Comedian Ed Byrne has spoken about his new stand-up show, Tragedy Plus Time, which is heavily based on the death of his younger brother Paul in 2022.
Paul Byrne was a director of stand-up comedy, who was very well known in the industry. He died in February 2022 aged 44 after a short illness and a long struggle with alcoholism.
The show's title relates to the famous Mark Twain quote, that humour is defined as tragedy plus time.
Speaking of finding humour in his brother’s final days and death, Ed Byrne told The Telegraph, "I’ll never go through anything as black as that ever and yet I managed to make it worse", referring in particular to his choice of music that he played to Paul after his life support machine was turned off.
He said, "Paul was a big fan of music and I decided to play a band I knew he liked to send him on his merry way."
The band were American indie rock band Sebadoh, and Byrne joked, "I picked the worst noise I could have picked. It turned an already grim experience into a nightmare.
"The fact that when the album finished and he was still dying, I turned to my mother and said, 'Thank God that’s over,’ that says something about how bad that album was."
Byrne also shared his thoughts on his brother’s struggles with illness. "The root cause of his demise was his constant belief that he thought he was going to be OK.
"The fact that he thought he could leave it a bit, not go to the GP for a while. Even in hospital making jokes about it, I don’t know how aware he was that this could be it."
Byrne, who lives in Essex with his wife and two children, also revealed that this new show is "not a show I wanted to do at all. But whatever is going on in my life, that is what the show ends up being about, whether I like it or not and whether the audience likes it or not."
When asked if he felt his brother would be happy that he has created a comedy show on the topic of his passing, Byrne replied, "One hundred percent. Absolutely. He’d want me to make jokes about it."
Tragedy Plus Time will debut at the Edinburgh Fringe in August.
