Since joining The Pane as a regular guest at the beginning of the last series, Mairead Farrell has more than held her own amongst the likes of Neil Delamere, Andrew Maxwell and Colin Murphy.

It helps, of course, that for the past few years Mairead (who recently gave birth to a baby boy, Dara) has acted as one of Ray D’Arcy’s comedic sidekicks on Today FM, thus giving her a solid grounding in the area of knockabout topical humour.
Mairead and her fellow panelists are shortly to return with a series of shows in the run-up to the general election, which gives the assembled humourists the ideal platform to demonstrate their satirical skills. As it happens, Mairead recently had a visit from the country’s most high-profile political figure.
“I live in Bertie’s constituency,” she says, “and he recently called to my door. It was a very quick chat, the only thing he really said was, ‘How’s everyting in de area?’ which was very Bertie (laughs). It was actually the second visit he’s made – the first time he called was last year. I was heading to a Des Bishop gig in Vicar Street with my sister, and I was upstairs getting ready. The doorbell started ringing, but I’d left the front door open, so I was shouting downstairs, ‘Come in! Come in!’
“Eventually I came downstairs, with heated rollers in my hair, and there was Bertie standing there. He was like, ‘Howaya?’ And then I met him again! He was on the Ray D’Arcy Show recently, just before I went on maternity leave. He wished me well with the pregnancy, and we had a chat about the area where I live. It was a pretty light-hearted conversation. When he’s surrounded by three of his people, you don’t want to start asking him about, like, why there are clampers in the locale, and if he can do anything about it (laughs).”
Would Mairead describe herself as a politically engaged person?
“I don’t really care about it that much,” she admits. “Politics makes me laugh a lot of the time, because you’re listening to the same old shite. We’ve had all the of leaders in on the Ray D’Arcy Show; Bertie, Enda Kenny, Michael McDowell, Pat Rabbitte. Gerry Adams was on today. I have to say meeting them in person is a lot different than watching them on TV. The one person who really impressed me, who I’d thought nothing of before, was Pat Rabbitte.
“I found him engaging. He was extremely friendly, he told me he’d watched The Panel the night before when I was on it. He seemed to me to be the only one who was in touch with young people’s concerns. I think everyone else was a little a bit out of touch. Enda Kenny is so insipid, he reminds me of a glass of water. And Michael McDowell just frightens me.”
Do you enjoy elections generally?
“It’s funny, the other day I was walking by a bus shelter,” replies Mairead, “and I saw this poster. It said ‘Vote Mary Murphy’. This is in my area, and I’ve never seen her, never heard of her, I’ve no idea what she represents. And there’s her mug at my bus stop! And you find yourself thinking, ‘Who are these people who just come out a month or two before the elections?’ Although I do remember her name because that’s my mother-in-law’s name.”
Dara O’Briain’s ever greater levels of success in Britain has seen him vacate the presenter’s chair on The Panel in recent times, with Colin Murphy sitting in as his replacement. Has the change altered the dynamic of the show?
“Not as much as I thought it would,” responds Mairead. “I think it just put everyone else on their toes a little bit more. It made people think, ‘Okay, Dara’s not here, so we just have to be a bit more careful.’ But it was pretty relaxed, and Colin’s great at… telling Andrew to shut up and letting everyone else have their say! (laughs) Andrew tends to go off on one a little bit, but he’s just so much fun. I actually can’t wait to see him again.
“Every show I went on, he kept telling me he was going to make me ‘double pregnant’. Funnily enough, it was brought to our attention yesterday by Seamas, the producer of The Panel, that Andrew is the image of Sonny Bono. Previously, of course, it had been pointed out on the show that he also bears a very close resemblance to the young Charles Haughey.”
Fittingly, bearing in mind the political theme to our conversation, when I ask Mairead what’s been the highlight of her time working on the Ray D’Arcy Show, she mentions an encounter with a certain well-known Arkansas native.
“Meeting Bill Clinton was great,” she says. “I fancied him. It’s the grey hair! Anyway, one person from the show was going to get the opportunity to meet him, and of course they sent me down. It was literally just that signing he did in Easons, but I was the one who got the media pass from the show to do it. He was finished signing all the books, but I still hadn’t got my copy signed. I gave it to one of his security guys and said, ‘Please get that signed’.
“He gave it to Bill Clinton, who was standing right in front of me, but I was standing behind a barrier. Clinton asked, ‘Whose book is this?’ I said, ‘Oh, it’s mine! Can I please get a picture taken with you?’ So he said, ‘Let her over’. I was lifted up by the security guard and set down beside him… and I had no camera! Thankfully, a photographer was standing there laughing at me, and took the picture. I have it here at home, framed and all.”