‘We haven’t yet become the cliche we hope to be’ - Jay Richardson meets comedy hip-hop act Abandoman

Seeing the Dubliner’s instinctive Cheshire Cat grin straining at the corners, I anticipated writing a review as keenly as I would drowning a kitten. Perhaps he saw that in my eyes, because he guessed I was a critic and somehow persuaded me to come back later in the week.

Nowadays, he’s performing to 5000 people, supporting Brit Award-winning singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran. But I’m reminded of our first meeting by a semi-functioning Skype link connecting me to Adelaide, where he’s appearing as Abandoman – the amorphous, improvisational comedy hip-hop act he fronts as a rapper, backed by Mancunian folk musician James Hancox. The group swells to as many as seven members for music festivals and was a tight quartet for Sheeran’s recent tour. But in Australia it’s just been the music technology graduate and a temperamental guitar pedal, literally a band o’ man. “I come out to these unprepared audiences and say ‘I’m going to rap for an hour’” he laughs. “And you can see them thinking ‘uh-oh, this sounds terrible’”.

They invariably change their minds. Always a better compere than a comic, thinking on his feet and engaging the crowd, Broderick has all but ditched stand-up and become a minor phenomenon, ingeniously crafting spontaneous rhymes from audience suggestions or simply the contents of their pockets, even as Abandoman have become the most versatile and broadly appealing act in British comedy.

They’ve supported hip-hop legend Grandmaster Flash and been Dick and Dom’s regular house band on CBBC; performed at celebrity weddings, award ceremony afterparties and for bewildered, hungover stag dos. Yet their favourite environment is the summer festival, where they feed off the raucous crowds, “all that restless, insatiable energy”. Right now though, and thanks to the Sheeran association, their fast growing Twitter following mostly consists of enthusiastic teenagers posting “about skipping school and maths tests – it’s nuts.”

Broderick’s first encounter with the singer was at a gig in 2009, where he spotted a figure in a green hoodie and “gently dissed this leprechaun with red hair”. The following year they were independently recruited for a rap show put together for the Brighton Fringe, and after Sheeran re-introduced himself as ‘that guy you ripped into’, they started chatting and became friends. Just before the 21-year-old’s career took off, he asked if Abandoman would consider touring with him, and to Broderick’s delight, stuck by his offer when he made his breakthrough.

Rapping ever since he was 12, Broderick would “drunkenly do so” even if it wasn’t his vocation. But his experience of co-writing and performing in the improvised rap opera Markus The Sadist, in 2009 at London’s Bloomsbury Theatre, “instilled in me that I was accepted”. Even if, as he puts it, “I mainly rapped about my enjoyment of cupcakes”.

Shortly after he met Hancox and talked his way into supporting his idols, the US hip-hop crew Atmosphere. Abandoman could be anything they wanted, he realised, and they won the Hackney Empire New Act of the Year and Musical Comedy Awards in rapid succession. At this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, he wants to experiment with “big synths and drums triggered by laser beams”.

Broderick’s parents were always bemused by his passion for hip-hop, his mother struggling to reconcile gangster rap’s violence and misogyny with her affable son. They were supportive of his stand-up though, flying over for his first Edinburgh spots in 2005, “imagining that I was appearing with Billy Connolly and being surprised at becoming part of what I recall, optimistically, as a crowd of six”, before tenderly asking if he might not consider doing something else with his life.

Then, at last year’s Kilkenny Comedy Festival, Gilded Balloon boss Karen Coren congratulated him, revealing that she’d seen an old lady “punching the air and screaming ‘Revolution!’” after they reworked a Rage Against the Machine song. Sheepishly, he told her: “That’s not a random punter I’ve won over. That’s my 65-year-old mother.”

Ultimately, Broderick wants to crack New York and be accepted as a bona fide MC there. But he’s under no illusions that Abandoman aren’t seen as a daft act – he’s currently inviting 8 Mile-style rap battles with any have-a-go adversaries over a giant Connect 4 board. “We’re not bling. We’ve only just started asking for a vegetarian sandwich and peanuts on our rider. We haven’t yet become the cliché we one day hope to be.”

• Abandoman play the Stand Comedy Club, Glasgow, on Friday 23 March as part of the Glasgow International Comedy Festival

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