Andrew Maxwell is headed for Sydney for the first time in "[whistles] eight, nine, ten years" to perform Yo Contraire at Sydney Comedy Festival. You might think stand-up would be lower on the Irish comedy veteran's list of priorities these days between his MTV show Ex On The Beach, developing sitcoms, writing for BBC Radio 4 and generally being a busy bee. But you'd be wrong.
"For me it's like breathing in and out," enthuses Maxwell. "It's not even me job. I was the class clown and luckily I went to a liberal school where it wasn't beaten outta me, probably the most liberal and arty school in Ireland. So my teachers, instead of battering me — the school upbringing for… I'd say the majority of Irish children up 'til very, very recently was to be beaten by a sexually repressed man — me being a cheeky chappy and class clown and all the rest of it, my teachers in my school went, 'Hey, you're quite funny. Why don't we put you on the stage?'"
"The hardest part is the isolation of the road, I mean, that is a massive pain in the fucking arse. But I've been to a lot of shitholes, and fucking Sydney ain't one of them."
And that's where the "cheeky chappy" has been ever since. "That's it, it's what I do. I love making people laugh, going places, and I'm a news junky — so it all just melds perfectly. And it is a lovely thing — it's nice to make people laugh. The hardest part is the isolation of the road, I mean, that is a massive pain in the fucking arse. But I've been to a lot of shitholes, and fucking Sydney ain't one of them," Maxwell cackles.
All in all it's his fourth trip to Oz, and although he's previously performed at the Adelaide and Melbourne Comedy Festivals, this is his first in Sydney. "It's just gonna be fun. I mean, you know, Sydney — how bad could it be?" Maxwell asks. "I'm gonna come along, I'm gonna sit up on a stool, I'm gonna talk about you, I'm gonna talk about me, then we're gonna talk about what's happening in front of us in the room, then I might give ya a dirty story, you know — we'll just see what happens. We'll just have the craic.
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"If you're not laughing at something, I'll tell you something else and eventually we'll all be wiping hot tears of joy from our cheeks, and we'll all saunter into the balmy Australian night with light hearts and eh, and full livers."
Maxwell reveals that he's already climbed the Harbour Bridge, so we're curious about what he's looking forward to this time around. It seems his goals are mostly gastronomic. "Meat pies, meat pies outta the petrol station," says Maxwell. "Can't go fucking wrong; you can not go wrong with an Aussie meat pie. A meat pie in Britain or Ireland is a dangerous, weird fucking thing. Filled with fuck knows what… chickens and pigs and bits of men that couldn't keep shut in a criminal case," shudders Maxwell. "That might be the case with an Aussie meat pie as well, don't get me wrong, but it is delicious."
