Hot Press Meets Colm O'Regan

I’m really looking forward to De La Soul! They are childhood idols, from when I was a gangster rapper on the tough streets of Dripsey!” laughs Colm O’Regan. The Cork comedian is relishing the prospect of headlining the Comedy Tent at this year’s Indiependence.
“I haven’t been. I’ve only heard good things. That it has a really nice vibe. And it’s in Cork as well. Back to the homeland!”

O’Regan is best-known for Twitter sensation @Irish_Mammy, the inspiration for his best-selling tome, Isn’t It Well For Ye?: The Book Of Irish Mammies. It is an engaging and rib-tickling study of all that is great about Gaelic matriarchs. He is readying the follow-up, That’s More Of It Now: The Second Book Of Irish Mammies, for release in October.
“I was surprised at the success of the Twitter account,” he states. “When the book was published there were about 60,000 followers so I knew I would be in with a good shout. I didn’t think it would be as successful as it was. It was the best-selling book by an Irish author published in Ireland last year. The Twitter account continues to grow. There are over 100,000 followers.”
O’Regan enjoys the contrasting disciplines of stand-up and writing.
“Well, stand-up is more fractured, unless you’re working on a show with a very strong theme, for Edinburgh for example,” he notes. “Writing a book you sit down and you go, ‘what am I going to do?’ Well get off Twitter and Facebook anyway! You sit down with a pen and paper and write and write and write. I’m enjoying that bit. I think I might be a writer. I thought I was bluffing for a while (laughs). I’m really happy with the new book. I’m looking forward to throwing it out to the mercy of the world.”
A consummate jack-of-all-trades, he also authors a weekly column for the Irish Examiner and has a regular radio diary for the BBC World Service’s In The Balance Programme.
“They keep the brain ticking over and give me ideas that mightn’t be ready for stand-up comedy but can be developed later,” he says. “Also, I’m self-employed, there are no guarantees, no pensions. So you take every job you can get!”
Another string to his bow is Inn Jokes, the monthly comedy club he puts on in his adopted home of Inchicore. It has been running for three years. He is also a member of the Inchicore Environmental Society.
“You are actually talking to the Chairperson of the Inchicore Environmental Society,” he laughs. “It’s a voluntary group. We do a variety of different things to improve the area, pick up litter and plant flowers etc. It sounds corny but it’s hugely psychologically positive to do something like that. It’s incredibly good for the soul. I love Dublin 8. it’s great. Full of history and the people are really neighbourly.”
Further afield, Colm’s stand-up has brought him to Capetown, Tokyo, Osaka and Montreal. He is even in demand as a comedic fluffer of sorts, employed to entertain the audience in quiet spells during the recording of Mrs Brown’s Boys.
“I did three last year and one of the Christmas specials this year,” he states. “The show is recorded twice in front of two different audiences, one in the afternoon and one in the evening. They’ll shoot a scene and then they’ll have a break to move all the cameras around or if someone forgets a line and they have to re-set. Then I go on and keep the audience warmed up. It’s quite hard work but it’s fun. You might have to come on 10, 15 or 20 times. It’s like altitude training!”
So is Colm a fan of the show?
“I hadn’t really seen it much before I watched it recorded live. It is very funny,” he says. “It’s a particular type of humor. Brendan would be a fan of the old school clowning comics like Buster Keaton and Laurel and Hardy. He’s got incredible comic timing. Compared to what Stewart Lee does or Reginald D Hunter does, it’s a different genre.”
 Has he any thoughts on its runaway success in the UK?
“The English have nostalgia for the nuclear family and the family in the show is a form of that,” he says. “It a group of people bound together, they love each other and they can’t stand each other. In lots of post-industrial societies there is a nostalgia for the family. Not in the traditional sense but where there is one strong figure and people gathered around. I think that’s one of the reasons why people like it.”
So with all that altitude training, is O’Regan festival fit?
“The key to a comedy tent at a festival is creating a sense of ‘another place’,” he notes. “Surprisingly a lot of the time at festivals when you have noise pollution...well... not noise pollution. Other bands playing! What a comedian calls noise pollution! You have very good rock bands playing and you think 'I can’t compete with My Bloody Valentine' or whoever. Ultimately it works out fine. The biggest threat is the changeover. The MC has to keep it going in between acts. People do drift in. They have to drift in and stay. If your jokes are funny enough you’ll get any audience. Another thing is, some people might be off their heads on something other than alcohol and they have no idea what they’ve wandered into. They’ll be coming up to the stage wondering why the song hasn’t started yet!”