The Class Messer

'Less the Duracell Bunny, more the Ever Ready battery' is how Jason Byrne describes himself. Emma Browne profiles one of Ireland's most successful comedians.

Jason Byrne's friend and fellow comedian, PJ Gallagher (one of the comedians from Naked Camera), describes how Byrne got him into stand-up: "I didn't want to get in comedy at all and he kept saying 'You have to do it, You have to do it' and I kept saying 'No no no' and one day I'm sitting on the bus – the 30 bus from Clontarf – and I saw me name on the poster, and I thought, 'looks like I'm a comedian'." Byrne had signed Gallagher up for his first ever gig in Vicar Street. When Village spoke to Gallagher by phone, Byrne was in the background, heckling. And when we spoke to Byrne, there was Gallagher in the background, returning the favour.

The unpredictable, wacky nature of the interview and the story of how Byrne got Gallagher into comedy typifies Jason Byrne and his comedy. He made his name through his stand-up shows which centre around props and audience participation but apart from that are totally ad-hoc and improvised. Byrne's impulsive, prankster comedy has been brilliantly cultivated in the new RTÉ2 show, Anonymous. In the show celebrities dress up as their alter-egos for a day. Through an earpiece Byrne guides them on what to say and do to unsuspecting members of the public or other well-known people.

Byrne, originally from Ballinteer, Co Dublin, got into comedy by accident – doing a charity gig, aged 21. "I just died on my arse". It was so bad that he avoided stand-up for three years: "I didn't do that again until 24 and it worked out."

He soon developed a name for himself on the comedy circuit through the uniqueness of his stand-up routines. He claims that 70 per cent of his material is planned, but as he said this PJ Gallagher was shouting "you fucking liar" in the background .

"He's mental…In fairness he's still the only comic who never repeats his comedy from the gig before. It's unbelievable... I don't know how he does it. And that's why people keep coming back to the gigs," says PJ.

Like many Irish comedians these days Byrne got his first big break in Britain – through Channel 4 and the Edinburgh Fringe festival. He appeared on the Channel 4 show So You Think You're Funny, where comedians perform stand-up and a winner is picked. Tommy Tiernan came first and Byrne second – out of 500 entrants. The year after that he appeared on the Channel 4 programme Edinburgh or Bust, which followed burgeoning comedians through their experiences of the Edinburgh Fringe festival. Since then he has had six sell-out shows at the festival. He has also been nominated for two of the prestigious awards at Edinburgh. In 1998 he was nominated for the Perrier Newcomer Award and in 2001 the Perrier Award.

After the Edinburgh or Bust programme he appeared on some more BBC and Channel 4 programmes before bagging his own solo gig – the Jason Byrne Show on RTÉ 2 in 2001. The show was a mixture of a stand-up routines with a live audience, interviews and music. It received bad reviews. One critic said "At his stage shows, there is something about the galloping energy of his performances and his manhandling of the audience that is difficult to resist. But there's only a whiff of that in his TV show, as if the cameras act as a filter screening out the infectious, loveable Jason Byrne and leaving behind a sweaty, shouting guy instead."

After that came the Jason Byrne Hates show for BBC Northern Ireland. The show revolved around the things Byrne hates – including women, men, sport, fruit, vegetables and magic. Although it was favourably received Byrne was disappointed with the show. "That was a show we did in Edinburgh (the Fringe festival) that BBC Northern Ireland got and fucked it against the wall and broke it."

So far two of the six episodes of Anonymous have been broadcast. In the first episode Samantha Mumba dressed up as a Zambian nun. The second show saw Hector O hEochagain as a 'D4' anti-Irish campaigner. In the next one, aired on 9 January, Bryan McFadden dresses up as a gay Westlife fan to fool his former bandmates. Other episodes will feature Keith Duffy, who will play a producer for a Boyzone musical, and Des Bishop who disguises himself as a 'Dub' in Cork. The producers of the show decided on Byrne after they saw him perform live at the Montreal comedy festival, where they were filming Ed Byrne Just for Laughs. "Once we saw him in Montreal he was the only one on the list," says producer of Anonymous Darren Smith.

The show has been doing well and there are hopes for a second series. The last episode received 230,000 viewers – a 25 per-cent rise in viewership from the previous show in that slot. Byrne works well as the Machiavellian mischief-maker telling the celebrities what to say – for instance getting Mumba as Sister Felicitus to ask passers by what a "geebag" is. "His live shows have this manic raw energy and this is hard to get through on TV screens but this (Anonymous) allows Jason to play to his school messer," says Darren Smith.

Byrne was once described as "part Spike Milligan, part Duracell Bunny, a subtle combination of comic genius and raw energy". He says "That was probably when I was 24… I'd say less the Duracell Bunny, more the Ever Ready battery. And Spike Milligan is dead."