“I HIT the big six-oh recently and haven’t done a tour in a long time, so I thought maybe the time was right to give it another go,” says Tim McGarry of why he’s hitting the road again with Ridiculous, his first extended run of live stand-up dates in eight years.
“Partly it’s because there’s plenty of [other] work on, so we’re busy doing lots of other things,” explains the north Belfast funnyman of this big gap between tours, “but I still enjoy doing the stand-up and I always do a 20 to 30-minute set in the middle of every Give My Head Peace Live show.”
Since Tim was last on the road, our local comedy scene has experienced a boom that’s seen a new generation of younger stand-up comics starting to fill some of our biggest venues on a regular basis, with plenty of dedicated comedy clubs and events happening every week around the north for up and comers to cut their teeth at - a sharp contrast to when Tim first got on the mic well over 30 years ago.
“Comedy has exploded here recently,” enthuses The Blame Game host, who has been taking advantage of the increasing number of comedy outlets himself.
“There’s so many new comedians and so many new gigs that people kept asking me to come and do a wee gig with them. I’ve already headlined quite a lot of these wee comedy clubs around the country, and I just thought, ‘You know what? I could probably do a solo show here’.
“So it’s a challenge as well - to see if I can do it as well as the young ones these days.”
To be fair, Tim has been keeping an eye on his younger competition in the run-up to Ridiculous: Shane Todd was the guest on the debut episode of the new weekly Give My Head Podcast, which Tim presents alongside fellow GMHP writers Michael McDowell and Damon Quinn, and he’s also performed live with many of the other top new names.
“I’ve done loads of gigs with them all,” he tells me.
“I’m actually doing one on Thursday night which is a ‘roast’ for Willie Thompson. Shane Todd is gonna be there, and Dave Elliott and Ciaran Bartlett and Mickey Bartlett as well. I know all those guys, I follow them. I met Paddy Raff yesterday, who’s doing brilliant work as well.
“I mean, I’m old school. I was brought up in the Troubles, and that’s defined a lot of the stuff that I do. But the new guys are all different. There’s a good variety of stuff and they’re doing brilliant.
“It’s a different world from my day, when the big goal was to get something on TV. Now, these guys don’t need TV. They’ve all got Patreon accounts and sell tickets for their live shows on the back of their other stuff. The like of Colin Geddis with his Bomb Squad Podcast, he has tens of thousands of followers.”
As for his new Ridiculous tour, which kicks off at the Old Courthouse in Antrim next Friday night and also features three Belfast dates at Crumlin Road Gaol on September 28 and the Lyric on November 16 and 17, it seems Tim’s father has also been a big inspiration for the new show - and an unexpected one at that.
“My late father was a surgeon at the Mater Hospital, and he used to say ‘always have a sense of your own ridiculousness’, because we take ourselves far too seriously in this country,” explains Tim.
“So I’ll be looking at some of the things that are ridiculous in society and politics and life. I’ll be talking about getting older, and my parents as well, because I’ve never really talked about them much.
“My father’s dead a long time, but recently someone sent me a DVD of him performing at the annual variety show the doctors used to do at the Mater. I always knew my dad was a raconteur with a good sense of humour and a nice way of telling a story, but he basically got up and did a 20-minute stand-up set.
“When I watched it, I went, ‘bloody hell - he’s very, very good’. I could do with learning from him by slowing down, taking it easy and making every word count - and not swearing as much, which I have a tendency to do.
“I’ll be honest with you, some of the jokes he did you couldn’t repeat in 2024, but he was kind of an inspiration [for the tour] as well. I thought I should go out and see if I can be as funny as he was.”
He adds: “I also took a DNA test recently, which I’ll be revealing the results of exclusively, and I’ll be talking about fame in Northern Ireland when you’re a D-list celebrity like I am - somewhere between a co-opted MLA from West Tyrone and Julian Simmons.”
Having worked up parts of the new set with recent gigs at Lavery’s Comedy Club in Belfast, Tim is feeling good about starting the tour proper on Friday night, as he explains.
“They were brilliant,” he says.
“I’m pretty confident that I have plenty to say. It’s just getting it all in order and seeing which bits work the best and getting it straight in my head. And then once it’s up and running, it’ll be fine. So I’m slightly nervous, but I’m really, really looking forward to it.”
I also took a DNA test recently, which I’ll be revealing the results of exclusively, and I’ll be talking about fame in Northern Ireland when you’re a D-list celebrity like I am - somewhere between a co-opted MLA from West Tyrone and Julian Simmons
— Tim McGarry
And, just to prove that he’s confident he can hold his own against other comedy talent, there will be a supporting turn opening each show.
“There’s so many brilliant comedians out there,” enthuses Tim, who is currently filming another series of his Irish history-themed BBC Northern Ireland show The Long and The Short of It with Dr David Hume.
“I’ll have a good support act come on to do half an hour, and then we’ll have a break. Then I’ll do about about an hour, or just over an hour.
“Basically, you’ll be in the pub for 10 o’clock.”
Now that’s a man who knows his audience.
