Acting the eejit

Ardal O’Hanlon is lying on a bed in a hotel room in Coventry where he’s currently in the midst of a sell-out UK tour. While still best remembered for his portrayal of the gormless Fr. Dougal in Father Ted, he’s since gone on to star in the BBC1 sit-com My Hero, the second series of which is currently on air. He’s also starred in the ITV comedy drama Big Bad World and more recently, he presented Channel 4’s Television’s Top 100 Characters where his Fr. Dougal came in at a respectable number 5. He has also written a darkly comic novel, The Talk Of The Town, loosely based on his own experiences of small-town Irish life. His welcome return to his stand-up roots after is years of television work begs the question, why? After all, most comedians eschew the live arena when a successful TV career beckons.

“Stand-up is actually very addictive, it’s exhilarating in a way that TV is not, it’s immediate and real,” he explains. “Television is quite false, in a way, you meet orange people with strange hair who’re quite unlike anyone who exists in the real world. Plus I cut my teeth on stand-up, and grazed a knee and broke a collarbone actually, and I still get a tremendous buzz from performing in front of an audience. I don’t live a very exciting life so live shows are where I get my kicks. I like living by my wits, there’s a spontaneity and instant feedback that you get from an audience that I miss in television work. But the main reason that I’m touring again is that I love to sit alone in hotel rooms and drink tea.”

Fans of Mr. O’Hanlon’s live shows will remember that his on-stage persona is not a million miles away from his most famous comic role, the addled curate Dougal McGuire in Father Ted. However, this tour sees him adopting perhaps a harder edge.

“That’s true,” he agrees. “But the slightly bewildered character that I developed came from the fact that when I started out doing comedy I was genuinely flying by the seat of my pants and would be absolutely terrified to find myself in front of a room full of people and talking bollox, basically! It took me a long time to escape from that wide-eyed persona, and of course I’ll never shed it completely, and nor would I wish to, but I think I’m a lot more confident these days. I think I’m much more myself on stage now, and I enjoy it a lot more. The other consideration is that there’s an expectation on the part of the audience who like the earlier stuff, so there are still elements of gormlessness and craziness. Grange gormlessness, maybe.”

His well received debut novel The Talk Of The Town surprised many with its comic take on rural life combined with an uneasy undercurrent of menace and death. I ask if the book was written in the wake of the death of his close friend and fellow Father Ted actor Dermot Morgan?

“Well the death of Dermot really made all of us who knew him take stock of our own lives, but in actual fact the book was written at the end of the very first series of Father Ted. I’d always written creatively, doing sketches or routines and whatever, but the nature of comedy writing is that it’s very bitty. I wanted to look at life in a little more depth, and while I started out to write a comic novel, I found it quite an organic process and the underlying serious themes, if you like, emerged during the writing process. I think it might be an opportunity to explore my alter-ego, and consider issues that I couldn’t deal with in stand-up because of the persona of my character and the expectations of my audience.”

What makes Ardal O’Hanlon laugh?

“Mundane things really,” he considers. “I think that everyday life contains so many oddities and absurdities and talking about that onstage can take you to some hysterical places. The fascination with lifestyle and the body beautiful is something I find really strange and I think it’s the job of stand-ups to point out these absurdities. My kids make me laugh all the time, again it’s the way that children look at things in a way that I think a lot of adults have forgotten how to, or have unlearned. I’ve also got some very funny friends. I think that Irish people are generally very funny, though mostly unintentionally perhaps.”

As a dyed-in-the-wool Leeds United fan, is he gutted that the lads are out of the European Champions League?

“I was actually gigging in Swindon on the night of the Leed vs Valencia game,” he groans. “Somebody had given me three tickets to the game and I thought long and hard about not showing up but professionalism prevailed and I did the show. But we didn’t expect to get as far as we did anyway, so I wasn’t too cut up.”

On a final note I ask his opinion on the current trend for nostalgia-based entertainment shows of the I Love The ‘80s genre?

“I’ve been asked to do a couple of those but I usually turn them down since I can’t remember what I watched last night, never mind when I was seven. An Irish version might be fun though, you could put Lolek and Bolek back on…”

Ardal O’Hanlon plays Vicar St., Dublin on Tuesday, June 5th-Thursday, June 7th. My Hero is currently being aired on BBC1