Kerry comedian Bernard Casey has been making a name for himself on the Irish comedy scene with his hilarious online sketches since 2013. We caught up with the funnyman ahead of his show, Local Gossip, going to the Cork Opera House and the Royal Theatre in Castlebar.
First launched in 2020, Local Gossip is a show that has ebbed and flowed throughout the pandemic. Kicking off to roaring success in Vicar Street just weeks before the first of many lockdowns, Casey says that getting this tour across the finish line has been an "unusual" experience."
"It's been so mad because the dates just kept coming and going throughout the last year, it's been extremely hard to plan," he tells me over the phone. "2020 was actually better because you knew what was happening but 2021 was very uncertain, so this year you're just hitting the ground running and getting things back to the way we used to be."
"My first date is the 18th of February in the Cork Opera House so I'm really looking forward to that, and then the following Saturday I'm in the Royal Theatre Castlebar. They are the last two dates of my original tour from 2020. Thankfully people a load of people held onto their tickets!"
While Local Gossip was put on standby, Casey busied himself with writing new material, creating new characters for his online sketches, running theatre workshops, and filming with RTÉ for Callan Kicks The Year.
Now that the restrictions have ended he plans to do all that and more, insisting that he'll be "running through the comedy clubs" before writing a new tour in Autumn.
"I remember at the first theatre course I did, they said you had to learn to adapt or prepare to fail. That was it, you know? You have to have your fingers in a lot of pies because you won't be eating otherwise," he laughs.
As well as instilling some practical life lessons, Bernard's time studying at the Gaiety School of Acting seems to have played an integral part to him finding success in comedy.
With almost 80,000 Facebook followers alone, his online sketches such as 'The Polish Barman' and 'The Irish Listening Test', not to mention his popular characters like 'The Local Gossip' and 'The Nephew', have allowed him to make a living from finding the funny in everyday Irish life.
Additionally, Bernard insists that his time in on stage acting has paid off in his stand up.
"You're putting on a physical performance," he explains. "The big thing with the acting course is facial expressions, of course, but using the stage properly. There's kind of a geometry to watching something."
"A weird one is that the Gaiety taught me how to walk," he adds, laughing. "You do all these walking exercises and at the start you're like 'what the hell is this?' but after a while you get it. It teaches you how to walk as yourself or as a character."
To see Bernard in action or for more information on Local Gossip, click here.
