COMEDIAN Jake O'Kane kicks off his latest stand-up tour at Omagh's Strule Arts Centre later this month as he prepares to mark a major milestone in his stand-up career.
"Would you believe that 2023 will be the start of my third decade doing stand-up?," marvels the north Belfast funnyman, before admitting that his latest show - the amusingly named Cheaper Than Sitting At Home - is still very much at the planning stage even with the aforementioned opening date of tour fast approaching on December 28.
"There's an alchemy to this whole thing," he says of putting together the new show, which will also visit the Ulster Hall on January 21 and February 18.
"There are guys who spend two years writing a show and then tour it for a year to get it right: I've yet to write this show, and it's now just two weeks off.
"But it's sort of there. After 30 years, you just sort of trust yourself that you'll be able to do it after having done it for such a long time."
Jake's annual jaunt around the country always involves the current affairs savvy comic and Irish News columnist reflecting on some of the most amusing political disasters/gaffes/crises to befall the north, as well as sharing his own more personal musings and misadventures.
"There's always going to be politics in the show and me annoying local politicians," comments the former Blame Game man of the upcoming tour, the latest instalment of a career which began with a sink-or-swim stint as compère at The Belfast Empire's now legendary comedy club in the early 1990s.
"But, as I've said before, politics has now got to the level where with the stuff they are saying and the stuff they are at, political satirists are basically redundant. Especially here in the north.
"Like, last year at the Opera House, I started a bit about our MLAs and there was this massive cheer.
Me being me, I had to slap them straight down by going, 'Now hauld on, it's your flippin' fault – you vote these buggers in, so don't you be applauding now. Youse are responsible for this.
"We're caught in Groundhog Day here. It's just going to go on like that until there's some adjustment in how they actually function in the Assembly.
"So, [for this tour] I'm also writing about what's relevant in my life: getting old, bits falling off and stopping working, my new medications, new tests and probes and all that stuff.
"Also, having teenage kids: they're fun when you're 61."
Indeed, having recently written in his Irish News column about the eye opening/widening education he's been receiving from his teenage son about the increasingly complex and nuanced dynamics involved in 21st century sexual relationships (go and Google 'polyamorous'), it seems the north Belfast man is also being kept right about the modern way of things by his long-suffering teenage daughter.
"I swear to God, they're a different breed entirely," says the comedian on the subject of 'young people today'.
"My daughter is the most 'woke' individual I've ever met and I spend my time annoying her. For instance, I keep on pointing out that she's only a girl and 'the second child', so we really have to focus on making sure the boy's alright – just to see her wee head explode."
While Gen Z's incredible levels of empathy, tolerance and compassion would almost be enough to give you a bit of hope for the future of this place, the ongoing resistance to the concept of integrated education from those just a couple of generations behind them is more worrying to the comedian.
"I've been arguing with the anti-integrated education crowd this week," says Jake, a vocal supporter of the Integrated Education Fund.
"It's really been frightening them that so many primary schools have been popping off and going integrated recently.
"It never ceases to amaze me how good, intelligent people can still argue that there's still room for religious education. You're sort of going 'really?'. How about we educated [Catholic and Protestant kids] together young and give them a better chance at experiencing normality instead?"
Impressively, the comedian actually practises what he preaches (pardon the religious pun) when it comes to his own offspring, though of course the devil in him also had to get a wee dig in for badness when plans were being made.
"They were never going to go to a Catholic school," says the comedian, "but you have to annoy your wife – it's part of the job.
"When the kids were young, the subject of education came up and eventually I said, 'What about Catholic school? Sure I went to one'.
"Her response was: 'And look how that turned out'."
Anyone who saw Jake in action at the beginning of this year with his Maskerade show will surely have noticed that he seemed to be in particularly fine, enthusiastic form.
"Part of the reason why the last tour was so good was that sort of 'getting out of jail' feeling that we all had after the easing of Covid restrictions," he explains.
"The year before had been cancelled, obviously. So there was a freedom involved in just actually getting out there and getting up on the stage again.
"It was a reciprocal thing: the audience were glad to get out as well, so it worked very very well – and the material just seemed to click as well. If only it could be like that every year, wouldn't it be wonderful?"
At the moment, it seems like a shared sense of living through extraordinarily cruel times is galvanising the connection between comedy crowds battered by the deepening cost of living crisis and performers who can both acknowledge this dire state of affairs while also offering welcome and much-needed distraction.
"We seem to be almost going back to the early 1930s or 1970s with this recession," observes Jake.
"Comedy always comes up during these periods because people want to escape – they want to laugh for an hour and forget what's going on.
"So, like I say, there will always be politics in my show, but I'd say a good 70 per cent of this new one is about other stuff. I want people to enjoy themselves and forget the nonsense."
Sounds like a plan – just don't forget to turn the lights and heat off before leaving the house.
:: Jake O'Kane's Cheaper Than Sitting at Home starts at Strule Arts Centre on December 28, Ardhowen Theatre in Enniskillen on December 29 and then continues to the Marine Hotel in Ballycastle on December 30. See davidhullpromotions.com/event/1/jake-okane for list of full 2023 dates and ticketing details.
