Five years ago, Gallagher had no intention of pursuing comedy. He was an air-conditioning repair man with aspirations to be an actor. Enter Jason Byrne, the comedian and a friend. But unlike the unwitting foils of Naked Camera, Gallagher’s debut was not merely unwilling but also unfunny.
“I was going to do acting, but I was too afraid to do stand-up,” Gallagher says. “I was too chicken to pick up a microphone. Then, against my will, Jason Byrne booked me when he was doing the Dublin theatre festival in Vicar Street.
“It was terrible. I hadn’t a clue and was in way over my head, so I went out and died on my arse. I don’t even really remember it. I remember going on stage and the next thing walking off, asking everyone was it okay. They all said no, but don’t worry about it, you’ll be all right.
“And the world didn’t end. Ten minutes after Jason went on stage the crowd forgot I was there in the first place. So you realise, you can get away with being crap while you learn. Nobody pays attention to the crap lads, you can ply your trade in private almost. I also had nothing to lose. I could go back to plugging things into a wall tomorrow if I wanted.”
He may no longer have to repair air-conditioning for a living, but until Naked Camera — which returns in its live incarnation to Vicar Street next month — Gallagher was known as a reliable fixture on the Irish comedy circuit rather than one of its brightest sparks. With routines largely built around absurd, highly embellished anecdotes, often culled from other people’s experiences, Gallagher had made a steady but unspectacular living performing in small clubs or as a support act.
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In keeping with his inadvertent entry into stand-up, he has seemed happy to go with the flow, both in terms of his act and his professional path. He turned down the initial invitation to join the fledgling Naked Camera project because he was taking two months off to motorbike around Europe.
“It’s not analytical comedy,” Gallagher admits. “I’m just into that sort of silly, ridiculous stuff. I still think someone falling over is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Gallagher’s ad-hoc approach may account for his low profile until recently, but equally it is the key to his success on Naked Camera. For one, few ambitious comics would be likely to view yet another variation of the hackneyed candid camera theme as an inspired career move.
“It’s not an original idea,” Gallagher admits. Yet, upon returning from his European trip, he had no hesitation in jumping on board when producer Liam McGrath told him there was still a vacancy. “They got me involved after a process of elimination — they had nobody left,” Gallagher says. “So I got lucky.”
In fact it was Naked Camera that got lucky. While his fellow comedians Maeve Higgins and Patrick McDonnell bring their own stamp to the show, it is Gallagher’s impulsive, have-a-go nature that prevents the show from being a familiar retread of a jaded formula.
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In guises such as Jake the whistler, the relentlessly self-confident, charmlessly upbeat would-be card, and Jumper Man, the twitchy, deeply suspicious Dub trying to offload bundles of old tenners, Gallagher’s encounters with the unsuspecting public are not only hilarious but also crackle with an edgy energy.
“People say: ‘How did you not laugh?’ It’s because I was terrified all the time. Especially when we just went in gung-ho. You don’t know what’s going to happen, you don’t know if people are going to take it badly or whatever.
“Actually the first one I ever did, where I’m buying the house (with wads of used currency), you can see I’m nervous. Afterwards your man (the estate agent) said to me: ‘Fair play, you had the shakes and all, just like the real lads’. But they were my own shakes.”
If Gallagher is convincing as a chancer, it may be because the 30-year-old Dubliner sees a bit of himself in the character. Born in the north Dublin suburb of Clontarf, where he still lives, Gallagher displayed little interest in a career, preferring to bunk off school and play bass guitar in a band with friends.
“Then I went straight from school into a lighting warehouse, where I met Jason,” he says. “I had it too good. It was just mischief. When I went to try and get a real job after that, I got the fright of my life, and I thought I had better do something different now.”
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He enrolled at the Gaiety school of acting in Dublin; but having made his inauspicious debut just before entering the college, his priorities changed.
“As soon as that was finished I realised I didn’t have the discipline to do acting either,” he says. “And there’s no work. If you want to do comedy and you’re in any way good, you’ll get gigs. Whereas most actors are part-time barmen or waiters — it’s a tough road. So in a way, I suppose, comedy is a cop-out.”
Even so, his acting skills and varied CV have proved of use, most notably in the creation of Jake, the chirpily offensive bore who has become his most popular character. “He’s a real bloke who I used to work with on a building site years ago,” says Gallagher. “He was horrible, the most awful man I’ve ever met in my life.
“He hated bad language but was a filthy pig at the same time. So he used to whistle the curses. ‘She had the biggest pair of (whistles),’ all that sort of stuff. But now he’s the only one anybody wants to see. I’ve created a monster.”
For all Gallagher’s goofy demeanour and laid-back patter, there have been occasions when his haphazard progress has got him down. Two years ago he found himself prey to the kind of doubts normally associated with comics such as Tommy Tiernan and Dylan Moran.
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“I stopped doing it for about a year, actually, through just beating myself up a bit,” he says. “Sometimes when you don’t like it, you really hate it. You take a bang, your confidence takes a real knock and it takes a while to build yourself up again.
“There was no reason for it, things were going grand, but they were going the same for a long while and you just get disillusioned. Then I got back into it when Des Bishop asked me on to his tour. As soon as you start working again things start happening again.”
Just what happens next is less certain, though typically he doesn’t seem too concerned. The nearest thing to a long-term goal is a motorcycle tour of South America. “Unfortunately everyone has already made those TV shows,” he says. “I could have killed Ewan McGregor when I saw him. And then he does it with a support vehicle. That’s actors, always pretending.”
He has few other ambitions, however. He has no interest in breaking Britain, nor in sitcom work, though he has just finished a pilot with Byrne, a dubious-sounding comic endurance show with the title A***holes, and a second series of Naked Camera is in the pipeline. As always, Gallagher is happy to take it as it comes.
“I know that whatever happens, televisionwise, I can still do the stand-up,” he says. “But at the moment I’m just delighted to be getting away with it. Eventually, Whistler will be like Crazy Frog and everyone will hate him. I’ll just enjoy it while it lasts.”
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The Stars of Naked Camera, Vicar Street, Dublin, July 8