Weighed down with bags, baseball cap jammed on his head, there's nothing suave or starry about the Brendan Grace who arrives at the stage door of the Gaiety, clutching a cup of tea and a brown paper bag. He has driven from Limerick; he's late; he's sorry, but what can you do?
"There's just two problems with Ireland," he announces, opening the paper bag and attacking its contents with gusto. (He missed breakfast, into the bargain.) "Two problems. One is the traffic, which is always bad. And the other" - he takes a bite out of what looks suspiciously like a coleslaw sandwich - "is the pies." The . . . pies? "Yep. I have a terrible problem with the pies in Ireland. No matter what kind of pie it's supposed to be - apple, or whatever - you put your fork in and, woomph! Nothing there."
Since he now lives in the US, where apple pie standards are a matter of national pride, Grace is in a good position to judge. The remark is interesting, though, for another reason. It's pretty much the only thing he says throughout the interview which is even mildly amusing. In conversation Brendan Grace cracks fewer jokes than the average classical cellist. Not that he's glum, particularly: he just doesn't seem to think of himself as a funny guy.
So what's the quintessential Dub doing living in Florida?
"What I like about Florida," he says, "is the leisure time I have there. I'm not known over there - I'm anonymous - and that provides a lovely contrast to Ireland, where I'm famous. I'm always amazed at the difference. I mean, over here people come up and say hello, and yet when I go back to Florida I'm just the guy who lives across the road. I have neighbours who don't even know what I do for a living. That's nice. I mean, it doesn't bother me people coming up and talking to me - but it can sometimes steal time from the family situation, you know?
"And you can go out in shorts. If I went out in a pair of shorts here I'd get wolf whistles from fellas on building sites - they'd think I was dressed up as Bottler. A few years ago I got up one morning and I needed milk and orange juice. I went over to the supermarket in the car, went in, got the stuff, and as I was passing by a mirrored area or a window, or something, I noticed that I had no trousers on at all. What I was actually wearing was a T-shirt and my jockeys. It never even occurred to me that I'd left the house like that - but nobody said anything. It was as if I'd walked in off the beach wearing a pair of trunks. Needless to say, I was a bit embarrassed. But nobody passed any remarks. It's like that, Florida."
Living in the US has also provided Grace with material for his comedy routines. "I compare the life there to the life over here - as I do over here, in reverse. I had a particular routine that was always very popular, about airlines . . .that has had to be buried for the foreseeable future. I mean, I wouldn't even dream of doing that now."
Has he become an ex-pat? He looks horrified. "I'd be terrified to call myself an ex-pat, for fear it'd be misinterpreted. What's the definition of an ex-pat, anyway? Is it somebody who has gone - an emigrant? Technically speaking, I left Ireland the same as the other emigrants did, and I'm domiciled in America. That is my new home. But I come back frequently for short visits; then there's a longer visit in the summer and a longer visit at Christmas. If I didn't go back and forth as often as I do, I'd probably sulk. Get very ratty."
When he comes back now, what does he come back to? Is there a family home?
"My parents have passed away and my only sister lives in Florida. My wife's mother is still here, but the only relations I have here are cousins, aunts and uncles," he says. "When I come back here I stay in hotels."
That sounds a bit strange, being a tourist in your own city.
"No, it's a joy. In Dublin I stay in the Westbury. And there's something about being next door to the Gaiety in a hotel and being out on Grafton Street, being able to cross over to Temple Bar or Moore Street or wherever I want to walk and then come back to the hotel - there's something about that that doesn't make me feel isolated. I had an aunt who was a famous model in Ireland years ago - she was well known. And she moved to America when I was very young. And when she came back to Dublin, she stayed in the Gresham or wherever - and I used to wonder what it was like. I always thought it would alienate you. But it's great. It's like having an address in Dublin on a temporary basis."
