I’d never even met an Irish person, but I had the clear impression that they were all thick – and the Pontins crowd seemed to agree: the joke went down a storm. The point of that joke is that Paddy is incredibly stupid, because he’s assumed that Rolls-Royces cost 10p. He bumps into an Irish man – we know he’s Irish, because his name is Paddy. He goes out into the street to see if someone can lend him 10p to make up the price. There was a joke about a man buying a Rolls-Royce who is a bit short of cash. They were incredibly racist, but the bigger crime here, comedy-wise, was that my set was entirely built on stolen material. A lot of the jokes seemed to have no problem playing with the stereotype of Irish people being stupid.
It had a talent competition and I decided to enter as a standup, with a book of jokes from which I took all of my material.
My first ever gig was at a Pontins holiday camp when I was nine.
