Laughter is the best medicine for comedian Phill Jupitus

Comedian and Never Mind the Buzzcocks star, Phill Jupitus has a unique way of staying sane.

“Basically I do stand-up instead of paying for a therapist. It’s much more profitable for me,” he says.

Jupitus returns to the city for more ‘therapy’ on Sunday for performances in the Galway Comedy Festival, rebranded as the Vodafone Comedy Carnival, which starts today, and runs until Monday, October 27. As well as several stand-up shows, listeners to Galway Bay FM’s mid-morning magazine show, Galway Talks, can hear Jupitus next week as he stands in for Keith Finnegan for an hour a day.

A firm favourite with Galway audiences, the English funny man has been coming here for two decades, since his first gig in the former GPO nightclub in the late 1980s.

That was pre-Celtic Tiger Galway – the city has changed a whole pile since and so too has his stand-up style.

“When you do something as long as I’ve been doing it – I’ve been performing in one shape or another for over 30 years – naturally my style changes. When I was younger it was a lot more surreal, whimsical stuff, but as I’ve gotten older, it’s a lot more talking about life – the comic father . . . the things I talk about are sort of the common concerns of most fathers; fathers and daughters especially, and I think that’s why it resonates with the audience,” he says.

Jupitus is unmistakably English – his accent gives it away – but he says that is an asset abroad, rather than a hindrance.

“I used to do a lot in America, so I know a lot of American speech pattern. I did a gig in New York once, and for the first half of the week I used American speech patterns but then I switched and just did British for the second half of the week and it just went down better.

“I think an audience, particularly an audience overseas, likes to hear something different. And they like to hear indigenous speech pattern. If I hear an American comic say ‘pavement’, I’d be like ‘no, that sounds wrong in your mouth’. It’s always better to sort of stick to who you are.”

Last month, Jupitus did a gig in Sweden that ‘went down a treat’ with 400 Swedes, so he says, “the language barrier thing is a bit of a misnomer”. He says cultural barriers exist, however, as he recalls nearly being arrested for a risqué segment in the Middle East.

“I did a gig in Dubai, and I talked about my daughter, and the guy that organised the gig said after ‘you really sailed close to the wind there’. They really don’t like you talking about sex in the Gulf – genuinely, it was that close to calling the police. I said ‘what, really?’ and he was like ‘No seriously, culturally, you can’t’. You just have to be aware. But the essence of what we do – stand up comedy – is the exchange of ideas for laughter. The thing is, if you mitigate those ideas, and if you water them down, and if you try and tailor those ideas to the audience, or if you try and second guess your audience, I think you’re taking more of a gamble than just doing your own thing. I’d rather fail by being myself than fail trying to be what they want,” he says.

And that’s the thing about being a comedian – you can fall flat on stage, your jokes going down like lead balloons. Jupitus is aware of this – “stand-up is a very, very strange job” – but he doesn’t get nervous before taking to the stage.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.