It's Way Past My Bedtime

Hector Ó hEochagáin is in fine fettle... which should come as no surprise to anybody. As viewers of his massively popular TV shows, or listeners to his recently ended high-octane Saturday morning RTE 2fm show with childhood friend Tommy Tiernan, will attest, the inimitably wired Navan-born media personality is always in good form. Indeed, his inner amp seems permanently set to ‘11’.

It’s shortly after midday in the Galway RTÉ studios, and the 41-year-old has just finished a successful dry-run of his brand new 2fm breakfast show, which has since gone live. The most famous Irish media redhead since Bosco tells me he can’t wait: “This is a really big deal,” he enthuses, waving a hand expansively around the room. “They’re fixing up the studios – knocking walls, making new offices, painting the walls, the whole deal. It’s the first time a morning show has ever been presented from Galway, so they’re really pulling all the stops out.”
He’s brazen, too. As we leave the RTÉ building en route to the nearby House Hotel, Hector walks over to a parked navy Ford Mondeo and taps on the roof to get the attention of the two men sitting inside. “Jaysus, lads,” he says, when one of them rolls down the window, “you’d want to be a bit more fuckin’ discreet than that.”
It’s the Galway Drug Squad keeping an eye on the dole office. Despite having their cover blown, they seem delighted to see him. “Ah sure, it’s yerself! How’s it goin’ Hector?!”
Actually, it seems everybody’s delighted to see him. When we walk into the hotel, a tray of Guinness appears, as if by magic, “with the compliments of the management.” Three different people come over to say "hello" during the photo-shoot, greeting him in a familiar manner (he only knows one of them). Unlike many other media personalities, what you see of Hector on your TV or hear on your radio, is what you get. Exuding magnetism, he’s one of the most likeable and least pretentious people I’ve met.
We eventually find a quiet table. Although still slightly jetlagged following a weekend flight from Vancouver, where he was filming another of his TG4 travel shows, he’s perky, alert and full of nervous energy.
OLAF TYARANSEN: What’s the strangest situation you’ve ever found yourself in on your travels?
HECTOR Ó hEOCHAGAIN: A high security prison in Bolivia. We paid a guy who was a convicted cocaine dealer from New York, called Freddy. We were in La Paz travelling through South America for the TG4 travel show. He had made contact with this guy, and he allowed us to film in a high security prison in La Paz. We paid him 200 John Player Blue and a bottle of Johnny Walker whiskey, and we arrived at this prison in the centre of La Paz, and everybody knew we had the camera. There were armed guards at the gate and security checks, like going through an airport. And we got all our equipment through, we brought it to a cell and we were allowed to assemble it. And then we were given a tour of this prison in La Paz for the next six hours, with guys ahead and guys behind watching us. Columbians; Peruvians; Bolivians. It was like walking into a city – a walled city – with restaurants, ice-cream sellers, shops.
Who gave you the tour?
The guy came down – a Richard Dreyfuss lookalike, who was the ‘boss’ of the prison, a convicted solicitor who tried to get out with ten tonnes of cocaine, but was caught on the plane. He said, ‘Bienvenido a la cárcel,’ which is ‘welcome to my prison’. And then he showed me how you can build apartment on top of apartment on top of apartment on your own cell. I went for lunch with Freddy in his apartment, his wife was cooking us spaghetti bolognese, and his kids were on the second floor doing their homework. That was the maddest, most fucked-up situation we’ve been in.
Did that madness come across in the show?
I’ve been stopped millions of times on the streets by people saying, ‘How did you get into that prison?’ That all stopped. Freddy wasn’t allowed do it anymore. He had a little racket going with the police and the guards, but he was still so delighted to get the bottle of Johnny Walker whiskey and 200 John Player Blue. He told me what they did to the paedophiles that came in there. He told me that the homeless kids of the streets of La Paz could come in there at night and sleep there safe. He told me that the wives can come in during the day and drop the kids off after school. He told me that if you want prostitutes, you can get prostitutes; if you want a man, you can get a man – behind closed doors. La Paz, Bolivia, 2006. Fantastic.
