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| Ardal O'Hanlon: 'Comedy never used to be a career – it was for slackers with ukuleles' | Ardal O'Hanlon: 'Comedy never used to be a career – it was for slackers with ukuleles' |
| (1 day later) | |
| Ardal O’Hanlon is too embarrassed to have his picture taken in the restaurant where we’ve just eaten, so we decamp to the basement. He’s wearing a black polo shirt and when I ask his age he mumbles something inaudible. (He turned 54 this month.) Earlier on, the waitresses have to coax an order out of him; his first answer to everything is “just tap water”. But at least he’s at one with his awkwardness. | Ardal O’Hanlon is too embarrassed to have his picture taken in the restaurant where we’ve just eaten, so we decamp to the basement. He’s wearing a black polo shirt and when I ask his age he mumbles something inaudible. (He turned 54 this month.) Earlier on, the waitresses have to coax an order out of him; his first answer to everything is “just tap water”. But at least he’s at one with his awkwardness. |
| “Despite the apparent trappings of modest success in television and so on,” he says, “I have always been an uneasy person. I can’t change that. I can’t change that part of my psychological makeup. The slight tension when you wake up: ‘Who am I? Who are these people I live with? What’s going on?’ But this is why I do this. If I was a very stable person, I would not have to do comedy. Nobody would have to listen to me.” | “Despite the apparent trappings of modest success in television and so on,” he says, “I have always been an uneasy person. I can’t change that. I can’t change that part of my psychological makeup. The slight tension when you wake up: ‘Who am I? Who are these people I live with? What’s going on?’ But this is why I do this. If I was a very stable person, I would not have to do comedy. Nobody would have to listen to me.” |
| He continues his new tour, the Showing Off Must Go On, in November. It’s his first in six years and represents not a departure from previous shows so much as a journey further into who he actually is – a guy who hates show-offs but loves showing off, who takes everything seriously but himself, then practically self-immolates if he can’t make people laugh with it. | He continues his new tour, the Showing Off Must Go On, in November. It’s his first in six years and represents not a departure from previous shows so much as a journey further into who he actually is – a guy who hates show-offs but loves showing off, who takes everything seriously but himself, then practically self-immolates if he can’t make people laugh with it. |
| “The unifying theme is me. Any comedy show, no matter what it purports to be, is ultimately about where the comedian’s at in his or her life. I definitely bring more of my personal life into it the older I get, and now it’s gone another step. It is much more satisfying in the long run to be more vulnerable, not arrive with something fully formed, and flawless.” | “The unifying theme is me. Any comedy show, no matter what it purports to be, is ultimately about where the comedian’s at in his or her life. I definitely bring more of my personal life into it the older I get, and now it’s gone another step. It is much more satisfying in the long run to be more vulnerable, not arrive with something fully formed, and flawless.” |
| It’s the latest step in a slowly evolving comedy journey that didn’t really get going for a while. At 28, he was living in Dublin, doing two or three gigs a month on a non-existent comedy circuit, living extremely frugally but also off the girlfriend who is now his wife. (They’ve been together since they were teenagers.) He moved to London to give it one proper shot; a couple of years, and if it didn’t work, he’d go back home. | It’s the latest step in a slowly evolving comedy journey that didn’t really get going for a while. At 28, he was living in Dublin, doing two or three gigs a month on a non-existent comedy circuit, living extremely frugally but also off the girlfriend who is now his wife. (They’ve been together since they were teenagers.) He moved to London to give it one proper shot; a couple of years, and if it didn’t work, he’d go back home. |
| Of course, it did work. In the mid-90s he was cast as Father Dougal in Father Ted and turned in a performance of such exquisite nitwittery that the show lived way beyond its time. You can still make anyone laugh, from cold, at any age, just with a picture of Father Dougal in his pyjamas. And, if his original standup chimed with what the Father Ted writers were looking for, then his Dougal persona has definitely permeated his standup since. | Of course, it did work. In the mid-90s he was cast as Father Dougal in Father Ted and turned in a performance of such exquisite nitwittery that the show lived way beyond its time. You can still make anyone laugh, from cold, at any age, just with a picture of Father Dougal in his pyjamas. And, if his original standup chimed with what the Father Ted writers were looking for, then his Dougal persona has definitely permeated his standup since. |
| “That was my armour as a fledgling comedian, adopting this bewildered persona where I was pretending to be much more stupid than I actually am. I was kind of stiff” – he does a seemingly reflexive impression of that awkward posture, arms swinging from hunched, nervous shoulders – “and it worked well for a few years.” | “That was my armour as a fledgling comedian, adopting this bewildered persona where I was pretending to be much more stupid than I actually am. I was kind of stiff” – he does a seemingly reflexive impression of that awkward posture, arms swinging from hunched, nervous shoulders – “and it worked well for a few years.” |
| He says his success was all just a lucky strike. He didn’t go into comedy as a career move; in those days, he says, no one did. “It didn’t attract careerists. It was slackers, people shuffling on to the stage with very little. I loved it. Fame and money weren’t possibilities even, when my generation started. That wasn’t the plan at all. On a typical bill, you would have all sorts of misfits. People with ukuleles. There was a guy called Woody Bop Muddy who used to come on and smash records. So that was his job. It was fantastic. A really exciting time to be part of that generation. To feel part of something.” | |
