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Brouhaha

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Like the difficult second album, the follow-up novel was much harder. Whereas the debut was written in a “splurge”, he was now hamstrung by self-consciousness and the need to produce something more sophisticated.

Advice I would give an actor or a comedian is to just keep your eyes open all the time and your ears open all the time. That’s really, really important. Particularly as an actor, listen, listen, listen all the time, to what everyone else is doing. I think you learn from absolutely everybody you work with: the good actors, the bad actors, good comedians, bad comedians, the good directors, bad directors. You just learn from absolutely everybody. This, however, is a town dead-set on keeping its secrets. And Sharkey is already drawing attention from all the wrong quarters…Now his best friend Sharkey is home asking awkward questions about Dove's death, about the strange graphic novel he left behind, and, most of all, about Sandra. Sandra Mohan. Missing now for over a decade, whereabouts unknown. Then, overnight, it all stopped. “Suddenly, I was drained of adrenalin. My body didn’t quite shut down, but for the first time that I could remember in 30 years, 40 years, I relaxed. Completely. And yes, my income fell off a cliff. But there were compensations. It was strange but there was a sense of almost exhilaration.” I’m not vegetarian but if there’s a good vegetarian option I will tend to go for it. I think that’s just another factor related to getting older. I particularly like at this time of the year when I’m actually in theatre and I’m about to launch into six weeks for rehearsals. You want to get match fit for it. So I tend to be very careful about what I eat. When I was 12 I got a job shelling peas at a local restaurant. In exchange for a few hours every weekend I was paid 50p and a can of Lilt. Does that qualify as my first paid job? You get delusions, of course, after that. You think 'I've done it once before, I'll be able to it again'. And the reality was I couldn't do it ... I didn't have a particularly good story to tell, I stopped and started too often because I was busy with other stuff; the tone went in different directions and I just lost my grip on it. I couldn't keep it all in my head, eventually I just had to abandon it.

Unsurprisingly, that went nowhere. A communications and journalism degree and the life-changing phenomenon of Father Ted later, his literary debut had to wait until his early 30s with the coming-of-age novel Talk of the Town. As for the local sense of comedy, he has found echoes elsewhere too. “Even watching Fargo, the Coen Brothers. That felt very familiar the first time. Everyone’s laughing in the cinema and I’m going: that’s the kind of milieu I grew up in. The deadpan tone. You don’t quite know what people mean when they’re talking to you because they keep a very straight face.” You very kindly refer to me as professional but I’m not sure that’s the case to be honest with you. I really enjoy it, I love acting, and I love that grown men and women, we just get to play. And the work is very considered, don’t get me wrong, everyone takes it very seriously most of the time, but it’s inevitable that it’s going to break down.Yet generally, Ardal’s enjoying growing older. ‘I stress a bit about losing my hair and the baggy eyes. But in your twenties and thirties you’re hustling and competing with other performers, you’ve also got young kids and that’s all a bit of a challenge. By my fifties, I felt as a performer and a human I became more confident in my own opinions. You’re settled, not in a complacent way, but you know your place in the world.’ I know people made the observation that people in Britain in particular learned more about Northern Irish politics in an hour’s comedy than they might have after 20 years of watching the news and reading the papers. You recently appeared in Disney+ superhero sitcom Extraordinary, it’s a bit of a departure from your usual roles. In my experience not really, but I do know people who feel that they’ve been kind of sidelined or whatever for stuff they’ve said. Dark, witty, and very clever at times. This book is not for the faint hearted, there are some very graphic scenes of violence and abuse. I found that it took a little while to get into the book, the writing is quite heavy and detailed.

As the son of a former government minister, was he ever groomed for politics? “No, not me. Even in my family, I would have been probably the least likely candidate. Because I sort of ran away from it.” So it is something that I really, really love, but as time has gone on, I’ve actively sought out more challenging acting roles, whether that’s on TV or on stage. It was one of the reasons why I did theatre, I came into theatre quite late in life. And ever since then, I’ve been really curious about, when you do get the opportunities, try to stretch your wings as much as possible and put yourself out and aim for other stuff and see what’s out there. Sometimes you have to go where the one takes you. Yes. I take big risks, although I don’t stray beyond what I’m prepared to lose. I dabble on the Alternative Investment Market in start-ups and tech companies.Walking out on stage at the Irish Cultural Centre, Hammersmith irishculturalcentre.co.uk , after receiving the most scrupulously comprehensive of introductions, Ardal O’Hanlon saw fit to inform audiences that the intro had in fact left out the swimming medals he won at age seven – and just like that, he had the audience laughing. It set a sound precedent for the rest of the night. It’s a bit more censorious as well, perhaps, although I don’t know if that is strictly true. It’s probably more self-censorship, people are just more aware of sensitivities and so on now than they would have been, like, 30 years ago. There’s the notion that comedy is a lot more restricted now, is it something you agree with? Determined as he was to pursue another venture in writing when the right idea came along, it’s clear to see that Brouhaha is a labour of love, inspired by many times and places throughout his life. Here’s hoping it won’t be another 25 years before we see his next written work!

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