Delayed Laughter!

INSIDE STORY: For award-winning Cavan comedian Aidan Greene his on-stage career is all that more daunting by the fact that his speech is impeded by a stammer. The Drumlane-native speaks openly to The Anglo-Celt’s seamus enright about over coming his adversities, the stuttering world of cures, and the worst heckle he has ever received...

 

“Back from Edinburgh’s famous Fringe, where Aidan teamed up with fellow local comedian Davey Reilly for a series of joint and individual performances, the duo will team up again to host a comedy show at Cavan’s Town Hall Art Centre on Saturday, October 8.
For Aidan, it’s his first local gig in almost six years, when he served as support to both friend Davey and Fred Cook in the Gonzo Theatre, upstairs at the Imperial.
“It’s going to be interesting performing back home after all this time, in front of all the people that knew me back then, in all of the stories I now talk about in my stand-up. I’m excited, a bit nervous too. No, excited,” says Aidan, debating the thoughts of the impending gig to himself for a moment.

Heckle
His last Cavan show though stands out in memory for one particular indomitable heckle. The career defining moment, crowd stunned into silence before all hell breaks lose, was made all the more enduring given that it was Aidan’s own mother who delivered the crunching chortle-filled blow.
When he first started out, Aidan admits much of his early material bordered on risque, with one particular joke delivering a crass analysis of his losing his virginity.
“So I use the joke about losing my virginity and because she’s in the audience I feel I need to address the fact that, ‘OK mum, your little boy’s no longer a virgin’. The show was going grand until then, when she shouts back up at me, ‘...but did you have to pay for it?’. The worst thing was that she got the biggest laugh of the night from it,” he recalls with more than a hint of maternal pride.

Adversity
Heckles aside, it hasn’t come easy for Aidan to get to where he has, growing-up with a stammer affecting his speech.
The qualified Software Engineer, who studied Screen Writing as a Masters course, outlines how writing during his teens, at a time when the speech-impediment was at its worst, served as escapism from an otherwise frustrating reality.
“Certainly the first script I ever wrote was about a 17-year-old in rural Cavan who had a stammer and, despite it all, he managed to come out of his shell. So it was like me trying get that through fantasy almost,” recalls Aidan.
Strong school friendship and an understanding peer group, of which Davey was one, helped matters further. “My parents were very concerned about me going to school with a stammer. But what I found was people didn’t really care so much and, looking back now, the person who cared most was actually me. So people didn’t really make fun of me, at least not to my face and really the only suffering was self-imposed.”

Fresh starts
Aidan’s entry into comedy came when a fledgling Davey used Aidan’s couch to stay on as he himself started out gigging at clubs and comedy nights across the capital.
“Davey use to stay with me and we’d even begun writing a script together. It was absolutely woeful - one of the worst things ever condemned to paper - but I was chatting to him one night about it and I made a silly joke. His response to that was it should be the first line of my stand-up show. About three months later I did my first gig, and it was Davey who got me that.”
Aidan has fond memories of his debut night, in front of a partisan audience wedged with well-wishing friends willing him to succeed. “The material was terrible, awful stuff. But my friends came to see it and the reception they gave me made me feel as if I was the best stand-up in the world. I needed that. I think that when you start off you need to think you’re doing amazing even though you might be dreadful. Otherwise you’ll just stop.”

Starman
Stopping would have been the worst thing for Aidan as it transpired, who finds standing in front of hubbub of an audience baying for mirth far less imposing than a one-on-one conversation.
“Back when I was a child in school, I use to always play the Star in every single nativity play and I never once stammered. So I think there is maybe something about being on stage for me. I still stammer when I’m on stage, but on stage I’m talking at and people are listening to me. So it’s not so much a conversation. The worst thing for me is one-on-one, because there’s no escape.”

Causes and cures
As part of Aidan’s latest comedy show, titled ‘(500) Days Of Stammer’, he delves into the weird and wacky world of causes and cures to stammering and speech impediments.
From staring at snakes when you’re pregnant in Africa to an expectant mother drinking from a cracked cup in Iceland, the causes are almost as strange as the cures.
In China the aetiological myth is if you hit a stammerer’s face when the weather is cloudy, their stuttering will stop.
Aidan admits his own family brought him across the country to various traditional faith healers, but to no avail. Aside from various tricks and techniques including the McGuire approach, made famous by Pop Idol singer Gareth Gates, it was however Aidan’s own determination and positive thinking that helped him manage his stammering.
“The toughest thing for any stammerer to say is their own name. I used all these tricks and techniques as a child but that was the one thing that always stumped me.
“More than any technique I’ve learned, the most beneficial thing for me is no longer being ashamed. The more ashamed I was when I stammered, the more fear I had and that just made me stammer worse. Now I just don’t care if I stammer or, if I do, I turn it into a joke. So because I’m not scared, there’s less tension, the fear is gone and it makes speaking much easier.”
Aidan freely admits, had he not got a speech-impediment, he might never have followed a career in comedy.
“A lot of what my show builds up to is eventual acceptance of my stammer. I mean, there’s not much more I can do about it. Instead of dwelling on the negative, I use it as a positive. If I hadn’t got a stammer I probably wouldn’t be a stand-up, I can say that.
“Certainly the most interesting thing I can talk about on stage is my stammer and it might always feature in some part of my show. With my stammer, I’m the one at the butt of my own jokes. I’m sure at some stage in the future I’ll get sick of talking about stammering, maybe it’ll become less and less pertinent but right now it’s part of the show. Will it continue to be, who knows?”

Inspiration
Like singer Gates and Educating Essex’s Musharaf Asghar, who wowed TV audiences with his battle to be heard through his stammer, Aidan is hopeful his story can serve as an inspiration to others coping with their own speech-impediment insecurities.
A section of Aidan’s show specifically deals with such icons, like Joseph Tapley ‘Joe’ Dougherty, the original voice behind Porky Pig, who was ultimately recast in the role due to his stammer, and Die Hard’s Bruce Willis, who struggled with stuttering throughout his first 20 years.
At one of Aidan’s recent Edinburgh Fringe shows, he tells how he had a woman approach him afterwards. She was a speech therapist and a high-ranking member of the British Stammering Association whose son has a stammer. “So I say in the show the most important thing ever said to me was: ‘Aidan, nobody cares about your stammer except for you’. She told me after that - that was what she always wants to say to her son but couldn’t, but to hear it from a person with a stammer, overcoming that, means more.
“I think if I’d seen somebody say that in a public forum back when I was in my teens, it would’ve been super important for me. I’d be really proud if what I’m doing now would help someone else get to where they want to be one day,” he adds.