Dylan Moran on Dr Cosmos and his new BBC sitcom: ‘It’s murder not performing. I’m such a Mariah Carey’

As he live streams his latest stand-up show, the comedian talks turning 50, his follow-up to Black Books and how he predicted Bill Bailey's Strictly win

Dylan Moran is itching to get back out on stage. The stand-up comic is one of many performers cut off in their prime by the pandemic, unable to work in front of live audiences.

“It’s absolutely shown me for the first time what it’s like to have performing taken away from me,” he says, “and how key that is to my way of dealing with life, of coping with life…so I miss it. I mean, it’s f***ing murder to be honest with you, not performing.” It’s human nature to crave attention in front of others, he adds, and make fools of ourselves. “I can’t believe I found out I’m such a Mariah Carey.”  

We are talking on Zoom and the Irishman is instantly recognisable, save for a huge, sprawling, crazy-man grey beard. “This is all very new,” he says, gesturing towards his computer. “I don’t know how much of this stuff is part of your day. But it’s not a massive part of mine up until now really.”   

Yet even he’s been encouraged to enter this brave new world. A recording of his brilliant 2019 stand-up show, Dr Cosmos, is being live-streamed this weekend on Dice. “Well, I made the thing. I thought some people better see it,” he reasons. “I’m happy for it to be seen. I would have sold it at car boot sale if necessary. I suppose it maybe is [like] a vast digital car boot sale.”  

Read More - Featured Image

The show is classic Moran, a free-flowing waterfall of ideas about masculinity, the generation gap, pets (“all cats are Alan Rickman”) and even a little politics. He doesn’t do Trump jokes, he says, but then proceeds to call former VP, Mike Pence “a frosted mortician”.

The last US administration was a “shocking” moment in recent history, he tells me. “I think it was incredibly depressing for the planet that we got so low.” Now everyone can rejoice in the sanity and stability President Biden has brought. “He’s heavenly in his dullness!”  

He deals with mortality too. “I think we all get to learn a little bit more about humility in the second half of our lives,” he explains. “You get this wonderful echo ringing in your ears of your young egoic self, making all these claims.”

He turns 50 this year. Does worry about getting older? “No, no,” he says. “I think life and nature are wonderfully kind to us in that way. If you seriously tried to think about your own death, it’s quite hard. Quite hard… we’re designed to protect ourselves from ourselves in that way.”   

Dylan Moran Dr Cosmos Image via Andy Green
Dylan Moran is live streaming his most recent show Dr Cosmos (Photo: Andy Green)

Since touring the globe with Dr Cosmos in 2019, including Britain, his native Ireland, Europe, the US and Australia, concluding just before lockdown, he’s been writing, writing, writing. This enforced “global introspection” is a goldmine for a comic of his observational talents. “I mean, this could be…who knows? Maybe buried in here is some key moment in our evolutionary history.”  

Living in Edinburgh (he’s married to Elaine, a script editor, they have two children), has he developed any strange lockdown habits? He started “inventing” new mealtimes he says.

“Like new times to eat because I was bored in the house. I thought between breakfast, brunch and lunch, there really couldn’t be anything else. But actually there are huge opportunities if you’re careful and attentive.” At 9.45am, maybe? “Exactly. There’s nothing happening around then. A very good time to sneak in an amuse-bouche before brunch.”  

I’m trying to write about modern pressures, about people under pressure, some kind of pressure

A lover of poetry and painting (see his Instagram), he’s also been penning a new sitcom for the BBC, starring himself and “one other very funny actor”. He’s rather secretive about it, perhaps because they haven’t shot it yet – a consequence of pandemic delays. 

“We film that whenever they give us the nod,” he says. What’s it about? “A lot of it is about…er…” He laughs. “I’m trying to write about modern pressures. Well not modern pressures. I’m trying to write about people under pressure, some kind of pressure.”  