Have you ever been banged up?
No. I was stopped by the cops the other day driving at 134mph in a six-litre GMC truck on my way to the Klondike River where the gold rush happened. We were way up in the Yukon last week, filming for TG4. I was doing 134mph, and this cop stopped me in the middle of nowhere, and she said, ‘You were speeding’. I said, ‘I was texting’ – as Tommy said, years ago – ‘Sorry officer, I was texting’. She goes, ‘I heard that one before’, and she let me go. But I’ve never been in a cell overnight for bad behaviour.
You’ve had a few hairy ones.
The hairiest place we’ve ever been in is Mexico City. I met some Mexicans on a trip in Canada, and it’s gone completely out of control. That’s the most messed up city in the world: 40 million people.
Is it still just a three-man crew?
Still the same two lads. Evan (Chamberlain) is from Mountbellew, and Rosco (Ross O’Callaghan) is from Dublin – he’s the cameraman, and Evan produces it. But the stuff Evan gets lined-up is absolutely superb. So we’ve now done a 6,700 mile trip across the second biggest country in the world. When I open the paper and I look at the times and the temperatures from around the world, and I go, ‘A-B-C …Auckland, Abu Dhabi, Addis Ababa’, and I just tick them off now. We’re still doing it ten years later and we’re very proud of that.
You’ve visited the Playboy Mansion.
Hugh Hefner came down in his gun-barrel pyjamas. We got talking about early Playboy, and how it got on the shelves and all that. He knew about condoms in Ireland, but anyway – I had kept my mic on and I went in to have a shite in his jacks. His jacks was black marble, but he had about five different types of cotton buds, and I have a serious love of cotton buds. So I was in there having a shite, cleaning my ears, doing what an Irishman does, the microphone was on – came out, and there was Heffner. And my cameraman was splitting his sides:, ‘Ha ha ha!’ And I said, ‘Mr. Heffner, how are you?’ And he goes, ‘The call of nature comes to us all’. And I said, ‘Well it certainly did, man, because I was in your jacks there for half an hour. Anyway, do you have much hassle in the castle?’ He goes, ‘I love you guys. “Hassle in the castle!”’ Because he had his own crew filming me. I thought I was going to get invited to a private party that weekend for his seventy-second birthday. No chance. We were turfed-out, like. But I spent eight hours in there. He gave me a good tour.
How many air miles have you clocked up?
We’ve done maybe 92 destinations, and most of the major cities in the world.
What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned from all this travelling?
That there’s a lot more happening than goes on in this island, that there is a bigger world out there, and that there’s still some fantastic places to be seen on this earth. Last week I was seeing the aurora borealis from the window in my room, a hundred miles south of the Arctic Circle. Next stop, if I went across the river, I was nearly in Alaska. I had to pinch myself. We live in a tiny little world here, and there’s so much shite going on in this country at the moment that it’s difficult for people to think outside it. Through travelling you see the tolerance and the friendliness of people.
You’ve got two young boys. How do you reconcile being a family man with all the travelling?
I have a great, understanding wife. Bribery comes into play a lot: bribery, holidays, and nice presents. And she goes off for weekends with her girlfriends. It’s hard on the boys now, but my young lad who’s six can Skype. He’s got the headphones on, he sends me a text in the morning because he’s learning how to read and write: ‘Good morning Dad. It is wet. I am well. I am going to school. Love you.’ But it’s difficult. It was great to see them in the airport the other day. But my missus has been with me for a long time, when I was on the rock ‘n’ roll, so it’s been a great journey. Behind every great man is a better woman!
Your new 2fm morning show is starting.
