But given that his success has been built almost entirely on his ability to successfully send dispatches into the vast, snarling online blackness, how seriously should we take things that happen on the internet? “It’s a tool,” he admits, “no one should pay too much attention or focus too much on what they learn on the internet. It’s just not real. It’s too fast to be real. What’s real is a bird shitting on you or a child smiling at you in a grocery store. Those things are real. The internet is just ether. Where does it even happen? It’s going to be gone from your screen in a second so you shouldn’t think about it. In metaphysical terms there’s a strong argument to be made that it isn’t even happening at all.”
Even with his acknowledgement of the inherent intangibility of the medium that made him famous, Delaney has always been very upfront and clear about his genuine beliefs. He deplores sexism and homophobia but his diatribes tend to come sandwiched between deranged musings about foreskins or begging Adele to let him help raise her child. “I don’t really worry about diluting a message between two jokes though,” he says. “Just because it comes from a source you are not expecting might mean it could actually land better. I try to give people the credit that they can handle shifts of nuance and tone just like they can handle a change of subject.”
It was this ability to imbue a thoughtful significance into some jokes while remaining unhinged for the rest that saw him propelled to the forefront of last year’s presidential election when he decided to torment the Republican challenger. When he tweeted “I was considering voting for Mitt Romney, but then I remembered I ENTERED THE WORLD THROUGH A VAGINA” it was shared nearly 10,000 times. With every new day of the campaign the most shared tweet involving Romney would usually be something Delaney had made up off the cuff.
The comedian’s popularity actually began to eclipse that of the Republican candidate on Twitter and news networks were forced to acknowledge Delaney’s mischievous nonsense whenever they analysed Romney’s online campaign. Naturally the internet responded in kind, with cartoonist Josh Mecouch starting an immensely popular series called ‘Mitt & Robb’ that gave illustration to Delaney’s often surreal torments. However the balance between espousing a political opinion while not straying into the excessively partisan is usually pretty difficult to do.
“I furiously attacked Mitt Romney,” Delaney admits, “but the thing was that I wasn’t necessarily a Barack Obama cheerleader. I just thought Obama’s healthcare plan was so vastly superior that I was going to do whatever was in my power to make sure he was around for a second term so that it was implemented. I thought that this was what my country needed. So I figured that because I had been gifted with this incredible amount of people paying attention to me I might as well try to use it for good.”
Delaney also personally knows the problems that health insurance can bring. Following his car accident in 2002 he was left facing numerous medical bills he couldn’t afford. But Delaney mined his experiences for jokes. He wrote about his depression and alcoholism in a series of online essays and encouraged others with problems to seek help. In his sets he would often call back to the darkest period of his life and wrung it for comedy, squeezing laughs out of some of the bleakest moments. But after years of exhuming his depression on stage and online Delaney has now arrived at a period of stability and recognition.
Currently on a world tour and set to play Dublin’s Vicar Street on April 14th (“I’m very excited for Dublin” he says, “I don’t think I’ve been over there since 1998”) while also working on both a new book and a BBC pilot, not to mention raising a young family, Delaney outwardly seems to be eons away from the Los Angeles jail he woke up in a decade ago. However it will be interesting to see if this newfound stability extends into his comedy. There’s an old adage that people prefer their clowns slightly sad, but Delaney disagrees.
“I think people might think they prefer their comedians sad but I don’t think they really mean it,” he explains, “it is too difficult for a truly sad person, a person who is debilitating sad, to create material and function onstage. If you look at people like Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby and George Carlin they have these amazing bodies of work and they might scream and yell on stage but “sad” would not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of them.”
Having arrived at a period in his life and his career where he no longer has to worry as much about waking up in wheelchairs or prisons, Delaney nevertheless admits that he will never be completely stable. “It’s better,” he admits, “but I’m still psychologically tanked.” However it is also clear he’s not shy about unbridling his mental outlook into his comedy. “There’s something wrong with my brain. It doesn’t show any signs of healing. But I still have passions, fears, concerns, worries and anger. So while I feel stronger about a lot of things right now and I have stronger convictions about things, I’m not worried about my material. That’s not going to change.”
Rob Delaney is playing Vicar Street on April 14th with tickets available here. Follow him on Twitter: @robdelaney
Josh Mecouch drew the above illustration of Rob Delaney. His cartoons can be seen at Formal Sweatpants and Mitt and Rob. Follow him on Twitter: @pants
