my mother is from Cavan. I’ve got 80 first cousins in Ireland. It’s a huge family – there are triplet aunties and my mother has 12 brothers and sisters. I’m already getting loads of messages on my Facebook page from relations saying they’re coming to the Clonmel show. It’s a big deal for me especially having lived there when I was younger. But, yes, I do have a London accent because I grew up here but as you can tell from the name, I’m not English.”

Very much the coming thing in stand-up, this week she makes her stand-up debut on BBC3 ( The Russell Howard Show) and next year she's off to perform at the Melbourne Comedy Festival. She will return here for the Kilkenny Cat Laughs festival next year.

“The woman who books Kilkenny came to see me in Edinburgh and invited me over,” she says. “I was thrilled, not just because it’s an Irish festival, but because it has such a great reputation on the circuit.”

Although Tommy Tiernan (a fan of her work) was telling everyone at Edinburgh this year to go and see her show, it was a slow build for Conaty and the award was a genuine surprise. “It was my first hour-long show at the festival so I was petrified enough by that, never mind worrying what the reaction was,” she says. “I had been told not to read the reviews – as in, don’t read any review at all for the whole month, you don’t want to be getting a one star review of day three of your run.

“I didn’t feel there was any heat or buzz about the show at all, but I did notice that quite a few comics were coming to see it. I was thinking ‘What are they doing here?’ but it turned out that it had spread by word-of- mouth. And if other acts come and see you, that can be only good.”

She’s grateful for Tiernan’s endorsement. “I did a gig with him about a year ago,” she says. “He turned up unannounced at this club and I was thrilled because I’m a big fan. He’s very encouraging and very supportive. I think it was him who told the person from Cat Laughs to go and see me in Edinburgh”.

Educated at a convent school in Camden, Conaty never harboured any ambitions to become a comic and drifted through a variety of post-school jobs. “The whole thing was a bit of a mistake. I was in this pizza restaurant and there was a pub across the road which had open-mic spots so a friend put my name down,” she says. “About six months later they rang to say they had a spot. I had no idea what there were talking about – I had totally forgotten about it – but I went ahead and did it. It never struck me at the time as something I particularly wanted to do or make a career of but I started doing more gigs – small ones –and then fell into doing it full-time. That was never the plan though. I thought I’d be working in fashion or something.”

She went from open-spots to five-minute spots to 20-minute spots. She had done the Edinburgh Festival five years ago as part of a three-part bill and like most circuit comics loved it but was put off by the huge expense. “It goes against every grain in your body bringing your own one-person show to Edinburgh,” she says. “Yes, it may be the best festival in the world but unless you’re from a wealthy background it can be very, very tough. There are some really great comics out there who don’t go up because of the ferocious expense.”

However, her experience of going back to give a talk at her old school did persuade her that she had a very good idea for a show on her hands.

“It wasn’t just about going back to do the talk, it was about the fact that I realised I don’t know that much more than I did when I left the school at 18. I left in 1997, the year New Labour came into power and there was all this change in the air. But my story was really one of not being successful in any way whatsoever. That was the base and I sort of explore ideas of being a finished product or being a work-in-progress from there,” she says.

Conaty’s quick-fire, scatter-gun stage style which sees her cover a bewildering amount of topics (and tangents) within a short space of time comes from her upbringing.

“We were a big and loud Irish family growing up,” she says. “You never got to finish a sentence as somebody else would be talking on top of you so I learned from an early age that the only way to get someone’s attention is to talk quickly and loudly. It’s handy for working in comedy clubs.”

Roisín Conaty performs at The Clonmel Comedy Festival (November 18th-21st). Based at O’Keeffes in Clonmel, acts taking part include Ava Vidal, Ivan Brackenbury (the Hospital Radio DJ), the “psychic” Ian D Montfort; Jason Byrne, Karl Spain, Keith Farnan, PJ Gallagher and Gearoid Farrelly. All show info and ticket booking at clonmelcomedy.com