Gusto is a new one-man comedy slide-show from award-winning producer, director and writer Billy McGrath exploring how one old age punk survived a world of sex, Irish dancing, drugs, Sean-Nos singing, and rock'n’roll - and lived to tell the tale. Billy introduces Gusto below...
This April I will walk on stage at Dublin's Project Arts Centre as my alter ego Billy Magra. It will be 'his’ first one-man show in the capital in nearly 40 years. It all started in UCD as part of comedy trio The Milligan Machine. Named after Spike, we used to pack out free lunchtime shows and pass around the hat at the end. Our last appearance was on BBC Radio 4 in summer 1972. Fast forward to October 1981. Dublin’s Comedy Store had opened on Harcourt Street and I went out of curiosity. One night I braved the ‘Open Audience Spot’ - and a few weeks later I was the resident MC.
I'm strapping on the comedy guns again, this time firing real bullets as I return to the passion of my youth and grow old disgracefully.
In 1982, Gay Byrne introduced my debut Late Late Show appearance as ‘Ireland’s No1 alternative comedian’. I was also the ONLY one. There were no clubs or comedy nights like now in every town and city in Ireland. I wrote and performed solo shows; opened more comedy clubs plus supported acts like Status Quo, Warren Zevon, Paul Brady, and The Flying Pickets. The latter asked me to tour the UK with them in 1984 but the same week I had an offer to train as a TV producer with RTÉ. That led me to London and beyond working with some of the most influential, inspiring and iconic musical talent. I was appointed senior producer in the newly launched TV3 (1998); was RTÉ’s first Commissioning Editor of TV Entertainment and since 2004 have run a production company, Sideline.
All through 2019, I produced and directed a feature-length film Citizens of Boomtown (the story of The Boomtown Rats) that premiered at the 2020 Dublin Film Festival a week before COVID struck. Now, locked in, I finally had time to do an MA in Screenwriting remotely with the National Film School (IADT), and same time as writing a screenplay, Rage Action; a genealogy detective TV drama series and a sitcom based in an anarchic nursing home, I was also filing away other material for a stage show. Not for fame or fortune, but to explore a question we all have to face: what do you want to be when you grow up?
When you retire you may have 20-30 more years to live. An ex-League of Ireland soccer player with UCD, I had hung up my boots and won’t be climbing the Himalayas soon. Instead I opted to challenge myself to write and perform a one-man show that will debunk the belief that 3rd Act-ers should bury their dreams, lose ambition, or become invisible. So I’m strapping on the comedy guns again, this time firing real bullets as I return to the passion of my youth and grow old disgracefully.
And after 30 years in the screen trade, I decided to build the show around a wide selection of slides that feature family, travels, various celebs and the real truth behind U2 asking me to manage them!
Gusto is aimed at a wide audience and adult kids are encouraged to bring their parents!
Gusto is at Project Arts Centre, Dublin from 18-22 April 2023 - find out more here.
