Ian Macpherson (comedian)

Ian Macpherson is an Irish writer and performer. He is best known for his stand-up comedy (especially his work in alternative comedy of the 1980s) and for his comic novel, Deep Probings: The Autobiography of a Genius. In 2004, Deep Probings was featured as a BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime. He has also written a number of children's books including Late Again!, Bernard Brain, and Hortense and her Sensible Friend.

2011 saw the publication of The Autobiography of Ireland's Greatest Living Genius, an omnibus containing both Deep Probings and its previously unpublished sequel, Posterity Now.

He was described by Arthur Smith as "Comedy's answer to James Joyce" and by Stewart Lee as "Pre-dating and pre-empting all contemporary Irish comics, and the originator of the most influential joke of all time, Ian Macpherson is the Newgrange Megalithic Passage Tomb of stand-up comedy."^[3]

Biography

Dubliner Ian Macpherson won the first Time Out Comedy Award in 1988. Several one-man shows followed at the Edinburgh festival, including The Chair at the Assembly Rooms (2001) and The Joy Of Death (2002) at the Pleasance. At this time he was also writing comedy scripts and radio plays. He recently completed the first two full-length stage plays of a proposed Clontarf Trilogy: Surprise Funeral and Please Do Not Steal This Title.

His latest publication, The Book of Blaise (or How To Survive The Menopause With Your Manhood Intact), came out in November 2015. He is currently writing a novel set in Dublin and touring his Edinburgh Festival 2015 one-man show The Everlasting Book Tour.^[4]

References

External links

• Ian Macpherson Official site
• Deep Probings at Amazon.co.uk
• Bottled Air Ian's series of short stories on BBC Radio 4
• Late Again! at Amazon.co.uk