It’s a big challenge. Myself and Tommy had the best eight months of our lives. Every Saturday morning, we’d close the curtains in 2fm here in Galway, and put on the lava lamp, and bring a little few statues, and we’d have our little Zen moment, and then we’d just have the craic. And we touched on… I don’t know what, but we touched on ‘having craic’. And playing good music and talking normally. It was very easy to talk to a guy I’ve known all my life, but we had such good fun on a Saturday morning. But there was no way with both our careers that we could have kept it going.
Are you still doing the TG4 shows?
Yeah. Hector in Canada, Hector in Africa. I have a deal done with RTÉ that I have the option. I don’t want to jump ship. In this country, how many people were on radio and tried to be good on telly, but just didn’t get the right shows? But I suppose after fifteen years of TV, I’m not going to give up telly just because I got a radio gig. I enjoy playing music, and that’s the key to the whole thing, that I will be able to drop certain songs – Stone Roses, Metallica, The Verve, or something that you wouldn’t expect to hear, Groove Armada, Chemical Brothers at twenty-to-nine on a Tuesday morning.
So you’re not going to be playlisted?
I am going to be playlisted to a certain degree, but I want to have this spontaneous freedom to say, ‘Here, have a listen to this’. I met the boss at 2fm, John McMahon, who knew the other thing was coming to an end, and he said, "Would you like to do the show from Galway?’ It’s a big move for them to come west of the Shannon. And we’ve always been advocating that they need to decentralise. I have nothing against the Dubs. I spent fourteen years living in Stoneybatter, and Phibsborough, and Cabra, and Drumcondra, and Killiney, and Monkstown. I know Dublin inside-out, so it’s not a country-versus-city thing. But I think it’s great. Strangers are coming up to you going, ‘Good luck with the new show’. So there’s a real feeling that this country needs something new in the morning.
Are you worried about not having Tommy with you?
He was the first man to say I should go for it. I asked him, ‘Will I take it?’ And he said, ‘You have to take this job’. They wanted a longer contract. I said, ‘I’ll take it for a year’. I didn’t want to commit to three or four years. And so he’s going to help me as much as he can. Hopefully he’ll be doing a regular slot once a week, but I know that the audience are out there anyway. Like, there are great people in the morning, who will text in and give me something to bounce off. It’ll be different for the first few weeks, I’m sure, but the nice thing is I’m getting up to go to work in Galway, rather than getting on a flight to go to Dublin.
Your rival, Ian Dempsey, recently said that he wasn’t sure you’d be able to carry it without a production team.
I have my own production crew in Galway. There’s six new jobs being created. It’s all Galway. This is the first time a show will be coming autonomously, from out of Dublin. We’ve got a really shit-hot team. I don’t have any masterplan as how to do radio. All I want to do is have craic, natural craic. I’ve been doing my own thing on television for fifteen years, so I’ll do my own thing on radio, and some people will like it, and some people won’t. 2fm seem to think it’s going to work, I think it’s going to work as well. It’s a great time of the morning, because kids are being dropped off at school, and lorry drivers are going in for their breakfast roll, and some people might be only getting up, some might be lying in bed with a quare one, others might be only going to bed, and some people will still have the decks going in the sitting room, so there’s going to be all elements to it. And a five-day week! It’ll be so nice to end at nine, have a coffee, have a meeting, and finish at half-ten. My day starts then. I like radio. I remember listening to Dave Fanning when I was studying for the Junior Cert in 1983 or something, he’d be playing Hüsker Dü. Radio can play good music, it’s not about talking all the time. It’s about letting the song dictate the mood of the people in the morning.
Will you be doing comedy segments?