Dylan Moran (centre) with Bill Bailey and Tamsin Greig in Black Books (Photo: Channel 4)

Moran’s last sitcom was the marvellous Channel 4 show Black Books – in which he played the grouchy, booze-addled bookstore owner Bernard Black. The show ran for three seasons, finishing in 2004, but it is currently on Netflix – meaning a whole new generation has soaked it in. “It’s so long ago… it becomes part of the kind of space junk orbiting the consciousness that’s out there,” he says. “On some level, I’m pleased to have a satellite up there.”  

Did he watch Bill Bailey, who played Bernard’s put-upon employee Manny, winning Strictly Come Dancing last year? “I did! I did!” His face lights up. “Delighted for Bill. Good on him. I can’t look at Bill and not smile. Bill isn’t even a comic genius… Bill is a comic phenomenon. Bill fell in the magic potion. He’s just a really, really funny man.” Moran predicted it all of course, explaining about a never-filmed episode of Black Books written for the third season.  

“Bill’s storyline in this is he is doing ballroom dancing with this Brazilian. Or Colombian. Her name is something like Yolanda. And the only line I can remember for it is… she gets really annoyed, because Bernard is sick and then Manny gets sick. And she calls him ‘Manrico’. She’s complaining about him: ‘Manrico – he has, how you say? Lurgeee!’” 

So there’s no chance of Moran competing in the next Strictly? “I’m sure that I would break both knees in the first minute.”   

Read More - Featured Image

In Dr Cosmos, he refers to growing up in Ireland as “Chernobyl with priests”. Moran was raised in Navan, Co Meath. Was it really that bad? “Yeah, it was. Well, certainly the social policy was radioactive. It was! It was a toxic dump! It was terrible. Because it was just this massive lie of what human experience is, curated by this firm. And it was a lie, it was very, very like the worst excesses of any kind of totalitarianism or what went on for people in the Eastern Bloc. It’s this pre-fabricated reality.”  

He left school at 16. “There was a recession in Ireland,” he recalls, “and my back was against the wall… I didn’t know what to do.” He bummed around for a while, but after visiting Dublin’s Comedy Cellar, watching the likes of Ardal O’Hanlon, Barry Murphy and Kevin Gildea, he was dazzled. He went on the following week, an open mic slot. Eddie Izzard was there at the same time. “It was great to watch somebody at that level. It was really powerful.”  

His stage persona became cemented instantly. “I don’t think I’ve changed at all from that night. I don’t think I’m any different in lots of ways,” he says. Five years later, in 1996, aged 24, Moran became the youngest person to win the Perrier comedy award at the Edinburgh Fringe. He went on tour the following year, then got into film – a shoplifter in Richard Curtis’ 1999 rom-com Notting Hill, a rival to Simon Pegg in Shaun of the Dead, and his best friend in Run Fatboy Run.  

Recently, he played a nasty drug-dealing fishmonger in Irish comic road movie Pixie. “If I could orchestrate my film career, that’s what I would do,” he says. “I would turn up for a day or two, do a cameo and piss off again.” There has been the odd serious role – in 2014’s Catholic priest drama Calvary. He has the talent for it if someone would take the chance. “I think I would like to film a bit more actually,” he adds. “I think I’d enjoy some more acting.”  

Dylan Moran with Brendan Gleeson in Calvary (Photo: still)

Yet it’s live stand-up where he truly belongs. Does he feel the Government should’ve done more to support the arts? “Of course, because everybody’s screwed. But I think it’s also very tricky. This juggernaut of this thing came with so many urgencies… I wish the people in theatres and so on had been looked after better.” He sighs. “I can only hope they can rebuild, and that people can come back.”     

He has a tour planned for 2022. “Life is returning.” He’s intrigued by what will happen “when we start re-smooching into one another”, when we taste freedom again. “I keep thinking of Russia in the 90s.”

Will he broach the pandemic in his new material? “You don’t necessarily have to go on and say, ‘I’m going to talk about Covid for an hour’. I might leave the room then myself. But it’s just about talking with people and engaging and having a good time. I’m desperate to do that. I just want to get up there and have a blast again.”   

Dylan Moran Dr Cosmos streams ‘as live’ at 8pm on Saturday and Sunday. Tickets at DICE.fm 

Most Read By Subscribers