Scottish comedian Larry Dean on 10 things that changed his life

1. The Mask

I WAS sent a video tape years ago in the post and it was a video tape of The Mask. I think when I watched that movie, it made me adore Jim Carrey films and the daftness of it all.

I think that probably inspired quite a lot of my comedy. It’s funny when you look back on things you watched as a kid, you wonder what your personality would be like if you hadn’t watched that.

It got me really into watching comedy films and stuff like that – I don’t think before that I’d watched any comedy. I was probably about 10 years old at the time. I haven’t watched that recently but I watched Me, Myself And Irene and Bruce Almighty so I’m making my way through Jim Carrey (below) films. I know I’ll end on The Mask soon because in my opinion it’s the best one.

What’s really cute is my nephew has it on his TV and he’s doing the same thing I did of just quoting The Mask all the time. It’s not really an appropriate film for a kid probably.

2. Nearly getting expelled

A problem I had in school was I thought they all hated me. But then one of my teachers, Miss McDonald, took me aside and said I would be expelled if I kept acting up.

I was already on a behaviour timetable and stuff like that which is a blast from the past. She took me aside and told me I was really good at drama and music so just make sure you behave in other classes, fail them all if you want, but get to next year and do the subjects that you want to do.

A lot of kids maybe don’t get the thing of somebody literally saying they believe you’re good at something so that was a good moment. As soon as I thought all the teachers hated me, I thought well "f*** you" but I realised I was just annoying and making their job difficult.

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I definitely wouldn’t have been able to go to university or pretty much anything, to be fair, without that education.

3. Seeing Edward Aczel

When I was in Southampton, which was where I was at university, there was a comedian called Ed Aczel. He was down doing a gig and somebody else asked him how many times he had to gig in order to be a professional.

He said it was at least four or five times a week. I’d done one or two over the course of six months to a year. It made me realise I had to give it a full try.

I thought if I just gig as much as humanly possible, then I can’t be that bad, although there was a lot of really, really bad gigs, but it made me give up drinking at university because I had to afford the train to get to these places.

Hearing that from Ed made me have the drive to get off my arse and do something about it.

4. Coming from a funny family

Everyone at my dinner table was trying to be the funniest person. I do stand up and I’m not even the funniest member of my own family. It means they all think they know better than me when it comes to stand-up.

My mum and dad’s side are daft with their sense of humour. Hanging out with my gran made me funny. Even in the past couple of years, hearing some of her lines – they were just so good.

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After she died, the nurses were saying it won’t be as funny around here because she always had such good putdowns for everybody.

So probably she helped me more with hecklers than anybody else.

5. Elvis Presley

I used to do Elvis impersonations and make poor family members have to sit through all that they weren’t bothered with. It’s a thing that made me perform. Weirdly, I don’t know anybody who is a performer that didn’t do stuff like that as a kid.

I suppose it’s a good indication that you’re really into it. But watching Elvis and just how cool he was, I love the idea of being dressed up as him. As a comedian it’s hard to pull looking cool off well.

In the UK, especially Scotland, if you go on and look flashy and cool, we’re just thinking you’re a prat. It’s an odd thing of being the lowest in the room rather than the highest.

A lot of comedians have the same interest in Elvis, there is probably some weird link between Elvis and stand-up. Elvis (below) was an image and that’s so important in comedy.

If I’m asked to describe a musician or their music, you can categorise it, but as a stand-up there’s more to it than just saying they’re a physical comedian or they do accent, or they’re Scottish. There’s probably a jealousy thing as well, he just looked amazing when doing what he did.

6. Dealing with hecklers

If I watched myself back when I started, I would have thought all my shows were bad. I didn’t know how bad I was until my pal this year said I was the joke of this group of comedians for the first few years.

I thought I was alright at the beginning. I remember the first death I had was at the Stratford Theatre in the café area and I learned a valuable lesson. If someone heckles you, you have to put it out of 10 in terms of how harsh it is and just go one above.

Say they give you a 5/10, don’t hit back with a 10/10 because that’s a bit unfair or cruel. Somebody said they were talking to their partner and I used the c-word and the whole audience was shocked.

Another person said, "we don’t use that round here", and I told them they’d probably heard it a few times before. I got booed off. I came off and the comedian Matt Price basically taught me what to do with heckles. It’s the most valuable advice I’ve ever had.

7. Billy Connolly

He was the only stand-up I watched on TV until Live At The Apollo came out when I was about 13 or 14. You would never meet a single Scottish comedian who hasn’t been influenced by him.

The problem with watching him is you learn exactly what the Scottish sense of humour is and you go to other places and you realise it’s not as universal, certainly not the accent.

But Connolly (above) would be the one where I don’t think I’d have been interested in stand-up if I hadn’t watched one of his video tapes.

8. First time in Australia

There was such a fear of not being understood. I’ve noticed I’m better at not being scared of it because I used to slow down so much. When I watch old videos of myself, I cringe.

I think 2014 was the first time I came out here. That whole month I noticed how different you have to play it but it’s come in really handy because I can do three different versions of a show.

I was in Sydney and I kept the word "munter" which is a funny old word but I had an Aussie asking me what it means. Luckily I’m at a position now that people know they’re coming to see a Scottish comedian.

But having to go on completely unknown, to them not even knowing if you’ll be Scottish, definitely made me a better comic. I hope, anyway – either that or my standards are just lower.

9. Having a stand-up director

Some people don’t realise this, but some stand-ups have directors. It’s somebody who will work on your material and your performance with you and they give you advice. It’s the same way a director would work with an actor.

When I started working with my mate Paul, it made a huge difference because Paul had worked with loads of amazing comics like Andrew Maxwell and Sarah Keyworth.

He made the biggest difference to me because making someone laugh is fun but there’s certain types of people it’s amazing to do that to and he was one of them.

When I first did Live At The Apollo, round the back there is a TV and a couch where the comedians sit before going on.

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Paul was sat watching the TV and I was so scared before I went on, I thought, 'I’m just going to try to make you laugh'. I just looked down the barrel of the camera and so my eyes were just facing Paul. Having somebody like that in a job like this is indispensable because you’re trying to get acceptance every night on stage but you have someone who has your back.

10. First solo show at the Fringe

The first time I did a solo show at the Fringe was 2015 and before that I’d done 20 minutes or 10 minutes or whatever but doing an hour and getting reviews etc was big.

I got nominated for best newcomer which at that point was a career highlight, but it was also about dealing with criticism. It’s horrible if you don’t know how to handle criticism and you get a shit review.

Even if you do something great, people will criticise it and the Fringe was great for dealing with that. You’re doing hours of material and dealing with so many different audiences.