If there’s somebody good playing the Laughter Lounge in the Róisín, we’ll have them in the next morning for a mug of tea. It’s gonna be great craic. Monday to Friday. Seven o’clock in the morning ‘til nine. As a statement, there’s thirty-something 2fm people coming down on Sunday night to Galway. All the shows will be broadcast from Galway on Monday. Ryan Tubridy is going to be in the roadcaster outside Supermacs, which is probably a bit of a new one for him, so I’m going to bring him a curry chips with garlic and a snackbox. I doubt he’s a man for three o’clock in the morning outside Supermacs, which is the quintessential part of Irish culture. People say to me, ‘Where is the most dangerous place to be?’ And I say, ‘Forget about it, man. Outside Supermacs in any town in the country at three in the morning – that’s danger!’ So I’m going to bring Ryan in a big fat snackbox. And a bottle of Buckfast!
Tubridy’s under a lot of unpleasant scrutiny at the moment by the media. Are you prepared for that level of intrusion into your own private life?
I don’t think they’re going to film me going into Woodie’s to buy vice grips. I don’t think they’re going to film me going into my local butcher getting a few pork chops. Are they?
They might if you fuck up.
Yeah, you know … [shrugs]
Have you had problems before?
No, no. My missus and the kids take a backseat. And I didn’t choose public life. It’s breakfast radio. I don’t think we’re going to get into a situation. Everyone was panicking that me and Tommy were going to do a radio show live. We had lawyers sitting with us, telling us, "You can’t say this", and "be careful about libel", and "if you exaggerate the libel so much then it’s okay". And we never had no complaints. Me and Tommy posed naked on a poster. It was my idea.
I saw it. I was a bit disturbed by the image, actually.
Ha! We had all these people down in Bar 8 down the docks trying to be cool, doing photographs. I says, ‘Tommy, the only way this is going to work: the couch is nice, let’s get the kit off’. Send them up town, get those old Jockey jocks, and let’s lie in a Calvin Klein pose like the muck that we’re filled with every day, and commercial ads, and magazines, and VIPs and Hello! magazines, and all that women’s magazines… so we did it and it was fantastic. One woman complained that it was very homosexual.
Very homoerotic, I thought.
It was fantastic. I was in the lying pose, and Tommy was in the holding pose: it was a great thing.
So for the record, yourself and Tommy aren’t having a gay affair?
No, we’ve been friends since school, very good friends, but no, no, no, we’re not (laughs). Man, he was so uncomfortable getting his kit off, and then finally he relaxed into it.
But you didn’t sort of experiment with each other when you were teenage boys?
Around the back of the bicycle shed? ‘Here, have a look at me knob!’ ‘What’s your knob like?’ No. Listen, I’ve never had that sort of intrusion into certain things. And I don’t think it will change.
Do you agree with Jay Leno’s assessment of Brian Cowen as a “drunken moron”?
I was away in Canada for all of this, and we were getting feeds on the texts. Did he get locked in the Ardilaun Hotel or something? I don’t know what happened, I was just getting texts off the missus going, "Brian Cowen’s in a load of shite". He said something about Croke Park. Jay Leno took the piss out of him last night, going, ‘Is this an Irish bartender? Is this a politician?’ You’ve got to admit that Brian Cowen is not the greatest-looking man in the world. Jason Byrne does a great impression of him, almost elephant man-like. I’ve met him on a number of occasions. I also did the Hanging With Hector with Bertie Ahern. He’s escaped a lot of the shite.
What’s your opinion of Bertie?
