It wasnt varied enough.
It was kind of like in one vein.
It wasnt a bad show.
I just did it a particular way and it felt a bit like one song over and over.
I wanted more variety in it, and then I had a chance to do it again in Sydney.
The thing was being taped anyway as they were putting it in cinemas [over there].
It was an opportunity to shoot it again, and I was happier with my performance.
There was nothing wrong with the way the thing was made in Britain.
It was just my performance.
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You take your tours all over the world.
Do you end up tailoring it much to different international audiences?
You know, you just learn the Swedish for grandmother!
It is like that, thats what you do.
Audiences are audiences, but there are surprises, still surprises.
Those people are fantastic linguists anyway, and theyre wonderful audiences.
There are definite pros and cons.
The obvious advantage is that youre not moving around all the time which is a pain in the ass.
Youve got to keep yourself on your toes by changing it around a little bit.
Because otherwise you may as well phone it in, and I dont want to do that.
When it comes to putting a DVD together, you seem to get very involved.
Your discs in the past have been very, very tightly edited.
Are you very hands-on with it?
The editing is really important, you know.
There wasnt a whole lot to cut out of the current tour, because Id deliberately edited it beforehand.
I worked on this show more before, so I pretty much knew what I was going to deliver.
I dont want to see that.
Theres an emerging formula to stand-up DVDs, which yours doesnt seem to fit.
[Laughs]
Well, yeah, its live!
Thats the whole point of it.
It can look like a light entertainment programme on TV.
I dont want to see that anyway.
Well, yeah, thats what I think.
That you could just hit it all again from fresh?
Because it means you could mess with peoples expectations.
You dont talk about trivia for the hell of it?
I talk about whatevers on my mind, what strikes me, what Im thinking about, you know?
I think that you want to get the man.
People have a very biographical focus on people now, on people who make things or do something.
They want to know where youre from, what was your childhood like and all that shit.
Id much rather know what somebodys view is.
Because thats where the fun and enjoyment and the pleasure of the thing is.
The difference between Miles Davis playing a trumpet and anybody else playing a trumpet, you know?
Certainly, the subtlety of what he feels.
I think theyre just looking in the wrong direction.
Because the thing is what is important is whats in the work, whats coming across in the work.
That answers all those questions before theyre asked.
Youre inevitably talking to people about who you are.
What you venture to describe is whats common to everybody.
But being human, you inevitably end up describing your view of it, more than the world.
You know what I mean?
And yet we have magazines that are inevitability trivialising people down to 20 words…
Yeah!
Its a sausage machine.
Youre going to get sausages out of it, but nothing else.
Comedy has got much bigger business over the past five to ten years.
There are panel games, theres Live At The Apollo, and yet youve steadfastly stuck to pure stand-up.
Youre not interested in the other stuff that much?
No, Im not.
Thats the short answer, but there you go!
I dont want light entertainment.
I want heavy entertainment.
Thats the flipside of people knowing who you are, and not knowing who you are.
They want to hear somebody doing it for real.
One thing thats always struck me about your work is your terrific mastery of language and vocabulary.
Have you ever considered writing a book?
I write all the time, but you just want to be careful what you put out.
You just have to be careful about it, so thats why Im being slow about it.
Is it more TV stuff that youre writing at the moment?
There are a couple of things Ive messed around with.
I like that you didnt present them on the disc in any context whatsoever!
Well, we shot it in one afternoon, everybody did it for free.
It was just some friends, we painted a couple of walls and we got a table.
I dont know whats going to happen with that.
But yeah, Im working on a few things!
I wont go through all the usualBlack Booksquestions, as I suspect you got those a lot…
I do get asked a lot!
Its great, because people obviously enjoyed it.
God, Im amazed!
It was just a TV comedy, and people do remember.
I am amazed after all this time people are still saying when youre doing the next one.
I do want to finish on one utterly trivial question, going against everything weve talked about so far.
Which is whats your favourite cake?
Oh, well, thats a good one!
There are so many levels.
Im actually thinking about it now!
Theres a lot to be said for a nice pecan pie.
Youve been watchingWhen Harry Met Sally?
No, I havent!
Is it in there?
Well, I think that its a much-underrated cake!
Dylan Moran, thank you very much.
Dylan Moran: What Is It is out on DVD now.
