“It’s a pretty big deal because it’s BBC1 and that’s the main station in Britain and basically all my heroes have been on that station as well,” he says, voice back at normal volume. “All these great sitcoms and great TV shows have all appeared on BBC1 and now it’s my go.”
With production beginning early next year and expected to take up to seven months, this represents bad news for Byrne’s legion of fans in Australia, as he won’t be attending the 2013 Melbourne International Comedy Festival or any other festivals around the country. To make up for this, however, he’s doing a short run of Christmas shows this weekend at the Athenaeum. “To keep everybody happy,” he says. Everybody, that is, except his Irish fans. “Oh yeah, I’m getting a lot of hassle from Irish people over here going, ‘Where’s our Christmas show? Why you takin’ it away from us?’” he says, adopting a wounded tone.
A string of shows in Dublin at the start of the new year should keep then happy, however, and then he begins life as star of his own sitcom. Based on his BBC Radio 2 series of the same name, Father Figure will see Byrne playing Tom, a married father to two boys. “Basically, they love the idea of me being a stay at home dad but my wife appears in the episodes pretty quickly,” he explains of the premise. “It’s not me at home with nappies on my head because the kids are around ten and eight, so they’re two lads and they’re pretty savvy to stuff so when my wife leaves the house. I end up being like their brother. They just don’t listen to me. What happens to me is I get a fairly basic task, or something happens at the start, and then it snowballs,” he says.
When writing the scripts, Byrne has noticed they bear a similarity to his stand-up material in that “they’re quite fast”, he says. “There’s flashbacks and all sorts of shit happening and then the story happening and then we flash up to another bit of the story and it’s like ‘holy fuck!’ and then it’s all over in 28 minutes”.
His on-screen sons are based on his twelve- and five- year old boys, although will be played by English actors. “I don’t know how they’re going to react, I’m sure they’ll be fine. They’ve seen me on TV before but to see me with a different family might be a bit odd, going ‘what the fuck is Dad doing with that woman in bed and who are those kids? That’s not Grandad and Nanna’ but what I said to them is that I’ll put them in it so they’ll see how it works,” he says of the small guest roles they’ll have. He then starts giggling as he goes on to say he could also “freak them out completely” one day when his real-wife is out by bringing home his screen-wife and playing it straight. “Why is she in the kitchen?” he asks as them, responding as a stern father, “she’s your mother, you know she is…” he giggles some more. “No, we won’t do that”.
He also won’t be quitting comedy, although he did joke to his comedian friends that after he got the green-light from BBC1, he should. Leave on a high before the show gets made. “It was just unbelievable, you know? It’s a great thing. But being Irish, though, and a bit of a moan, the next thing I said was ‘holy shit! I better get it right’.”
If there’s one thing Byrne definitely gets right, it’s his infectious high-energy lunacy. Chaos, pandemonium, bedlam, all appropriate words to describe what usually happens when he’s on stage and his three massive Christmas specials will be no different.
“What happens at the end is I do the nativity play and I get the audience up to play all the parts and I narrate it and it’s fucking – I’m not joking – it’s so funny because it’s a bloody mess,” he says with unabashed glee. “They’re worse than children! Like I’ll go ‘and Mary knocked on the door of the inn’ and literally the person dressed as Mary is looking out to the audience facing the wrong way and it’s ‘would you knock on the fucking door?’” he says with mock exasperation.
One of his favourite memories from a previous Christmas show was when the “baby Jesus doll” got lost. The audience member responsible lost him in the dark, in the wings, but found a small appliance back there to use instead. “So I had to go ‘and the baby Jesus was a fan heater’,” recalls Byrne.
Whatever form the baby Jesus takes this year, Byrne is asking for the audience to get into the spirit of the season. “What would be really good is everybody brought presents for the baby Jesus,” he says. “Tell them to follow the star to the Athenaeum.”
BY JOANNE BROOKFIELD
