Baz Ashmawy

He’s one of the stars of RTÉ’s irreverend travel series, How Low Can You Go – the surprise home-grown TV hit of this year. But now that it’s ended, Basil “Baz” Ashmawy says he’d like to do something a tad more serious, albeit with lots of travel involved if possible.
“Yeah, I’d definitely like to do some more serious documentaries if I got the chance. In fact, in a perfect world I’d like to only work on shows I’d watch myself, which I know is a lot to expect.”

He gets to partially fulfil his wishes when he fronts a new series for RTÉ called Basil’s Culture Clash which will go out early next year, all going to plan.
“Basically the idea of the series is, I go off and live with different groups of unusual or unconventional people,” he explains. “The Freegans for example, who live in the Bristol area and who don’t believe in the traditional economy and eat out of bins and that sort of thing. People might think of them as paranoid crusties or hippies but I found them to be very cool people, quite intelligent and well-educated.”
He also stays with a guy who “eats road kill including dead cats and dogs” while he’s just about to head for the US to hang out with the “virgin circle,” one of the many self-proclaimed celibate groups who’ve been hitting the headlines of late.
“They’re going on a bit of a promotional tour and I’m going along with them to see what they’re like. It should be interesting but I’m not being judgmental or anything. I’ll just tell it as I see it.”
When not travelling the world in search of unusual people, home for Baz for the past couple of years has been a house in Kimmage in South Dublin, which he shares with one of his mates and a British bulldog called Louis.
“It’s a typical small three-bedroom place, very much like the house I grew up in the nearby Rathfarnham/Ballinteer area. The thing is, I’m rarely here, I’ve been away so much lately. For that reason I’m not really into possessions. I just have my TV, X-box and my clothes and that’s about it. I love music – we use the iPod in the house. I’m into Kings Of Leon, Cold War Kids, Libertines, Dirty Pretty Things, stuff like that, and I like hip hop of the old school variety, acts like Dre, Tupac, Public Enemy.”
While he sounds like a Dubliner, with a surname like Ashmawy and his distinctive middle-eastern features, his background is more exotic than most of his South Dublin contemporaries.
“I was born in Libya, and then we lived in Cairo,” he reveals. “I came here when I was about eight. It’s odd, I don’t remember moving here being the massive transition that it was, though I remember it being a much colder place.”
He does however remember feeling different and standing out from most of his classmates: “You’re talking about back in the ‘80s when there weren’t a lot of mixed race kids around – I think there was one other guy in my school. But I was always very proud of my heritage and there never were any specific problems – you were just thought of as a foreigner. The fact that I was called ‘Basil’ probably caused me more trouble than the colour of my skin (laughs).”
Though he had studied theatre in college he got into TV more by accident than by design.
“I was working as a recruitment consultant for seven years in London and just got sick of it. I’d studied drama and theatre in Trinity but I’d dropped out. So I came back home, did a bit of acting, met a producer and she asked me if I was interested in a pilot and it went from there. A lot of it is being in the right place at the right time. It’s a hard career – you can be really hot one moment and out in the cold the next, but I love what I do. It’s a great feeling to wake up every day and know you’re going to enjoy your work. I think it was Christy Moore who said, ‘Be very careful about getting paid for what you love – it’ll break your heart.’”
The success of How Low Can You Go has, he says, has given him the confidence and background to take it to the next level.
“I’m doing a bit of writing but I’m procrastinating on that front a bit. I’d still like to do comedy and maybe even a bit of stand-up.”
However it seems for the moment he can’t shake off his wanderlust and penchant for travelling the world
“You can’t beat it, going to different places,” he beams. “I remember we did this thing in How Low… where we were riding horses across the plains and prairies in Texas herding cattle. It was such a surreal moment. That night I slept under the stars with a big swag bag. But I never really take it for granted. You have to realise that the next day it’s back to reality.”