Dylan Moran gets stuck right in

The comediancurmudgeon returns for a standup spray, writes Lenny Ann Low.

Dylan Moran has been missing people. It’s why he is heading to Australia to tour We Got This, his post-lockdown stand-up reverie covering politics, ageing, being divorced and humanity staring in the mirror after decades of the internet.

‘‘The jig is up with our own bullshit,’’ he says. ‘‘We see how we’ve been living because we’ve had the net for 20 years.’’

Of late he’s been noticing a nostalgia for how things were 20 years ago.

‘‘Usually you’re laughing at that. You’re in your 50s, I’m in my 50s, and you have that retrospective flow. You’re delighted that you left that behind, it’s in your rear-view mirror.

‘‘But now we’re thinking we definitely had a better time. We cared less about everything, we were less neurotic, we were less frazzled all the time.

‘‘You wonder, ‘What could we have done?’ We didn’t know. They told us things were good and we rocked along with it and we were dumb about it.

‘‘It seemed a bit suspicious to me because it went on for so long. You’re thinking, ‘Jesus, where’s the war? There’s usually a war.’

‘‘Well, now there is and everybody hates everybody and the Cold War is not cold any more. It is definitely above room temperature by now.’’

Getting on with life, reckoning with ourselves, is partly why Moran is keen to stand on stage and commune with hundreds of people in theatres.

He spent lockdown writing Stuck, a five-part BBC sitcom which follows rolling conversations and rut-like schisms for a long-term couple, played by Moran and actor and comedian Morgana Robinson.

Spending days filming and creating the series in collaboration with cast and crew in the same room pleased him enormously.

‘‘You’re tight and you do your shit together and you’re all dependent on one another,’’ he says. ‘‘You all have something at stake that you want to be good, and it’s rewarding and energising.’’

In his spare time, he writes, reads poetry, draws and paints – many of the artworks are projected behind him on stage performances. Recently, he’s been ‘‘messing around with keyboards’’, something his Stuck character, Dan, tries in a brief but jazzy paean to life’s mundanities.

Moran’s career was sparked by winning the Perrier Comedy Award at the 1996 Edinburgh Fringe, aged 24.

His rumpled, confused, poetically curmudgeon persona spawned many an acclaimed stand-up show, along with onscreen roles ranging from 1998 TV sitcom How Do You Want Me? to films Notting Hill, Shaun of the Dead, Run, Fatboy, Run and Calvary.

Bernard Black, the eccentric and enraged misanthrope in cult TV series Black Books, is the role that for some defines Moran’s comedy style. Childlike, furious and intently disengaged from the absurd humdrum of everyday life, Black tore up how adults are supposed to behave. But Moran is not Black. His reckoning with a world demanding restrictive or ridiculous behaviours is more meandering and philosophical. Moran, having given in to Instagram to promote his work, posts rambling and abstract videos – there is no better insight into his view of social media.

‘‘I don’t spend too much time on it,’’ he says. ‘‘There are practical aspects but there is zero relational nutrition in it. It’s not going to make you feel anything real.

‘‘When television first came out, people said that it was an invention for lonely people. And it’s obviously true with this too. We’re in an epidemic of people feeling isolated, being alone together.’’

‘‘It’s a machine dialogue that you’re in. It’s weird. Do you want to be in a machine dialogue? Or do you want to be living your f---ing life as an organic human being?’’

Life, he says, is about being as alive as possible, with people joining us in that pursuit.

‘‘We are giving away the best of ourselves to tech companies,’’ he says. ‘‘We need to reclaim ourselves. There is an opportunity now to be honest about what it is you want, or carry on moaning for the rest of your f---ing life.’’