Larry Dean asks a question with his own answer, beating you to the chance.

“Hiya Carla, how are you? Am awrite” is how Larry started our conversation. Safe to say I was taken aback, but I shouldn’t have been – with Larry you should expect the unexpected.

With the bendi-ness and slapstick bodily humour of Jim Carrey complemented by the story-telling ability that is akin to Billy Connolly in his banana boot days, South Side native comedian Larry is an award-winning funny man – he scooped up Scottish Comedian of the Year in 2013 and Best Show Award in 2018 for ‘Bampot’ at the Edinburgh Comedy Awards.

He is a comedic force to be reckoned with, despite his slight frame, cheeky boy laugh and ever-present bottle of Irn-Bru. And, the best part – he talks exclusively about lived through experiences of being Glaswegian..

“I just got back from California yesterday, so this morning I got up at half past five and meditated”, Larry tells me. “I learned how to meditate a few years ago, when I was getting a show ready and was under loads of stress. I did a pure mad course and thought, ‘we’ll, this will be good for material’.

“It was actually quite useful. Jim Carrey does it so I thought maybe it would make me a better comedian... actually, when I did it the first time, I realised it was just a posh nap.”

Lucky for us, Larry will be taking both shows ‘Bampot’ and ‘Fandan’ out for a night on the tiles in Glasgow this week, at the Blue Arrow Club until Wednesday, before they go for a whirl at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe later this month. It would seem that alongside meditation lessons, everything else is also chucked into Larry’s comedic repertoire, as if he sees the humour in everything. The shows are loosely based around anecdotes from his life as a gay man from a strict Catholic family in Glasgow: which, to Larry, seems hilarious in itself.

“I do get off on anything now – if anything bad happens in my life, I think, ‘well’, this is an Edinburgh story’.”

Although being in a position such as Larry’s will not be unique to men throughout Glasgow, being a comedian is indeed quite the unique career choice for Scottish men who opt for looking tough rather than funny. How did he realise this was the route for him?

“I always used to like being the centre of attention”, says Larry.

“I used to practise making funny faces in the mirror before school, to make people laugh. I was really popular” he jokes.

“I knew I was definitely going to do it, though, when I got into a performance course in Southampton and loads of my mates, as well as my careers advisor, told me that I’d never go to Southampton. I was like, ‘I’ll prove you wrong’, and then I moved out of spite.

“Then I said to my dad, ‘I want to be a comedian’ and he kept telling me I wasn’t funny, so I said I wanted to prove him wrong too. It’s probably not a good habit to get into. When my ex broke up with me, I started eating vegetables because I thought, ‘I’m determined to outlive you, ya p****k... at least it’s a good thing that’s come out of bitterness.”

For Larry, it would seem that he thrives off the reverse psychology style negativity of the Scottish character, and this has surfaced most pertinently through his dating stories.

“I go on dates with people who think the idea of going out with me will be hilarious and a good jolly, and it’s not.

“But people in Glasgow do this – they take the p**s out of themselves, because if you’re taking the piss out of yourself then you aren’t taking the piss out of someone else, which means you probably won’t get stabbed.

“In Glasgow, though, if you take the p**s out of someone, it usually means you’re friends. I don’t want to say I really like you, I’ll be horrible to you, and you’ll get the jist. I’ve done that with people who are not from Glasgow... and they just thought I was being horrible to them, and I am a f*****g psycho.”

“I haven’t done Bampot in a few months and Fandan in a year, so I thought if I do these in a small room in Glasgow and bill them as a work in progress, I get to go through them all. My style has changed, it’s...”

I suggest, ‘matured’?

“It’s matured by immaturity, if that’s possible. The stuff I laugh at is the stupid voices and the physicality – if you’re going to do comedy, you might as well make yourself laugh while you’re doing it. Which probably shouldn’t be the main reason why I do it, but there you go...”

And although it’s a short train journey, are the audiences massively different between normal Glasgow evenings, and Edinburgh Fringe mania?

“I find in Glasgow I can speak my normal self. A lot of people when I do shows overseas, Glasgow people say I talk really slowly for a Glaswegian. I don’t talk slowly, but if I don’t slow down what I say, people don’t have a scoobie what I’m talking about.

“Whenever I do gigs anywhere other than in Glasgow, I always feel that I’m speaking in a second language. I can’t use certain words, and it’s gutting to think ‘that punchline would be so much better if I could say ‘b****g’, but instead I’m going to have to say ‘scrotum’. Only Scottish people get it.”

 

Larry Dean: Works in Progress (Bampot + Fandan) - The Blue Arrow, 19-21 August. Tickets available at thebluearrow.co.uk