Lorcan McGrane: Comedy Bio

I'm mostly on my tumblr Lorcranium and Twitter (@lorcychief) these days, but thought I'd put my comedy bio and clips up here.

lorcanmcgrane@yahoo.com

·         Tedfest finalist 2013

·        Amused Moose Scotland Finalist 2013

·        

Amused Moose Irish Finalist 2012

Winner of the Belfast Heat of Craic Attack, 2011.

Belfast Telegraph 10 Ten Highlights of the 2010 Fringe.

"Straight faced comedy with a good sense of comic timing"
Three Weeks 

“McGrane’s set goes into the kind of detail about cult comics and movies that would have even Jonathan Ross’s head spinning.” – Alternative Ulster Magazine

“Lorcan McGrane’s show is full of beautiful green women, improbable superhero based antics, and most importantly, lots of very good jokes” – Norwich Fringe Festival

"McGrane’s self-effacing set is esoteric and always funny."- culturenorthernireland.org

Lorcan is originally from Monaghan. He started stand up in 2007 while doing a PhD on Superhero Movies and gigged in Norwich, London, and Edinburgh, where he performed Free Fringe shows in 2008 and 2009. Since then, Lorcan’s one man show ‘Geekdom’ has appeared in the Belfast Fringe 2010, The Black Box, Belfast, the Norwich Fringe 2011, and 10 Days in Dublin Festival 2012. Now performing regularly in Belfast, Dublin, and Derry, Lorcan has supported such artists as Ardal O’Hanlon, Colin Murphy, Kevin Eldon, Bec Hill and Kevin McAleer and also appeared on Today FM, BBC Ulster, BBC Radio 4, Newstalk, Phantom FM, and the Comedy Corner of Dublin City FM.  He has also written comedy pieces for Buzz Magazine, Six Magazine, Temple Bar Review and Sun Zoom Spark. 

Clips:

Sowerby and Luff’s All-Stars, Edinburgh Festival 2009

Performing at the Cutting Room, Lenny Bruce Tribute Night at Take 5, Norwich, UK, 2009

The Empire, Belfast, 2011

Podcasts:

Seven2 Ten with Christian Talbot and Jake Bourke

The Movie Quiz with Peter Davidson

BBC Northern Ireland: Hotrod's Hot Rod of comedy with Bec Hill

Radio:

BBC Radio Four: Woman’s Hour ‘Are female comic bookheroes taken seriously?’(05.06.06); Dublin NewsTalk Radio (14.04.08); 

Dublin NewsTalk Radio (14.04.08); Iron Man and the history of superheroes. Interviewed on BBC Radio Ulster on ‘Hotrod’s Hotrod of Comedy’ segment on BBC Introducing with Rory O’Connell (04.05.10), Comedy Corner on Dublin City FM (13.12.2012).

Press: 

Interview on Comedy Scoop
Review of 'Geekdom' on Comedy Scoop

Rock 'N' Rofl Luanch Night, Saturday 16th July, Aunti Annie's Belfast

Headlining this new club in Auntie Annie's with support from Gemma Hutton, Cormac O'Donnell, Dannny McCrossan, Johnny McCarthy, and AJ Johnston

Facebook Event here.

Boardwalk Empire Comedy Club Titting About

or if you are in Sims land

Pic courtesy of Marcus Keeley who somehow digitally infiltrated the Batcave to render this cgi Lorcan, God help us all.

It's a while since I've frequented the auld blog, painful memories (all available in the archive forever and ever, or until there is no electricity like in a Snake Plissken in an Escape From L.A. stylee.) I've been busy alternating between overseeing a bootleg alcohol operation in 1920s Atlantic City and killing skuttering aliens in a nanosuit, either that or overdosing on Boardwalk Empire and Crysis 2. Recently, however a few nonbleak things happened that I feel compelled to document.

The first was finding all of Preacher graphic novels in a Monaghan charity shop for 1.50 euro a pop, which meant that after a bit of in-my-favor maths from the lady behind the counter and a wink, I got all nine volumes for 12 euro: Ladies in charity shops regularly think I am mentally challenged for buying 'funny books' from the children's section at the age of 35 and give me discounts out of pity, but I think we all know who the real winner is. Ironically they were in the religion section beside George W. Bush's 'Decision Points', (presumably the 'decision point' for Bush was seeing the advance and accepting one last chance to get a huge amount of money for selling bullshit to shitmunchers)

There they are now, all the lads together.