Bertie played ball with me for the first ever Hanging With Hector. And I rang him, and I got through about four press secretaries, and they were like, ‘Sorry? You want to do what?’ I said, ‘Howya. My name is Hector Ó hEochagáin. I have a new idea, I’m going to pick people I want to hang with’. And this is before Living With Lucy and all that, this is seven or eight years ago. And I said, ‘I want to hang around with Bertie’. ‘Sorry?!’ And I said, ‘Is there anyone I can talk to?’ And then finally I got to some Johnston girl (Mandy), the press secretary, yeah. And she liked the idea. And then they didn’t get back to me. And then they rang me one morning, and said, ‘Tomorrow morning, eight o’clock. St Luke’s, Drumcondra. We’re on’. And I was like, ‘But you didn’t… I have to get people…’ So we panicked and got the shirts ironed, but Bertie played ball with that when he was President of the European Union. But there was some revealing moments, like when the French Ambassador to Ireland was pushed down the steps by the head of France. What’s his name? Jacques Chirac! Yeah, Chirac pushed the ambassador down the steps to get Bertie into the photo. I turned to the camera and said, "An bhfaca tú é sin? Did you just see what happened there?’ I flew on the jet with Bertie. When we arrived at the airport on a private jet from Ireland with all the little harps – and a harp on my cup of tea, and a harp on my lovely scrambled egg – instead of having a fleet of nice cars, they had a fleet of Renault Méganes. I’m not saying anything about flying in and getting nice Presidential cars, but the French do things their own bloody way.That’d be like flying into flippin’ England, you’re Obama, and you have a load of Ford Fiestas at the airport because it’s an English car.
Do you think it was a calculated insult?
I just think the French, man … (shakes head). I’ve been in Paris at numerous events. I’ve been over at the Rugby World Cups. The only place I’m happy in France is in Bordeaux; maybe Toulouse; or over in Lorient, the Celtic area. I hate Paris. I abhor it.
There’s a picture of you on your Facebook page posing at the Eiffel Tower.
That is not me! There’s a guy impersonating me on Facebook, who has fifteen, sixteen, two thousand friends. I’m going to ‘out’ him on radio next week! I’ve written to Facebook through my solicitors for the last two years. I’ve had Bebo pages taken down. I don’t do any of that stuff. These are all impostors.
So you’re not on Facebook?
I’m the man on Twitter.
I checked your page. Your last tweet was months ago.
Yes. I do Twitter and then I stop because I don’t want to go (picks up Blackberry and pretends to type) ‘I’m doing an interview with Olaf Tyaransen’. I get into it, and I get out of it. But there’s a guy masquerading as me on Facebook who answers people back as me, and he says my likes are Mary Coughlan. He’s got 1,600 friends. More are waiting. A girl asked me yesterday, ‘Why won’t you invite me on to your page?’ I said, ‘I don’t have a page’. But yer man answers back saying, ‘Great to see you the other day at the Róisín Dubh. Yeah, great gig, wasn’t it?’ That’s not me! So I’m going to ‘out’ this guy starting on next Monday. This guy is going to get it! But that Facebook/Twitter thing, what’s it all about? I’m not a big Facebook head. I think it’s more of a singles thing. It’s all about, "Oh, look at yer wan, she’s lovely! Oh, look at this one!" Like, there’s a bit of flippin’ soft Redtube about it? Porntube.
It’s more like, ‘Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!’
Yeah, yeah. Like, here’s me in Sydney at the bridge last night. I’m not really pushed with that, you know. But Tubridy is mad into Twitter. He twitters like there’s no tomorrow. I just don’t think I could get up to that. I don’t want to be telling people I’m in Woodie’s buying the vice grips, or I’m in the gym, flippin’… or I’m after buying a bloody bit of halibut. But, are people transfixed with it? Are they interested in that shit? I think there’s far more interesting things out there.
Well there are, unless you actually, say, work in Woodie’s: ‘Guess who just came in and bought a vice grips?!’
I bought a Ministry of Sound stereo in Woodie’s – lovely white, with a boom-box, six speakers. I was in Woodie’s in Navan, doing nothing. And the girls wrote me a secret message, a letter. And I got the package from them and I opened it, and then there was a letter inside the box going, ‘This is Sonia and Sandra from Woodie’s, and we are bored to fuck. We can’t wait to get out of here. Take us with you on your journey next time you’re going. This is the shittiest job we have ever had. You wouldn’t believe the fucking boredom in this fucking shit-hole. Hope you read this. Here’s our mobile numbers. Kiss-kiss-kiss’. I kept it beside the stereo. I said, ‘That is quality’.
