Best at last

SOME in the world of comedy feared that stand-up Brendon Burns wouldn't survive long enough to win the top Edinburgh Fringe Festival award after ten unsuccessful attempts. The 36-year-old, English-based Australian finally achieved his dream last month of winning the IF prize (formerly the Perrier) after clawing his way back from rehab and mental illness. This victory over 600 other comics comes as a welcome bonus to Saltburn Theatre and Darlington's Inside Out Club who took the chance to book Burns for October appearances some time ago.

Burns, himself, had just about given up on joining names like The League Of Gentlemen, Lee Hall and Steve Coogan on the list of comedy greats.

He'd decided just to focus on acting at this year's festival - he, Adam Hills and Heath Franklin signed up for a run of Breaker Morant - when the idea for a new show came to him.

"I thought I was doing just the play, then I had the idea for the show, the script just wrote itself. Doing the play during the day makes your stand-up at night the kind of hilarious folly that it should be. It's too easy to take yourself too seriously and then your funny side suffers. You know I'm going to be there to hand over the award but I might be exploring television or film next year."

Burns and Ro Acharya and Matt Holt are working on a pilot comedy show for the BBC as well as a screenplay. "The BBC approached us and said 'nobody is doing what you're doing, can you turn the Edinburgh show into something for TV?'. You're not supposed to talk about these things until you've got beyond the pilot."

Asked about the award-winning content of I Suppose This Is Offensive Now, Burns says: "The this is in italics which is all-important for the joke to work because it's basically taking the piss out of people who think it isn't. The joke is me all blacked up with a bone through my nose and me as Christ on the cross and me in a wheelchair pulling a mongy face, if you will, and me in a fairy outfit.

"It is basically about the lack of balance and accountability by the media in a society where finger-pointing is going on from the left and the right and if you dare to disagree with either one of them they accuse you of being the other. That was why the show was so popular. A lot of people felt they weren't represented. A lot of people thought the Big Brother thing (Jade Goody's comments on Shilpa Shetty) was a storm in a tea cup but aren't Bernard Manning fans."

He freely admits that after 17 years on the comedy circuit he once thought he was 'owed' an award but now thinks differently to the extent that he rates Andrew Maxwell as the best current pound for pound stand-up. "I just made the right decisions, I had the best show according to a panel of whatever, that's because Edinburgh is 60 per cent talent and 40 per cent decisions and I had the right directors, I chose the right people and I listened to them and made the right changes. Three heads are always better than one."

Having built up a reputation for being over-the-top and more challenging than most, Burns admits that he now regrets having told anti-American jokes after 9/11. "I said some stuff I didn't mean and was just trying to be controversial, it was quite childish of me.

"But my attitude has to be inclusive. You pick any segment of society and say that you can't be funny about them and you exclude them. I don't do hateful humour, I'm not offensive. I don't deem myself as offensive. I don't think I'm outrageous. My show is how ludicrous I think I am as a person, how human I think I am... and no human is beyond parody."

Currently on his website a video plays of him on stage saying: "Say what you like about cancer, it's a good way for bald kids to meet sports stars."

ISN'T that going a little too far? "The joke isn't about kids with cancer. It's a joke about kids being so cool and savvy that they would shave their head to meet a sports star. I understand the misunderstanding but I know what I wrote. The joke is part of a routine called 'five reasons I shouldn't leave a notepad by the bed when I've taken cocaine' so it was five jokes where I wasn't proud of the darkness of them. So I'm not going ha-ha-ha about kids with cancer."

Asked if he sees his Edinburgh victory as any extra pressure, he replies: "What am I gonna do? Work for 17 years to win this thing and then complain when I do that I'm busy? I'm really grateful. The award meant everything to me because I'd been up there so many years and been overlooked. I really thought this year was my best shot and my last shot as well.

"Everyone in the industry knows I had my problems not that long ago and that I might not have made it through them. And to come back, a year and eight months later and win the biggest prize in our industry, only 20 months later... what a comeback, what a miracle.

"I appreciate you've got to go through what you go through. Everything that happens in this life makes up who you are and I'm glad it happened now rather than earlier. I understand that I had to wait this long. Earlier it would have gone to my head. It's very strange because my immediate reaction was humbled and grateful. Whereas before I was jumping up and down saying 'why aren't I getting this?' and 'I'm owed this'. I plan to work my arse off to make this mean something."

After what he rates as four, five-star shows in a row at Edinburgh, including writing a trilogy about himself, he felt this year's show was his most audacious yet. "It looked like it was going to be at first this puerile, childish 'I'll say anything' pile of **** with people coming back and saying 'that was so much more thoughtful than I expect' which was amazing that people still had those preconceived notions seeing that my track record had proved otherwise.

"I no longer have to go up to Edinburgh and have that 'maybe this year' feeling. That's over. I've realised a true boyhood dream. I've been a fan since I was nine years old and saw my first stand-up. This year, I was clean and I was sober and gave it the best shot I had."

* Brendon Burns plays Saltburn Theatre on Saturday, October 13. Box Office: 01642-729729 and Inside Out (formerly Club 2K), Darlington, on Sunday, October 14.