Rereading it all in one go was an amazing experience, especially liked the cameo from Bill Hicks, put it up on Lorcranium here and here and it reminded me of a more innocent time when references to strap on dildos and sexual perversions evoked illicit thrills rather than mundane jaded tuts of recognition. It would have made a great HBO (home bosum ogling) series.

The second great thing was fulfilling a comedy ambition of playing The Empire Comedy Club. I did an open spot with Sean Hegarty supporting and Simon Evans headlining, all MCed by Jake O'Kane. Comedic brother in arms Marcus Keeley kindly recorded and uploaded it, he says it's good, but all I can hear is some Monaghan mook going "eh" all the time while his gut strains behind a Primark cardigan that looks well the first time you wear it but is gets more embarrassing each time you wash it. Check out the rest of his great videos here. Think it went well though, got asked back in September.

Last but by no means least, and I would say this was an unfulfilled comedy ambition as I didn't even think it was possible, but I supported Kevin Eldon at his first (sold out!) show in Belfast organised by the Black Box and Big Laughs Belfast. He has one of the most impressive comedy cvs of any actor in the contemporary British comedy world. I did a wee youtube tribute to Eldon over on the Tumblr, and Peter "Hotrod" McCaughan's review of the night can be found here.

I don't need to offer my tuppenny bits worth on how good Eldon's show 'Titting About' is, the Paul Hamilton opening section expertly gets the audience in the mood for the sort of actorly character sections that will prevail and the quickfire nature of the show generally leaves little room for an audience to either stop laughing or get bored or agitated. I love the George Martin/Hitler section, the roots of which can be seen here:

Upon meeting him, I had to suppress the fanboy urges to divulge favorite Eldon moments or reveal that whenever I apply for a job I am far too old for I always think of the office assistant/ear severing sketch in Big Train. I also resisted the urge to ask who ended up keeping the Kevin Eldon/Chairman Mao painting from the Big Train Virginia Plain sketch, it must be in someone's living room:

Anyway, in the tradition of the Internet, pics or it didn't happen

(p.s. I'm pretty sure the ice age happened and there are no pics of that)

In the manner of a comedy blog, as mentioned by the mysterious Comedy Guru...here are some gigs/my fleeting roster of self worth:

Monday July 4, 2011, Morgan Hearst's 'Manic Mondays', the Pavillion, Belfast, headlining: Facebook event here

Saturday, July 9, 2011, Millenium Forum Derry, headlining: Facebook event here

Saturday, July 16, 2011, Rock N' ROFL, Auntie Annies, Belfast, headlining: Facebook event here.

Friday July 29, 2011, Courthouse Comedy Club, support.

other appearances include in the gutter and in the bushes outside your window.

Some flyers for Geekdom, April 6th.

Some flyers for Geekdom, April 6th at the Black Box.

I was interview by AU Magazine in Belfast:

Ahead of my one man show 'Geekdom' at the Black Box, Belfast, April 6, Andrew Johnson, of Belfast punk act the Dangerfields fame did a nice we interview with me in AU Magazine.

I was 'Buried' for '127 Hours' and then I got 'Wrecked'

Buried trailer.




127 Hours trailer.



Wrecked trailer.

I presume 'Wrecked' isn't about going out and getting blocked which is what the name would suggest in Irish markets. Maybe it's the scripts that make the rounds in Hollywood, does this constitute a genre? What would you call it 'Mantrap movies?' 'Restriction cinema'. In any event I smell film studies thesis material for someone in the future: 'Trapped White Masculinity' and blah blah blah etc.

V for Vagina

Inspired by the io9.com story: The weirdest, wrongest and sexiest new costumes for 2010

What was Udo's Choice in the end?....

Udo's choice which I presume would be different to....