You never rang them?
Never. But now they might read Hot Press and go, ‘He bloody got that letter!’. But it was interesting. I kept the letter.
You’re lucky to escape that life, really, aren’t you?
I was sixteen when I went into Trinity. Do you know, I just fended for myself for years and years: the Aran Islands, and the Basque Country, and all that.
You followed your missus to Spain, didn’t you?
Yeah. But then when T na G started I went to auditions, I got knocked back, and I went for my first job, and I was on the dole six weeks later. And I’ve done loads of different things, so I’m happy now that I can work in this industry and get paid.
What do you think of reality TV shows or talent competitions like X-Factor?
It’s driving me demented! My kids are now looking forward to X-Factor on a Saturday night. We have to stop this! We cannot allow this show to become the be-all and end-all. It’s absolute trash. The Xtra-Factor, and the Sunday night results, and Ireland’s Got Talent, and reality TV has to be burned at the post and got rid of. I am completely against any of these talent contests. Sky, as well, is just manufacturing – Dizee Rascal, yer wan from Texas, and yer man Jamie Cullum (Must Be The Music). And then there’s Britain’s Got Dancers, Britain’s Got Talent. And then TV3 have been into Ireland’s Dirtiest Chippers, Ireland’s Sluttiest Teenagers, Ireland’s Most Pregnant Women, Ireland’s Hardest Gangs, Ireland’s Toughest Pub. What are we turning into? Is that the way TV has gone now? Anyway, that’s my X-Factor rant.
You can go on if you like . . .
And Louis Walsh, he’s got his hair cut now, he looks cooler. Simon Cowell is working out. And… who cares? You’ve got a good-looking bird in between them every time. Who cares? Why do hundreds of thousands of people turn up to audition for their chance of fame? You should have to graft for a bit of success. That’s the world we live in now, isn’t it? Big Brother. Is Big Brother finished?
It is.
Thanks be to God! But I’m sure they’ll come up with something else.
Back to your 2fm show. Presumably you’ll have to start getting up at five in the morning.
Oh man. Last night, my missus said, ‘Why don’t you have a couple of dry runs there?’ I went to bed because of the jet lag coming from Vancouver, but I said to her, jokingly, ‘I’m going to be going to bed with the lads’. I have a five-year-old and a six-year-old. And we’ll all be putting our pyjamas on downstairs. I’ll be sitting in the middle of me lads. Can I have some supper?’ ‘Yeah’. And then, ‘Will we brush our teeth, Mam?’ And then we’ll have a story upstairs, and she’ll tuck me in. There’s got to be a lot to be said for it. I mightn’t even get the second half of the Champion’s League. I think ten o’clock will be my break-off point, but I’ll be in bed at half nine. The first couple of weeks I might be going in for half five, but I might get it down to a tee. No traffic in Galway, no traffic on the Tuam Road, no traffic on the Headford Road, and I’ll be in for six. I’m going to buy an espresso machine next week for the office and for the crew. I think I have enough natural energy, but I do think coffee will come into play.
You have a reputation for being mad-cap.
Yeah, I have a lot of energy.
Was that always the case?
I don’t think anyone who knew me in school would say I was any different. I was funny in class. I got away with messing. I think, character-wise, it’s the way I’ve always been. There was always funnier lads in class, and there’s mad-cap Irish people all over the place. There’s people working in Boston Scientific who know people that are ‘mad’. It’s just I have a lot of energy reserves, and I enjoy bantering with people, and I enjoy feeding off people’s energy.
What about drinking?
Oh listen – hangovers. Solpadine plays a large part in my life.
Will you be able to go Sunday to Thursday nights without having a few pints?
I could, yeah, because I’ll look forward to it then. With the Celtic Tiger, we’ve got into our Chilean wines, haven’t we? I look forward to getting down to a gig at the Róisín in Galway on a Friday night, Saturday night. House parties – I made a bit of a room out the back of the house with a pool table and all my memorabilia, and you can play some large, loud music. My missus bought me a drum-kit for my fortieth, so I’m in the middle of lessons now.
