Comedian Jason Byrne has said he went gunning for fellow funnyman David McSavage first on LOL: Last One Laughing Ireland, the new show which pits ten Irish comedians against each other in a battle of wits and titters.
The new six-part series, which is streaming on Amazon Prime and is hosted by Graham Norton, sees the funnymen and women cooped up in a room for six straight hours with one challenge - make your fellow comic laugh without laughing yourself.
The ten comedians taking part all come from very different schools of laughs - Aisling Bea, Catherine Bohart, Amy Huberman, Deidre O'Kane, Emma Doran, Tony Cantwell, Martin Angelo, Paul Tylak, David McSavage and Jason Byrne.
Speaking to RTÉ Entertainment at the launch of the show, Byrne said, "I was going to go for Dave McSavage first. I thought I have to get rid of him because he’s not gonna laugh at anything. Dave’s soul left his body fifteen years ago so it’s quite hard to make him laugh.
"Then I backed off him after a while even though I was breaking him down a bit but I thought I’d better look about and go for some of the younger comics. It’s not that they’re not as experienced, it’s that they’re not as miserable as us.
"They have a certain outlook on life. They’re more ambitious than us, they’re still probably trying to get on Live at the Apollo and get over to do big tours whereas us older comics, we’re at the other end now. We don’t have a lot of laughter left in us."
This is the house where laughter died and the challenge is clear - if you laugh, you lose but if you make it through six hours of sight gags, funny masks, novelty props and eh, comical poetry without even a grin or a titter, you walk away with the LOL: Last One Laughing Ireland title and €50,000 for your chosen charity.
LOL: Last One Laughing Ireland is Prime Video's first Irish original series and the format has already had hit Italian, French, and German versions.
Dublin comedian Byrne is very much the wild card in this pack of jokers and has always been the Max Wall of Ballinteer.
Speaking about what works best on the show - sight gags or witty one-liners - , he said, "I think Irish people can switch off quite easily during conversations, especially when someone is telling a joke. You’re going to tell your joke when they’re telling theirs.
"Subtle things on this show work so tiny, little noises, costumes and the props on the set and the set-ups . . . I loved when Jedward just popped up out of nowhere and Zig and Zag came in.
"Stuff like that but even Amy Huberman rolling in as a mermaid . . . like, what’s happening there?! So, they kept doing things like that to make us laugh.
"It was kind of relentless but definitely why this show works so well around the world, and you can go through all the languages, and it just works."
LOL: Last One Laughing Ireland is on Prime Video now.
Alan Corr @CorrAlan2
