Cross-Examined: Keith Farnan

Keith Farnan is currently touring an impressive three shows: Cruel and Unusual talks about his experiences campaigning against the death penalty in America; Sex Traffic examines the trafficking women and sexualisation of young girls and No Blacks, No Jews, No Dogs, No Irish, All Welcome looks at issues of race and immigration.

It’s pretty heavy stuff, yet Farnan denies a conscious effort to spread a message with his comedy. "If I was to say I had a plan, that would be the most laughable thing I could say. Getting out of bed on a Monday; that’s the plan… I just try to write as much topical material as I can, and you tend to notice patterns in the material as you write it."

Trained as a criminal lawyer, Farnan found that litigation practice sat uneasily with his conscience. "I think I came to a sort of moral agreement with myself that although the system needs a defence lawyer, I wasn’t gonna be the guy who could do it." Having always harboured a passion for writing, acting and directing, he went into comedy as "the perfect amalgamation of the three disciplines."

Sex Traffic, which ran at the Fringe last year, examines feminism from a male perspective. But was he worried about the kind of audiences a show with that kind of title might attract? "You do get bunches of lads and maybe the odd stag party who came into my show, and sort of went 'Oh, we’re on the wrong side of the fence here', but I think they got something out of it as well." In fact, he says that a lot of the finger pointing was against the misdirected efforts of women’s organisations, rather that at men. Even riskier, perhaps – did it not piss a few feminists off that a man dared speak on their behalf? He tells me that on the whole, feedback has been very positive, but he’s also happy to engage his naysayers in intelligent debate. "It’s nice when sometimes my comedy brain gets shoved aside and the lawyer says ‘Shh, now, I’ll take care of this,’ and can deal with arguments in a logical way."

In between his diverse touring schedule, he’s in negotiations to turn Sex Traffic into a TV comedy documentary: a comedian taking on sexism and looking at whether women can ‘have it all’. "Probably the show will answer that in the negative; women can’t have it all unless things change dramatically." However, it’s No Blacks… which he’s bringing to the MGICF. "It’s about Irish immigration and as you’ve got a lot of Irish people who would have gone to Glasgow, and it’s around St Patrick’s Day, it seems to fit perfectly."

His shows are thought-provoking and at times uncomfortable but, crucially, they are very funny. “I like to think that these things raise questions for people to think about, but it’s comedy, first and foremost: gotta get ‘em in, gotta make 'em laugh. It's wonderful if you can write something that can really come back again and again in terms of audiences and having something genuine to say, while making people laugh."

It may not have been an intentional plan to address life’s inequities, but is he going to continue in this type of comedy?  "No absolutely not, I’m going to sell out and do kitten comedy – whatever sells out Wembley." He’s joking, of course, but also makes the point that you never know what might happen next: “You never try and second guess yourself, and wonder what you’re gonna do."