The vegan, anarchist, transvestite, musician and comedian performs his latest show Occult Comedian in Soho this weekend.
For some people, it's natural to be a comedian. Andrew O'Neill is a transvestite metaller who looks feminine but sounds masculine. So comedy gems flock towards him like flies buzzing around the latest winner of 'Pupa Idol' (sorry.) The universe has carved a niche for him. "Just write down the obscenities yelled at you by passing oiks and you've got gold!" His look is incidental really. He's as unashamed as he is unflamboyant, a very direct and lateral thinker and a very collected speaker. He reminds you of the cool and rebellious young science teacher you never had.
So he's just old enough and wise enough to play the role of the comedian's comedian. He sticks to the script and doesn't tend to mess about with the audience. When he does address any heckler it's with another wittily polished little de-personification of the moment. With a glaze in his eyes like a waxing moon, he's looking half way through you, so as to focus on the charming viscera within. "You're all just as weird as me and I think you know it. Now let's forget about weirdos and laugh at the rudeboys." So he has a lot of social commentary (an inexhaustible well of it in fact) but is also very much partial to a surreal aside here and there. He'll reveal an irrelevant and unexplained motif one section at a time and scatter it in between the routines. And he likes lists. He likes reading lists of dreamy head sketches, which he wrote down anything from a few minutes ago to a few years ago, we can't be sure.
A commanding performer and an engaging writer, he puts together tales of urban dysfunction, pegged together with colourful nuggets of nonsense. He's a Gothic Alice in a Wonderland of Burberry. The wise-cracking, stone-faced villain in a story where the heroes are wankers.
Andrew O'Neill will be at the Soho Theatre from 29th-30th January.
Photo credit: Joe Brown
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