Brendon Burns: Interview

Brendon Burns: Interview

18 June, 2009
by: Emma

Emma McAlpine speaks to the outspoken Aussie comic about acid-tripping on stage, the truce with his wild alter-ego Burnsy and where he draws the comedy line...

Brendon Burns has had something of a rock and roll past on the comedy circuit. He got banned from the BBC for snogging a goat live on air. He wrote and performed a brutally honest trilogy of autobiographical shows about his life from 2004-2006, which began with his fiancé dumping him and culminated with his committal into a mental institution. In part two of the trilogy, he took mushrooms on stage during a gig at Glastonbury, shortly after handing out enough to get the whole crowd wasted as well (six kilos apparently). The memory is not a fond one for Burns: "It was your worst acid nightmare come to life. I'd forgotten everything I was supposed to do and locked up as people were watching me. I think it was very hard for people to understand how many kinds of pain I was in. Most people took them and went off to watch something else - Jim Jeffries was running around calling everyone scumbags!"

At the end of the trilogy in which his aggressive stage persona Burnsy fought with his real self, he committed himself into The Priory after a psychotic meltdown. Burns concedes his toxic lifestyle contributed to his mental state but has now been clean for some time and, if his latest shows are anything to go by, is on top form at the moment: "I hid behind my rock and roll persona but there has now been a marriage between the two of us. You could say when it comes to Burnsy Vs Brendon, the truce has been drawn."

In 2007, he won the highest stand-up accolade a comedian can hope for in the UK, the if.comedy award (now the Edinburgh Comedy Award). "I've been following who's been winning it since I was 16 so it was a boyhood dream come true to win." The show moved away from the autobiographical stories he'd been performing and instead focused on socio-political issues like racism. Tackling touchy subjects like this means he is often labelled a 'controversial' comic but if people assume that makes him offensive then they clearly haven't been to one of his London gigs. He says: "I like stuff that works on several levels, the first time you laugh on one level then you think about it a bit and laugh on another. A lot of people say to me 'you're actually a very liberal left-wing guy, it's just that you shout it!' I don't actually think I'm that outrageous."

His large tribe of fans may know what to expect but he still has the potential to shock those that haven't heard of him. He says: "I've cornered such a niche market now, I'm not on TV, I'm not bringing anyone new in... I recognise a lot of the crowd at my gigs. You should see me at a gig where I share a bill with someone else. People are gobsmacked! I stick out like a sore thumb. The people who come to see me for me know I'm not a hateful person. There is a subtext to what I do and I don't want to be the ambulance-chaser fuck-you guy. You get a lot more done with a tickle than a slap."

It is this understanding of what people will accept that makes his material so successful. He is fully aware there is a line he has to respect and spends longer on the contentious jokes because he knows they need to be qualified: "The means have to justify the ends and vice versa. There's an Australian comedian called Greg Sleep who can work any room and he does a joke which goes: "I hate racists but I particularly abhor Jews". Now even he couldn't pull off that joke if he had said 'black'. The audience would not accept it, even though that's what the joke should be and you should really go the whole way. People will laugh at irony but only to a point." 

Brendon Burns will be at the Southbank's Udderbelly tent on Friday 14th May and Thursday 15th July.

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Emma