Odo's choice, which would be to change into a desklight and whine about things

So my guttywuts are tying to kill me, although in thinking about it I started the war, and the "gut fire" to paraphrase William "Billy" Joel. I have acid reflux and various gut-related things through years of stress and misuse and also from going from PhD to stand up comedy, two fields synonymous with stress, cigarettes and bad diet. I am also back in Ireland where coleslaw and cheese counts as "salad", chips are vegetables and thus one of the "five a day", and Guinness and Baileys are the "health drinks" you have when you are not meant to be drinking. Plus I am 34, when in evolutionary terms I should be fathering and minding children rather than worrying about when I can get the time to really play Halo:Reach properly, although as Scottish comedian Gary Croft pointed out the other day, having kids normally makes you want to drink and smoke more.

I recently had a Esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD) with biopsy or 'gut scope' as it is more scientifically known. The nurse said not to worry as the camera was 'only the size of a chip', my geek mind went into overdrive and explained to me internally that while the camera end may have roughly the diameter of a chip, chips normally aren't 2 foot long with a plug hanging out the back and get washed in wee sinks like the tail end of an 'Alien' space hugger. I got sedated which was awesome, some people I knew went, 'don't bother with sedation, you'll feel drunk all day', yes, but what if you want to feel drunk all day. They accidentally wrote "colonoscopy" on my paperwork but I didn't need one, which was a shame as I had lubed myself up as precaution, as one does in any situation where women are approaching you with rubber gloves on. People think the dentist is expensive but you can pay a lot more for having two women approach you with vibrating equipment.

Only joking I was a bit worried for two reasons:

1. I had not prepared and had not drunk the four liters of licorice flavored 'shit yourself juice' or 'laxative' as I believed it is called, and..

2. Stewart Lee has already done pretty much the definitive 'comedian gets a colonoscopy' routine and it would be churlish of me, with the best will in the world, to claim that the last ten years or so of bad diet was an elaborate tribute act.

So now I have to start eating healthily, I thought I'd start slowly by going to the health shop and asking for the unhealthiest thing in it, turns out it was the proprietor (haha sorry). I now have a fondness for Nairns oatcakes, Whole Food's 'Wake Up' coffee alternative, which is thankfully made with guarana and not guano as I had originally thought upon reading the label, and rice cakes. And the afore mentioned Udo's Choice which seems to me to be like a bad sci-fi movie, like he has to choose between a sexy alien and sexy cyborg but he loves them both! what will "Udo's Choice" be....

It was a shame as I had my vice equilibrium finely tuned:

and now look at it!

It's alright though as I now fantasize about an huge meteor coming to destroy earth ala the great Canadian film Last Night or Mick Farren's great short story 'Fun in the Final Days' when I can smoke and drink with abandon, either that or whenever I have sex again, although, it will probably be the meteor thing first. In the meantime, that'll be me crying and jamming rice cakes into my face and masturbating outside the window of your local fast food joint....

Spot the difference...

Chatterbox (1977)

Chatterbox (2010)

don't know which is worse

BBC Radio Ulster/BBC Radio 1, Voicebox and Sunday Strip Club

It's go at Lorcy central or 'Lorcom' as I refer to it, in my head. Last night was on Hotrod McCaughan's Hot Rod of Comedy, a regular segment on BBC Introducing in Northern Ireland with Rory McConnell.

Which you can listen to here, it's about one hour and 25 minutes in.

Myself and Hotrod at Palookaville at the Oh Yeah Music Centre

Telephone interviews are always a bit weird because you don't know if you are going on too long or not enough, I end up pulling Tim and Eric style faces to myself after each sentence....

I also always immediately think feck I should of said this that or the other. Will be doing some new character madness at the Voicebox Comedy on Friday, at the awesome Safehouse Gallery which I can't wait for, Marcus Keeley's Voicebox nights have been growing steadily in popularity month after month, this one I think is the biggest line up yet, with about 20 acts with 5 minutes each, and us regulars will be doing character bits/sketches and videos in between, I made and overelaborate photoshop thing for it

One of Marcus' most recent videos from his youtube channel

With great outtakes.

and I'm doing a best of powerpoint things: "Sex and Superheroes and The Story of Poor Auld Jesus: The Highlights" at The Sunday Strip Club at the Pavilion on Sunday 9th May

The Revelation of St. Christopher of TooKee...

