Al Porter is rebooted and ready for Cork Opera House

There are two things in the room when Al Porter walks through the door: an elephant and a one of Ireland’s finest stand-up comedians.

When I catch up with him over the phone, he’s between a thousand jobs as he gets things set for his upcoming line of shows which includes a night in Cork Opera House on 31 August.

Since his early days as a comic, Porter saw Cork audiences as a somewhat intimidating yet tantalising challenge. Outside of Dublin, Cork will be his biggest venue on this tour and one where he can’t rely on legions of cousins to show up in support, he laughs.

“I think Dublin comedians always had this kind of chip on their shoulder about the Cork audience, that Cork is hard to crack, and I always saw that is a good thing, because then if they laugh you've actually done something good.

“Being from Tallaght, I know what it's like to live around people who are very funny. The people in my area are already very funny, very sharp. The way they talk has this kind of music to it. They'll cut you to pieces. And Cork is the same, so I think it's not that Cork are hard to crack, it's that Cork people are already funny.”

These days, Porter says his life is more normal than ever and his newest show, ‘Algorithm’ has been described as his most relatable yet. This rings true in some ways for the 32 year old, but in many ways, he feels his life has never been especially relatable, a gap he always tries to bridge through his comedic style.

“You know, living with flatmates in a house share and being a part of ‘generation stuck’, having older parents and not being able to afford a mortgage, and not quite being some rocket ship juggernaut to success that RTÉ has anointed to be king of the canteen. I'm not single either, so it's the normal stuff. Me and my boyfriend are nine years together. Are we going to get married? Are we not going to get married? All our friends are getting married. Should we have a kid? Maybe we shouldn't have a kid. All this stuff.

“The irony is, I am definitely a better stand-up comedian now then I've ever been. I've never been less on TV but I'm funnier, so it's trying to convince people to take a chance on you.

“Algorithm has kind of become the world according to me. The world is gone mad, we're living on our phones and social media, we are constantly confronted with the fact that we're ‘generation stuck’.

In his typically self-deprecating style, Porter says anyone who can truly relate to him may need to get professional help. This is coming from a guy who, as a boy in working class Tallaght, played football in his communion suit because he refused to take it off, such was his devotion to style and his desire to grow up fast, to skip adolescence and set himself on an almost vertical trajectory that would see him sitting on ‘The Late Late Show’ stage at the tender age of 21.

“I'm not the most relatable person in the world naturally. I always say, if you relate to me something went wrong in your life. If you're saying, ‘Jeez, he’s very like me,’ you probably need to see a doctor or some kind of therapist.

“I've never been relatable in one sense because when I was a kid, I stuck out like a sore thumb. The other boys wanted to play kick the can; I was the can!

“I loved dance, I loved drama, I loved Tom Jones, I loved Joe Dolan, I dressed up as women and did comedy characters and tried to be like Lily Savage when I was like 12 years old. I was nine years old singing Tom Jones’ ‘It’s Not Unusual’, and all the adults around we're going, ‘It is a bit unusual’.

“So, in one way I have never been relatable at all. However, my approach to comedy has always been just to chat to the audience like they're my friends. When I walk out on stage today, it should be like we both just met at the garden fence on the way into the house and I go, ‘Come here till I tell you’.”

Now to address that elephant mentioned earlier. In 2017, right at the height of his fame, allegations of inappropriate behaviour were made against Porter which, despite all charges being dropped in 2019, caused his skies to darken and him not to perform for almost six years. Only in 2023 did he step out into the comedy world again with his show, ‘Al Porter Now’, a picture of a repentant and changed man.

“Self-deprecation is a big part of my act. I come out and I go, ‘Let me tell you all the things I hate about me’, which is actually possibly why I was able to come back gigging after so many years.

“I suppose, when I was coming back on stage, it would never have worked if I didn't have that element to my act because I was able to come out on stage and say, ‘Oh yeah, I know I f***ed it all up, didn't I?’. Last year's show had that kind of element. There were 15 minutes of last year's show that, by design, had no laughs. I said the right thing to do was address the elephant in the room – say, yes, people did call me out for poor behaviour, and yes, even though you're my fans, I don't want you to leave thinking, ‘Ah God he was very hard done by,’ because that doesn't feel right. I wanted them to leave going, ‘No, he actually told us that the way he carried on put himself in the vulnerable position of death threats and suicide hoaxes and losing his job but put other people in a vulnerable position of feeling embarrassed and feeling uncomfortable’. I would every night go, ‘I am very sorry that I made people feel that way’. Now, there's no laughs but it was the right thing to do.

“It’s so momentous for me to finally get back on stage after six years and my confidence had obviously been so knocked, and I'm obviously extremely aware of people's perception help me. So, to go out every night and do the therapy of reliving it was great but exhausting.”

With so much of Porter’s new show built around this idea of “generation stuck” as he puts it, a generation of young people paralyzed by crippling rents and preposterous house prices, I ask him how he thinks this period of Irish history might be remembered in 50 years’ time.

“By the time my mam was my age, 32, she was having me, her third and final child, already living in her house with her husband for ten years with two very normal jobs. I am a million miles away from having a house. Me and my partner both have a job. I couldn't afford to buy a house in my local area in Tallaght.

“I think that maybe we will look back and go, do you know what, it wasn't the worst thing in the world that we got to spend more time with our families. I know that's a bit nuts to say now, but in a way, when my parents die, and I hope it's not for a long time, but when they're gone, would I have spent all this time with them if I’d been able to get my own house and go the route that they went back in the 1980s? Probably not…”