The show for which he is currently rehearsing, Good Grace It's Brendan!, is billed as his first one-man show in Dublin in over 10 years. In fact, it's the first show he has done in the Gaiety since 1988 - when he was in the theatre from Monday through to Saturday in panto, then back first thing Sunday morning for RT╔'s Sunday Night at the Gaiety. His routines probably haven't changed hugely in the interim: he'll still, he says, produce the old favourites. The father of the bride; Agnes and Lily.
And the inimitable - some would say inevitable - Bottler, the bearded Dublin schoolboy in cap and blazer. Where did the name come from? "I don't know," he says. "I haven't got a full handle on how it stuck, but it was used on me in school. I think where it came from was, we used to get milk in school years ago, and come the winter-time the milk used to virtually freeze, and a lot of kids wouldn't go near it. So I used to get their milk from them and bring it home . . .Whether that was it, I don't know."
Bottler, oddly enough, was developed as a way of making contact with out-of-town audiences. When Grace started, he was playing gigs all over the country. "I did country characters and I felt that the only way I could have a licence to slag a country situation was to slag a Dublin situation first. So I used to bring Bottler out and flog him in public, make an exhibition of him. He was never really a hero character. He was always a gobshite - I thought, anyway."
Grace began his career, not as a comedian, but as a singer. He was a singing waiter in his uncle's pub - now the Wexford Inn - at the age of 13. "I wasn't paid or anything. I used to just get up and sing whatever square song was in at the time: Ghost Riders in the Sky, or Lovely Leitrim. I even remember singing a rendition of Up Went Nelson. That's going back a bit. That happened in 1966."
At the time it was almost obligatory for "comedians" to sing, though, wasn't it?
"Yes, and I loved those comedians we'd see on television: Morecambe and Wise, Des O'Connor, Ken Dodd. I mean, I would give anything to hear Ken Dodd singing, if he never told a joke. I just love his songs."
For Grace, singing is almost a form of relaxing on stage - especially in a one-man show. "I find it comforting sometimes to bang out a couple of songs," he says. "I don't have any opinion of the way I sing - I'm not trying to be a tenor - so I'm not nervous about it. I'm just a pub singer. I can do a 15-minute spot in my act, and if a person came in just for that, they wouldn't know I was a comedian. I can just sit there with a guitar."
Another element of his act which he sees as crucial is the art of knowing how far to go - or rather, how far not to.
"Where you can go with comedy is a fine line, and I think it's just as much a part of the craft of comedy as people say timing is. How to tell a joke, when to pull back. And particularly so with the kind of audience that I get, say, at the Gleneagles Hotel in Killarney, which I do every summer. That audience is 90 years old down to kids, they're from all walks of life and they're definitely inter-denominational, because in the latter two weeks of July there's an awful lot of people come down from the North . . .I consider it an art form to be able to make the kids laugh and at the same time to make the adults laugh for a totally different reason. The kids are laughing at my naivety, and the parents laugh at the fact that the kids can laugh at what I've said, without understanding quite all of it."
To his obvious surprise, however, he has become a hit with a whole new generation, thanks to a single appearance in the series Father Ted.
"When I was asked to read for the part I hadn't seen Father Ted, and they gave me this piece to read, a few lines, and they told me to read it as a nasty, threatening type of a person. I didn't know whether to shout it or growl it - and I still don't know where the character came from that I did - but they went for it immediately."
Grace confesses to having had severe misgivings, not just about the role, but about the whole anarchic Father Ted concept.
"I had an image that rested very easy with an awful lot of people in Ireland - very clean, type of thing - and now here I was, referring to two priests as wankers."
But perhaps a push in another direction was just what Brendan Grace needed. His performances as the hairy-handed "jungle music priest" went down so well that he was to be given a regular slot in the next series. Dermot Morgan's sudden death put paid to that idea with shocking finality, but Grace is convinced that the character can be revamped.
"Even not as a priest, but in some type of series. He'd make a great villain in a panto, that character." Now there's a thought.
Good Grace It's Brendan! is at the Gaiety from October 28th. Booking on 01-6771717