| But the 90s couldn’t last for ever, nor could youth. O’Hanlon’s shtick has changed, not just with his segue from being cast as the hilarious idiot (after Father Ted, My Hero) to taking a relatively straight lead in Death in Paradise (which is one of the three most popular shows on TV). “Before, I hid behind the persona,” he says, “I hid behind the surreal one-liners, because that’s all about craft and there’s a lot of pride in that. But it’s ultimately limiting. It’s better to let people in a bit more.” | But the 90s couldn’t last for ever, nor could youth. O’Hanlon’s shtick has changed, not just with his segue from being cast as the hilarious idiot (after Father Ted, My Hero) to taking a relatively straight lead in Death in Paradise (which is one of the three most popular shows on TV). “Before, I hid behind the persona,” he says, “I hid behind the surreal one-liners, because that’s all about craft and there’s a lot of pride in that. But it’s ultimately limiting. It’s better to let people in a bit more.” |
| This means engaging with the issues of now. The day we meet, the government has put forward its latest suggestions for the Irish border issue (which seems to amount to four borders), after weeks of callow, ahistorical bilge about how easily it could be solved. O’Hanlon is not impressed. | This means engaging with the issues of now. The day we meet, the government has put forward its latest suggestions for the Irish border issue (which seems to amount to four borders), after weeks of callow, ahistorical bilge about how easily it could be solved. O’Hanlon is not impressed. |
| [I was] dragged out of my bed at the age of seven, my mother screaming, six kids under the age of 12 | [I was] dragged out of my bed at the age of seven, my mother screaming, six kids under the age of 12 |
| “For us, this is existential,” he says. “There’s a danger of economic collapse in [the rest of the UK], but for us, we could return to a state of war. You know, people are worried about that. How anybody in political leadership in this country could demonstrate such wilful ignorance of Irish history, and such blithe disregard for the people of Northern Ireland. Thousands of people died. Hundreds of British soldiers lost their lives. I grew up on the border…” He pauses, still averse to sounding at all aerated. “I wouldn’t like to overstate the impact the Troubles had on me and my life.” | “For us, this is existential,” he says. “There’s a danger of economic collapse in [the rest of the UK], but for us, we could return to a state of war. You know, people are worried about that. How anybody in political leadership in this country could demonstrate such wilful ignorance of Irish history, and such blithe disregard for the people of Northern Ireland. Thousands of people died. Hundreds of British soldiers lost their lives. I grew up on the border…” He pauses, still averse to sounding at all aerated. “I wouldn’t like to overstate the impact the Troubles had on me and my life.” |
| But the impact, it transpires, was pretty significant: the son of a politician, Rory O’Hanlon, south of the border, they had death threats, a bomb scare. “Dragged out of your bed at the age of seven, my mother screaming, six kids under the age of 12. I’m not equating my experience with the people who lived in Northern Ireland. But my dad was always out and about late at night, and I could not go to sleep until I knew he was in. There were assassinations, for one reason or another. And I could not relax until I heard his footsteps on the garden path.” | But the impact, it transpires, was pretty significant: the son of a politician, Rory O’Hanlon, south of the border, they had death threats, a bomb scare. “Dragged out of your bed at the age of seven, my mother screaming, six kids under the age of 12. I’m not equating my experience with the people who lived in Northern Ireland. But my dad was always out and about late at night, and I could not go to sleep until I knew he was in. There were assassinations, for one reason or another. And I could not relax until I heard his footsteps on the garden path.” |
| That gnawing anxiety didn’t translate – unsurprisingly – into a burning political passion. “I always shied away from it. I was always detached, I never supported his party [Fianna Fáil]. I always liked him, I wished him well. If push came to shove, I might even vote for him. But I always stood well back.” | That gnawing anxiety didn’t translate – unsurprisingly – into a burning political passion. “I always shied away from it. I was always detached, I never supported his party [Fianna Fáil]. I always liked him, I wished him well. If push came to shove, I might even vote for him. But I always stood well back.” |
| Yet now he’s on stage, talking about politics from a comic’s perspective. “We postcolonials, we hold Britain up on a pedestal, as a beacon of sanity and wisdom,” he says. “But what we realise now is that you’re just as irrational as the rest of us. And that’s sort of the arc of what I’m doing. But, you know, with jokes. As a comedian, you can’t tell people that they’re wrong or that they’re stupid. But you can say, ‘What you did is very irrational.’” | Yet now he’s on stage, talking about politics from a comic’s perspective. “We postcolonials, we hold Britain up on a pedestal, as a beacon of sanity and wisdom,” he says. “But what we realise now is that you’re just as irrational as the rest of us. And that’s sort of the arc of what I’m doing. But, you know, with jokes. As a comedian, you can’t tell people that they’re wrong or that they’re stupid. But you can say, ‘What you did is very irrational.’” |
| • Ardal O’Hanlon tours the UK and Ireland until 7 March. | • Ardal O’Hanlon tours the UK and Ireland until 7 March. |
| • This article was amended on 30 October 2019. An earlier version misnamed the comedian Woody Bop Muddy as “Woody Bup Moddy”. | |
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