If you are a resident of the UK and Ireland you will no doubt be aware of the Daily Mail, now available in Ireland..kinda. For non-UK and Ireland readers, if you can image Fox News as a film of putrid bile thinly spread over newsprint you get the gist. Now the Daily Mail is an easy target, like a BNP graphic design* shaped fish in a barrel of boke. I don't want to slag it off per se, it's clever in what in does. What it does however, is waffle on until you almost fall asleep and then sticks the boot in with a sexist, homophobic, or racist phrase that gives you a feeling of peering into a parallel dimension, thinking, 'wait? did I just read that'. It's become a veritable sport among comedians to make fun of it. The best is the Daily Mail list of Things that give you Cancer.

But I digress, fundamentally, their film critic Christopher Tookey does not like films

Update: see comment below, he does like films:

Check out Tookey's Tops

verus

Tookey's Turkeys

"I have awarded marks of 6/10 or more to 2910 films so far, out of a total of 8,550 movies I have reviewed"

Now, lots of critics from Alexander Walker to Mark Kermode to Charlie Brooker , all don't like some films or tv shows, that's their job, to critically assess things in the context of their culture, but fundamentally they love the medium they write about, and arguably Brooker has actually made more TV shows, and extremely good ones, despite what this mook has to say, than most film critics have made films.

Similar to the fact that most comedians rag on the Mail, and rightly so, for easy laughs, there was a almost urban legend that Kick Ass was going to cause a Daily Mail fuss when released. This is almost nostalgia for our generation brought up on Video Nasties and seeing it's pale mirroring in the 'Crash debate', the anticipation of another tussle of censorship and moral outrage like wot we know and love, of course nothing of the sort happened. As Kermode pointed out, the BBFC certificate had a sense of the humor and irony involved...

Unlike Mr. Tookey,

Don't be fooled by the hype: This crime against cinema is twisted, cynical, and revels in the abuse of childhood

with one of the most hilarious film ratings in the world

Verdict: Evil

Rating:

?

how can a film be "evil", the majority of those killed are bad guys and drug dealers, by vigilantes no less, surely that's a demographic the daily mail can get behind when it suits them? Evil is such a metaphysical concept, it's a word created by people who don't want to comprehend the horrific capacities of humanity. Kick Ass, in contrast, is an amazing smart funny movie. It would be churlish not to admit that I only went near the mail site because I knew it would slate Kick Ass but the amount of one star reviews yer man dishes out is unbelievable, Nanny McPhee is the only recent film that has has a positive review, god help us all surviving in this world where fictional characters some how want (need!?) to destroy our very souls. Quantum of Solace get's two stars, Law-Abiding Citizen get's three?

Clash of the Titans: Back to Argos, the whole lot of you

Verdict: A horrible myth-take

Rating:

Steer clear, unless your a teenage girl

Verdict: Forgettable and regrettable

Rating:

RACE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN and DRAGONBALL EVOLUTION: These two should be burned at the stake

Obviously he love's Gran Torino...

* I have a theory that right-wing Christians and political Web sites see graphic designers as a heathen band of homosexuals, atheists, and general reprobates so they deliberately make all there Web sites look like shit.

Don't believe me?

Jesus, Dinosaurs and More (gee I hope the 'more' is reasoned evidence based on physical reality)

John Hicklenton (8 May 1967 – 19 March 2010)

I have foresworn twitter, and only found out today via a comment on Facebook by the great Liam Sharp of the sad passing of one my favorite 2000ad artists, John Hicklenton. In my mind, it's the kind of news that should have been on ITN, BBC, and Sky all at once instead of something about Lindsay Lohan going on a holiday to find out that bad things happen in the world:

From the 2000 ad forums "We have just been informed by Pat Mills that John Hicklenton has sadly passed away. Here are a few words from Pat: John Hicklenton passed away peacefully last week. His ending was an expected one and he saw it as a triumph over his illness MS. Amongst his final words to me were "MS - you have a week to live, you've met someone you shouldn't have f***** with". A great artist and a true hero. Pat Mills"

There was always a weirdness creeping around the edges of 2000ad, and once you got used to its standard of amazing art and writing, even more weirdness crept in. Like when you got used to Ron Smith and Carlos Ezquerra every week, and then out of nowhere BAM! there was a couple of Brian Bollands. I think every 2000ad reader has their 'golden age', a period of unrivaled quality and unbroken consumption of the comic. For me it was around 1988 to the early 1990s, not surprisingly coinciding with a rural Irish lonely adolescent geekdom. (compared with a lonely geek adulthood). I got to do Media Studies at the University of Ulster at Coleraine and wrote a thesis on Dredd in 1996(! shite that's ages ago), with a Hicklenton depiction of Dredd on the front cover, called:

