A COUPLE of years ago, Irish comedian and writer Maeve Higgins decided to call it quits on London and based herself in a house on Bere Island off the south-west coast of Ireland.
Brought up in Cobh, Co Cork, she had returned to her mother county after years in Dublin and a brief ill-fated move to the English capital. But fate had plans for Higgins, who first found fame on the RTE comedy show Naked Camera before making her name as a brilliant and naturally hilarious stand-up comedian.
Not long after she was sat reading old copies of The New Yorker in her Bere Island retreat, she got an email offering her the chance to do a show at the Irish Arts Center in New York – a mere 3,000 miles across the Atlantic from the Cork coastline. Now Higgins has been based in New York for almost two years and couldn’t be happier.
When I speak to her she’s at home in East Harlem and is busy writing away for both her own live shows and TV pitches.
“I’m thinking about a TV show about immigration – which is the biggest story in the world at the moment; there aren't that many comedy shows about immigration. And I’m also organising a fundraiser for Syrian refugees on December 20, so that’s been taking up my time.”
She says she felt very comfortable in her adopted city after just a few months. “I remember after six months or so I was on my way to a place and knew where I was going and I didn’t need to look at my phone for directions and I was going to meet two of my new great friends, so I was like 'This is where I live; it’s worked out’.
“I tried London and it wasn’t good for me at all and then I tried New York and I thought it might not work but it did.”
She and writer Jon Ronson – who has also moved to New York – struck up a friendship and they now put on a monthly live show called I’m New Here.
“We have a mutual friend in [comedian] Josie Long. So Josie was in New York and we went out and Jon was there and we got to be friends. He was having a hard time settling in to New York and I seemed to get settled within a month, so we found that interesting. That’s how we started our show. Because Jon’s a journalist and writes screenplays and is a hard worker, he’s been a good mentor for me.”
Maeve has put her experiences of failing in London and succeeding in the Big Apple – as well as a host of her funny thoughts and stories – into her new book Off You Go: Away From Home and Loving It... Sort Of.
“It was around last Christmas that I realised I had bits of pieces and had done stuff for papers, so I thought I’d put all those experiences together for the book,” she says.
“I think my writing has gotten stronger over the past two years because I’ve been writing more and reading more. I read all the time and I think that helps my writing. I’m glad that I have a book now that chronicled what happened.”
In her book she makes it pretty clear that London didn’t work out.
“The sheer volume of posh English boys doing bad stand-up comedy chilled me to the core,” she writes. “And the panel-show frenzy happening on television could not have been less appealing... London didn’t show me the same curiosity and welcome that New York has.”
She found it hard to make friends in London, ended up having to take a waitressing job at one point and found the comedy scene sexist.
“Cities have personalities and you either get along with them or you don’t and I didn’t like the personality of London and it didn’t suit mine,” she says.
“Comedy is a silly job but you do need people to be into what you’re doing or you won’t get work. Because of the way things are in the UK and Ireland, it’s really just a lot of men getting the work. Their work is valued a lot more than women’s work.
"I’d think `This guy is not good at comedy but he’s getting paid SO much money to do it on TV’. And I also look at RTE and Irish films and it’s all men – they’re funding men.
"So there is that thing of, 'If you can’t see it, you can’t be it’ and you don’t see women being held up in comedy. In New York there’s more diversity and there’s less sexism in comedy.”
Higgins hosts the second of three 'One Night in Heaven’ shows at the Irish Arts Center in New York tomorrow, with the third one taking place on December 15.
“Each one has a theme. They’re the things I think about the most: food, money and sex and romance. It’s me hosting and doing bits of stand-up and reading bits of my book and then I have different guests.”
She said she wished her sister Lilly, a well known cookbook writer and Great Irish Bake Off judge on TV3, could have been a part of last month’s food-themed show.
One of Higgins’s long-running jokes (or is it?!) is that she and Michael Fassbender are an item. In Off You Go, she writes that, 'he and I are keeping things casual – for now’. So will Fassbender be a special guest at her love-themed show in New York next month?
“I have said to him but we like to keep it on the down-low,” she laughs. “He probably will be there but I don’t want to put that out in the press. But he’s not in my new book as much as my first one [We Have A Good Time, Don’t We?].”
She says she “doesn’t want to be defined by being Irish in America” but says it is of course “helpful to have that community and support”.
As well as being praised by Jon Ronson, Higgins has a new friend in US comedian and actress Amy Schumer – who has joked about the Corkwoman, “I’m sorry, but we’re keeping her. We’ll send her back [to Ireland] for the holidays”.
Higgins has appeared on Schumer’s popular TV sketch show Inside Amy Schumer.
“That was a lot of fun and I love that show. But I’m more of a writer than an actor.”
So will she be staying in New York for the foreseeable then?
“I don’t know. I find it hard to make plans; I just kind of go with the flow. I have a visa for three years so I’ll probably stay for the three years. I absolutely love it here.”
:: Off You Go is out now, published by Hachette (www.MaeveHiggins.com).
