Ard to explain

“I want an entourage!” Ardal O’Hanlon declares. We’ve been talking about the downsides of stand-up; namely, travelling on your tobler for months on end. “I’m going to recruit an entourage. I want a stylist, I want a hairdresser, I want someone to pick my ear wax... I want someone to shave my grapes.” Well, we can advertise the position in the Hot Press Classifieds, there’s been odder requests. “Okay... I want a small hairy man who will wake me very gently every morning with a flute. Do you know of anyone that fits that description? ‘Elf Wanted’.”

The one-time Dougal (that will be the only mention of that) and respected stand-up, author and actor switches back to ‘serious’ mode. It’s a skill he’s been honing in recent years – juggling live comedy with turns in dramatic theatre. Last time we spoke, we touched on his stellar work at The Gate in God Of Carnage. Now, he’s coming off the back of a London run in Port Of Authority. This trend of blending disciplines will continue. The Monaghan man nods. “It’s a theme that’s emerging, something I’ll do at the start of the year, in a puritanical fashion and with a bit of discipline. You start the year with real purpose and real focus. You get out of your own head space. With stand-up there’s too much self-obsession, too much navel-gazing. It’s important to get out of that, work with other people and bury your ego for awhile.”
The Ardal ego (a mild and modest one, of course) is back above ground, as he takes to the road for a summer tour of Ireland that includes a spot in Forbidden Fruit’s Comedy Tent. He’s already going to drastic measures to shoo away the solitude. A few weeks ago, he was even shooting the breeze with Ryan Tubridy. As a seasoned Irish entertainer who’s run the gamut of Late Late Show hosts, which of the three wise men is your favourite – Gay, Pat or Ryan?
He’s so seasoned, he performs a seamless sidestep. “I was lucky enough to do Parkinson a few times. I’ve never felt safer in all of my life. I was safer on Parkinson than I was in the womb. To look into that man’s eyes...” At this point, Ardal fixes my gaze, unblinkingly imitating the King of British Chat for what seems like aeons. “His big, gentle, kind and welcoming eyes... He listens to everything you say, there’s that twinkle, he’s laughing, and everything’s okay. I trusted him so much, so that was my favourite ever chat show experience. Of the others, probably Gay. He had some of that quality too, where he made you feel safe and warm.”
Is it a job you could have been cut out for yourself? “No” he says firmly, at first. “Actually, do you remember the time after Gay? They were actively looking for the new Gay, a new Late Late presenter. I know Pat Kenny was probably a shoe-in, but they experimented with other people. And I was courted by a few RTÉ producers. Which is bizarre! I wouldn’t be good at it at all. My main problem would be remaining upbeat in the face of someone off Coronation Street. The mask would slip.”
So he’ll stick to sitting on the couch. As awkward as that can be. His most recent appearance featured a spring attack by Tubbers, where he brought up O’Hanlon’s TV role as a ‘champion’ for Irish painter Sean Scully out of the blue. Caught unawares, O’Hanlon made a half-hearted attempt to convince the audience that Scully’s Wall Of Light Orange Yellow (a bunch of stripes, for all intents and purposes) was a masterpiece. He got a few laughs. Unintentionally.
“Well I wasn’t meant to be talking about that!” he argues. “The producers of this thing approached me and said they were doing a show about art galleries and masterpieces. They asked if there was any Irish painting I’d like to champion and Sean Scully leapt out at me. I happen to quite like art galleries. They’re a good place to step out of the rain into...”
Or a good venue for voyeuristically following people, I blurt out.
“If someone’s following you, it’s a good place to hide. Or if you’re following them, yes. It’s a good place to flirt. Though I don’t really do much of that anymore, I was never really any good at that. I think that the whole point of the exercise – to get people back into galleries.”
Maybe we need some kind of America’s Next Top Painter reality show to stir interest. It could consist of artists sitting in front of an easel for hours as Simon Cowell looks on witheringly, arms folded.
“Well there’s already been one that turned people into orchestra conductors. That was weird. As for Scully, I happen to know a bit about him, the reason he does these apparently child-like paintings of stripes. If you actually go in and see them, you are impressed by the sheer scale of the exercise... here I am advocating for him again! I did my job!”
We’ll move on then, but stick to equally lofty pursuits. Okay, journalism. You guest edited the Irish Post recently?
“It was PR really, in my capacity as a patron of this homeless charity, the Aisling Return to Ireland Project. It involved me coming in for the day and suggesting things, which were mostly ignored.” Next time, arrange it so you edit a red top. You can suggest phone lines to tap, keep tabs on your comedian mates. “Exactly! They gave great coverage to the charity, which brings homeless people back home to Ireland and gets them in touch with their families. I do the fundraising and we’ve had the most spectacular shows. I’ve had Graham Norton do it, Dylan Moran, Jimmy Carr... You name it, everyone has done this gig.”
Putting on star-studded charity shows is one thing, but has Ardal looked at John Bishop carrying out a triathlon from the Eiffel Tower to Trafalgar Square and thought, ‘I fancy some of that’?
“Maybe a ... biathlon? I’ve been looking around. In Scandinavia, they have a biathlon which is like a mixture of cross-country skiing and writing a detective novel. I’m always queasy about the relationship between comedy/acting and celebrity culture though. You have to be careful. Fair play to John for raising all that money, that’s brilliant, but it catapults you into a different arena.”
Anything else bother the good-natured comic about the business?
“Off-beat, quirky, lo-fi ‘festival favourites’, who no-one really wants to see, but get tremendous reviews after Edinburgh. Then they come down to Kilkenny and die on their holes. It can be annoying to someone who’s accepted the challenge of going out there and trying to play to ordinary people. You’re not just playing to a niche, Guardian-reading, post-graduate audience. You should be able to play in every environment.”
O’Hanlon has walked the walk in that regard. “I’ve done stuff in prison!” he laughs. “It was tough. Years ago, myself, Barry [Murphy] and Kevin [Gildea] did some shows in Wheatfield. One of the gigs was really nice, it was for young offenders. It was improv and we asked for suggestions, that was quite funny. We did some sketches slagging off the warders. Did we incite any riots? Not really but you could see some of the prison officers getting a bit twitchy: ‘This has gone on long enough! Let’s wrap it up quickly!’”
Any jails booked this time?
“Nah, just the M50 ringroad. Then the regions. So the first leg of... a never-ending tour!”