"Fascism, Fetishism and Fandom: Political and Psychoanalytical aspects of Judge Dredd".

with a description of his depiction of Dredd,

Figure II: Dredd as Phallus - John Hicklenton, from ‘Heavy Metal Dredd’, in Judge Dredd the Megazine, 23/1/93 - 5/2/93. Hickleton appears to be an artist very much aware of Dredd’s fetishist like appearance and plays it up more than other more conventional artists.

"It was a time of Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns", I suppose, would be a pop culture shorthand "when comics grew up" to use another cliche. There was an attempt to try something new when the likes of Brendan McCarthy, Brett Ewins, Shaky Kane, and Rian Hughes expanded from 2000ad to'adult' titles in the anthology boom : Crisis, Revolver, Deadline and many others (Heartbreak Hotel, Overkill, Expresso, Strip, Meltdown.) Not to mention Grant Morrison, Garth Ennis, Warren Ellis, Mark Millar, whose intelligent subversion you may no doubt be aware of.

For someone reading comics in Monaghan in the late 1980s and early 1990s this world, this was my equivalent of being invited into a trendy punk rock scene. One could imagine the above hanging out at some cool SoHo haunt with Jonathon Ross, Neil Gaiman, and Lenny Henry, and Paul Gambaccini, and Tank Girl, Transvision Vamp, and Fuzzbox (believe it or not this would have been a cool scene) and Zenith probably or something, but who was that dark shadow in the background....

John Hicklenton was always a mysterious figure to place among this first wave of "comics are for adults and cool now" blah blah chatter. A Hicklenton story in 2000ad was a jolt of darkness and eroticism that was very other from the more popular strips. My teenage mind always wondered why they were so rare, and so odd and beautiful and unforgettable when they did appear. Why was he not in the comic more? did they have to go to a different dimension to get the artwork?

His bio pic, and it's 'sisters of mercy' makeover version appearing on the back of the Nemesis Titan editions, such as Book 9, (you'd only need to go up to a 2000ad fan at the time and go 'Nemesis Book 9?!?' to get a knowing response), didn't help to dispell the myth. And yet his work was both intrinsically comic book and realistic Nemesis the Warlock is within the ranks of those comic characters that just work perfectly in comics yet seem ridiculous in 'real life' (how does he speak? what does he sound like?in what way does he float?) as a few Nemesis photo stories attested.

Hicklenton brought and unsettling and beautiful realism to Nemesis you could imagine this thing existing, especially transposed onto the V for Vendetta-like fascistic background of the reapers and oi oi boys. It was only later that Hicklenton's battle with MS was more widely known, through the great documentary Here's Johnny . There has seldom been such a heartbreaking yet grimly humorous depiction of the battle between the creation of art and the body that produces it. I'm reminded of Rorscharch's line 'None of you seem to understand. I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with me!' with any disease that would attack Hicklenton. The quotes from him on the transcendent nature of art are inspiring:

"Drawing is my walking now, I run with it, I fly with it. It's keeping me alive. I have a thing with it. I can't wait to get a piece of paper with a pen because it's what I can control.

"I haven't got MS when I'm looking at my pictures and I haven't got it when I'm drawing them either. It gives me an ability to express that fear."

I'm sure many teenagers of the period annoyed many an art teacher, mine included, with endless 2000ad and sci-fi inspired opuses, many of which would probably get us sent to school psychologists in these current times, but we didn't have those then so we got to draw. I distinctly remember one project where there was some quote about a circus and something behind a curtain and I more or less drew the below, from a Megazine story called the Black Widow, with an almost unrecognizable curtain as a border around it.

one last bit, for what it's worth, it might sound like wank, but just a way of saying how an artists work can affect a comic fan:

When I'm wandering around with my ipod (or walkman as it was back then, still a lot of the same tunes, mostly Frank Black's Teenager of the Year) I am usually thinking of really great potential 2000ad movies, like if they'd ever make a kick ass Judge Anderson movie or Judgement on Gotham. Anyway I always imagined a Necropolis film would be amazing if combined with Judgement Day's Magnificent Seven aspect of having all the judges from around the world (in my mind I was just trying to jam Judge Joyce in there) involved. Before they are dropped into a screaming mad cesspit of zombie violence though there would be a Q type character (cameo by Hicklenton)

