Comedian Garrett Millerick is set to bring the last show of his hit tour 'Just Trying To Help' to Dublin next month.
Garrett will perform at Whelan's from 8pm on May 21st. And for the popular comedian, who has two parents from Dublin, performing for the first time in the capital is a kind of homecoming due to his strong Irish roots.
Speaking to Dublin Live ahead of his gig in Whelan's, Garrett said: "My whole family are from Dublin, my dad's from Dublin and my mum's from Bray and me and my sister are the only members of our family to ever be raised in the UK. I've played all over the world, south east Asia, Australia, America, all over Europe, but I was saving Dublin for a bit because I've got a lot of roots and family there so I wanted to wait until I was ready. I'm ready now, so I'm really excited to be coming over."
Read more: Hamilton in Bord Gais Energy Theatre: Tickets, dates and everything you need to know
Garrett explained that his latest show 'Just Trying To Help' has been in the works since before the Covid-19 pandemic. He said: "It's been a long gestation with this one, the first preview of it was actually just before lockdown.
"But the main original run was in 2022, and then there was a London run just before Christmas then we started the tour in 2023 and Dublin is the final night on the tour." Garrett first became interested in comedy early in his childhood, and when he was young his parents got a second video recorder. He said: "I think I was about eight years old at the time and it was the first time we had two tellys in the house.
"The old telly and video recorder were upstairs and I used to sneak out a bit and record programmes that I shouldn't be watching, like Harry and Bill from Spitting Image and things like that. And I used to learn all the sketches and then go into primary school and perform them for my classmates, which led to my mother getting very angry conversations in the school playground."
Garrett previously worked in theatre and writing for several years, and around ten years ago he decided to take the plunge and try out his own comedy show. He said: "I'd been working on lots of plays because you have to marshal a huge number of people together and resources and funding.
"And I kind of lost that connection with the audience and the idea of why I was doing it. So I thought I'd go and perform stand-up, it's just you and a microphone and I thought I'd go and try engage with an audience just as an exercise for myself and it really clicked with me and I really enjoyed it and it just went from there."
Garrett's new show 'Just Trying to Help' was nominated for best show at the Leicester Comedy Festival, and it also received critical acclaim at the 2022 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. In Just Trying to Help, Garrett explains that it is about how things sometimes go wrong when we're just trying to help.
When asked what inspired his new show, Garrett said: "It's all real life, it's built around real stories and observations. The Just Trying To Help thing came from a fight I witnessed at a taxi rank about twenty years ago where this guy tried to break up the fight and he ended up beating up the two guys that were in the original fight.
He said: "He kind of looked over at us at the taxi rank in frustration and said 'I was only trying to help!' So the whole show is kind of about what happens when you get involved in things to try and help, and it doesn't always go your way."
When asked about his favourite ever performance, Garrett recalled how he once performed on a boat that had broken down on a river in Cambodia. He remembers: "I performed on a boat in Phnom Penh in Cambodia, the engine died and the generators died and we were up a river with Phnom Penh behind us. And everybody then got out their mobile phones and lit me with the torches on their phones, and so I did a show there being lit by candlelight on this drifting boat in the middle of a river in Cambodia and that was pretty special."
For his gig at Little Whelan's, Garrett's dad and extended family may also be there to support him on the night. "It's the last night of the tour so I'm going to put a shift in, it's my first time playing Dublin and it's going to be a good one."
Garrett's Dublin fans are in for a treat when he performs his acclaimed stand-up comedy show at Whelan's on Sunday, 21 May with tickets costing €17.50 and IDs may be required. For more information and to buy tickets visit whelanslive.com
READ NEXT:
Harry Potter show coming back to 3Olympia Theatre after sold out Dublin runs
- Hilarious Dublin comedy night should be on your 2023 bucket list
Bill for housing Ukrainian refugees in Ireland to hit €1 billion within weeks
RTE Operation Transformation's Mary Diamond dies at 57 as tributes paid to 'absolute gem'
Sign up to the Dublin Live Newsletter to get all the latest Dublin news straight to your inbox.
