‘It just makes you weird’: Irish comics on taking part in global hit comedy show

Irish comics have said that a global reality comedy series they took part in was very difficult – and features some very niche Irish jokes.

Prime Video’s series LOL: Last One Laughing Ireland launches on the streaming platform next Friday, January 19.

The premise involves contestants trying to make the others laugh while not laughing or smiling themselves, with the final one who does not crack a grin winning overall.

The show’s Irish cast has compared the show to being in a room full of unruly teenagers and to trying to stay quiet during Mass – adding that the quips got hyper local in an attempt to break the others’ resolve.

Graham Norton hosted the series and the cast included Aisling Bea, Amy Huberman, Jason Byrne, Deirdre O’Kane, Catherine Bohart, Emma Doran, Martin Angolo, Paul Tylak, Tony Cantwell and David McSavage.

At the show’s Dublin premiere on Friday, Norton said he believed the Irish version may be the best of the LOL series that he had seen.

“Getting to watch 10 top comics up close for that many hours and seeing the stuff they come up with, because some of it is planned but a lot of it isn’t, and that’s really brilliant,” he told the PA news agency.

“It is a deep dive into Ireland. Because it’s in English, I thought they’d try to make it a bit international, or general or bland, but it’s so Irish.

“There are references in this thing that nobody else could possibly get unless they were brought up on this island.”

He added: “It’s a very fun watch so hopefully it’ll go down well.”

Doran said that not laughing was “nearly impossible” and no amount of practice could be done.

“It’s exactly the same as when you went to Mass with your cousins and you sat down the back and you would start laughing – it’s like that on steroids. But a bad Mass lasts an hour, and we were in there for hours.”

Bea told PA she was surprised by how much she enjoyed herself on the show.

She said: “Afterwards, I felt that I’d been out with a big bunch of friends and the feeling was like a big bunch of teenagers who were in the class you had to do because you weren’t good enough in school. It was so much fun.”

Bea said that immediately the humour was “entirely local” and she wondered how it would appeal internationally – but she said it needed to be specific to make the others laugh.

She said: “Because you’re not trying to make the audience laugh, you’re trying to make each other laugh.

“There’s a rule in comedy that the more specific you are, the more it appeals to more people and this is so specific – we have The Den, Zig and Zag, Anne Doyle, doing the most specific Irish joke you’ll ever come across in your life.

“I’m really interested to see how that will go down with people around the world – will they get it. I really think Irish people will enjoy the hell out of it.”

Bohart said the Irish version of the series represented “Olympic level” comedy.

She said: “I think the unique nature of it was that everyone was at some point having a nervous breakdown, which I know we were paid for and did opt into but it was not something I expected. It just makes you weird, it’s too long to reject one another when we’re so needy. So I just think there was an element that was just mental.

“I think people love to see people uncomfortable. Also there’s an ego in it – we’re all so used to our little claps, and then we can’t get them and we’re like ‘please, why don’t you like our tricks’.”

Bohart added: “You don’t want to be the least funny, you don’t want to be the first out, you don’t want to slag off your mom in a way you can’t take back, just in a desperate attempt to make Jason Byrne laugh.”

Byrne praised the series for the freedom it gave them, and said he used a lot of props to prompt his co-stars.

He said: “We do a lot of TV where you go ‘Oh god, I hope that’s OK’ and when you have no control over it either. And it was 11 hours or so inside a house. It’s a lot of time to keep going. But it was great fun. Everybody in the house got on well together.

“I do a lot of prop work, and I used to do a lot of prop work when I was younger, and I walked into the place and there was stuff everywhere. And my whole brain went ‘OK, that’s it, I’m in paradise now’.

“The hardest thing is not necessarily making somebody laugh, the hardest thing was not to laugh while you’re trying to do it. That’s hard.

“The tension that builds is what makes you laugh.”

O’Kane said she initially thought she was not the right comic for the show.

She said: “Jason Byrne is built for this show, so is Aisling. They like props and they improvise a lot and I’m quite wordy.

“Then I watched the Canadian one and by the time I got to the end I understood what it was.”

Asked if it was a clash of different styles of comedy, O’Kane said: “I think so.

“All comics are different in their styles, and it’s very interesting when those comics who wouldn’t normally be drawn together are. It’s just a crazy show, it’s so hard.

“You want to stay in the game, you’re not allowed to be passive, you must make somebody laugh. It’s quite a clever premise.”

O’Kane added: “I have a little bit of fear about one aspect.”

Cantwell said that the series is “so Irish” and that when you are in a room and no-one is laughing, it feels “so unfunny”.

He said: “It takes you back to when you were a school kid and someone farts and you’re not allowed to laugh. It’s just that with a ridiculous budget – it’s so much funnier than I thought it was going to be.”