Comedian Ed Byrne tours UK with new show Spoiler Alert

Ed Byrne has been an acclaimed stand-up with audiences and critics alike for 20 years now.

His success with shows such as the Roaring Forties, Different Class and the 1998 Perrier-nominated A Night At The Opera led to him appearing on the box in the diverse likes of Mock The Week, Father Ted and The One Show and All Star Mr & Mrs, while his love of hillwalking resulted in him writing a regular column for The Great Outdoors magazine.

In fact, his love of natural history has crossed into television with appearances on The One Show (abseiling in Snowdonia), Countryfile (climbing Sgùrr Dearg, the ‘inaccessible pinnacle’ on Skye) and presenting items on Volcano Live (BBC).

The Irish comic is firmly of a belief that the current breed of parents spoil their kids rotten whether it’s to do with the ever-increasing size of garden trampolines, or his own kids’ demand for elderflower cordial.

“My dad wasn’t a bad dad, he was just a 1970s dad. I could never see my children ever again from this moment on, and I’ve already done more parenting than he did in my entire life. But, I made a conscious decision that I was going to be an awesome dad.”

In Spoiler Alert, Ed compares and contrasts the old-school child-rearing days with 21st century methods and suggests that there are different ways to learn how to be a mum or dad.

“I grew up in what I would call an aspirational household in that my parents bettered themselves over the course of my childhood. My mother was a radiographer and ended up a lecturer in radiography, while my dad was a sheet metal worker and went up to a supervisory role.

"I’d still say that you are expected to do a lot more parenting than our parents did and that’s a weird thing because you tend to think that your parents are where you learned parenting from.

"But you don’t, really, it’s more that you look around you to see what’s going on with other parents.”

As well as stories about his two young sons, Ed weaves in routines about running out of petrol in the most awkward place imaginable, helping rescue an injured man in the Cairngorms, and the nation-dividing campaign and result of the EU referendum.

"His way of tackling Brexit is to draw an analogy with the time his son was determined to touch an electric fence with his dad trying to warn him of the dangers.

“I was telling the story of the electric fence for a while, and then suddenly it struck me that it was Brexit in microcosm. The government told you not to do this and that it would be a terrible idea, but you said ‘no, we want to do it anyway’. So now we’re doing it and it’s proving a terrible idea.”

Spoiler Alert also continues a theme that he’s tackled in previous shows, that of his gradual shift from being a working-class Dubliner to a fully paid-up rural-residing member of the middle classes.

Where once he would do routines slating 4x4 owners, he is now the proud(ish) owner of such a vehicle. And in the poster for his tour, he brandishes other signifiers of social mobility: a bowtie and chainsaw. “It’s one of two I own: that one is the smaller of the two,” Ed remarks of his chainsaw rather than his neckwear.

“I use it for firewood, both for my wood burning stove and also for the barbecue. The first time I used one I was fine, though I think it worried my parents that I had bought a chainsaw.”

Having premiered Spoiler Alert at the Edinburgh Fringe and used the month of August to hone the show, it is fully ready to go.

“On the first leg of the tour l’ll do about an hour and 15 minutes, plus I’ll have a support act. I keep a tour diary now of places where the curries are disappointing and where they are good and where audiences have been good before.”

With such an extensive series of dates ahead, Ed Byrne will be coming to a town near you soon. Go and spoil yourself.

Ed will be appearing in Bromley, Epsom, Dartford, Kingston, Richmond and Wimbledon over the coming months.