"Sorry lads, you can't go down there unless you're wearing "Hickle-Suits"

And on saying this pressing a button with insane Mech-versions of his characteristic designs specific to each international Judge. For me Hicklenton's Dredd designs would have been the hardest to replicate in any film version, the scaled down versions in the Stallone film (both in terms of costumes and the so-called perps/ random people in eye make-up) attest to how difficult bringing the true madness of Mega City One to the screen is.

I am genuinely shaken and sad at Hicklenton's death and my thoughts go out to those who knew him beyond his amazing body of work, which truly affected the history of British comics. It even inspired some goon to stick flower pots on his head to get the requisite 'highness' to attempt to replicate a Hicklenton-style Dredd luck

some articles:

Comic Book artist ends life at suicide clinic after battle with ms, The Telegraph

BBC news

John Hicklenton passes away Forbidden Planet

Vicious Imagery blog

Ms Trust

Bristle's Blog

digital spy

mindless ones

Ode to a Magnum 6D....

...as opposed of course to the disposable lighter-esque Magnum 6G Personal Defense Weapon System, or god forbid the plasma pistol, the 5 for a pound neon plastic purple disposable lighter of the Halo world.

To help escape the horrible winter that has only recently seemed to let go its grasp, I finally got an Xbox 360 after much hmming haaaing and played Halo 3 on legendary. During Halo: Combat Evolved on legendary there is much walking about looking for ammo and I developed a Sledge Hammer! like fondness for the M6D and it was one of the surprises that this lowly weapon became the weapon of choice and was a nice friend to talk to and say things like 'yeah you better run' and 'you better wait right there I'll be back in like an hour with some sniper ammo'. Which reminded me that first post I ever wrote on here was about Halo, 'Needler Dreams'

During Halo 3 when waves of feckers were coming at me, was to say in a very quiet voice..'well, that was quite the inconvenience'. It's strange the way 'realism' gets bandied about as a term. I would deem Halo 3 as realistic in that things feel real within the universe they have created, holding two weapons at a time and four grenades and health reviving etc. It's when you have to score points to buy abilities and such it gets to be a bit of a nightmare.

Like the other day, I started Fallout 3, where you have to choose important things like your sex, race and bad haircut etc about six seconds after your born. Now, I was balancing up options whether a heavy set black man would be able to survive the harsh post-apocalyptic more than a hot Asian lady, who might either bamboozle the mutants with sexual wiles or get killed easily. Then I thought I was over-thinking the game and chose a generic Caucasian goon. Plus, my name in the game is ‘Cuntybollix’, only because I wanted Liam Neeson playing my da to say it. He did say it was a lovely name though and I look forward to the day when the dread king Cuntybollix rules the postapocalyptic wasteland with and iron mutoid claw. I gave up and am still wandering around the vault looking for fucking bobby pins to open a door and getting pummelled because you have to pull up a computerized system and click loads of options to get a gun to fire and then you end up in your pants for no reason (mmm achieving nothing and ending up in my pants for no reason, maybe Fallout 3 is like real life.)

Where to start with Bayonetta! As per usual Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw of Zero Puncuation gets it right:

See I really was more first person shooter kind guy, it had that lovely fluid quality and movement compared to watching the arse of some thick soilders are they give each other high fives and blow up terrorists (I'm looking at you Army of Two, idiots). But Bayonetta is like 8 foot tall and has guns attached to her high heels! If I am to play a third person game, at least make it something interesting to watch.

I had not really experienced quick time events before, it's like you're watching a cut scene that you can get killed in repeatedly for no reason. Again there are certain 'realism' rules, you fight flying upsidedown angel things, some shaped like ships! some just a big weel on fire or a gigantic pixalated planet with a red fiery ball inside it but when you get a pair of haunted ice skates you can only wear them on your feet, I mean I can already fly a bit and turn into a panther and my body hair comes off and turns into a parrot the size of a double decker bus to eat some angel gobshite why can't I wear haunted ice skates on my hand if I want to? Check out the madness: