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....