How about spliff?
Not at the moment. Listen, regarding marijuana, I have been in places all over the world – parts of Jamaica; parts of Ethiopia and Africa; I’ve been to South America; I’ve been to Thailand; I’ve now just come back from Vancouver; I’ve done marijuana stories all over the world. I did a whole story in Amsterdam with a young guy from Tallaght who had moved over there, where we fixed the camera outside… you know, I let people make their own judgements of if you smoke or you don’t smoke. The ganja factor in this country is massive. Someday it will be legalised, won’t it?
It’s possibly about to happen in California.
Yeah, they’re about to vote in California. Now, Canada’s a very rich country with oil, and natural reserves of gold and diamonds. But British Columbia is the biggest producer of marijuana in North America. It’s a billion-dollar industry, so I’m pro-that. I don’t want to see young lads on the side of the road drinking a bottle of vodka, and then thinking they’re a man.
What do you think of headshops?
I absolutely abhor them. I think they are the absolute scourge of society – we don’t know what’s in that stuff, that they call ‘bath salts’. The people who are behind the headshops are very well-connected. They’re not entrepreneurs. I’ve heard rumours of people who own headshops that are in important jobs. These aren’t teachers or doctors. You know, there’s a solicitor runs one – I’m not going to name the place – he’s a solicitor. These places are pulling in thousands of euros.
Or were.
Were. I want them all shut down. How can a 15-year-old go in somewhere and be allowed to buy Mexican mushrooms, or liquid acid, or herbal ‘bath salts’ that say, ‘Do Not Take’. Do you know? Synthetic stuff. We have a strange little country where a cowboy operation… there’s none on the streets in Manchester, or in Cardiff. And I have asked my mates who live over there, and yet you’ll have one in Tubercurry, in Leixlip. In Navan there was one called The Buzz Stop that was open ‘til six in the morning, so you had people going in there. I don’t know about your view on them, but my view on them is they should be stopped.
Have you ever had a bad trip?
No, no, no. This country is a country of excess with alcohol and everything else, and we’ve just got to get it into proportion – open the bars ‘til six o’clock in the morning and we will cut down the people who come out of there bananas at 2am and have nowhere to go except Supermacs, and then they get into a fight, and then there’s tons of people in the fight.
And then Ryan Tubridy gets involved!
Yeah, Tubridy outside Supermacs. The thing is if you legalise something it takes the whole ‘thing’ away from it, and it just becomes calmer. I lived in Spain for years. You don’t have to worry about walking home at four o’clock in the morning when you see a group of lads coming on the same street as you. You don’t have to check your pace, go over to the other side of the road, and keep your head down. There’s that tension in Ireland, man, that doesn’t need to be there, because everything is condensed into seven o’clock in the evenings ‘til two o’clock in the morning. And 70,000 people are thrown out of the bars in Dublin, and 8,000 people are thrown out in Galway, and there’s nowhere to go. I know for a fact that the cops pray for rain every Saturday night, because rain disperses people. Let the bars be open ‘til six in the morning. And, do you know what? People will come out of there and fall asleep. People won’t come out of there hyped and buzzed-up, and selling these stupid Fat Frog drinks, and Goldschläger bombs. So everything is wrong. The judges tell you, ‘We have to get them home’. No. Open the bars up ‘til six in the morning and let them drink, because they’ll come out of there and they’ll be so rubbery that they’ll have to go home. That’s my view on it.
What’s been the lowest point of your life?
(Long pause)... I’m a very optimistic person about the way things work out. There’s very few happy families left in the world, but my childhood upbringing was pretty good. But low points? I know what it was like to be on the dole, and then not knowing what you want to do, and failing college. I got a job in television – my first job in television – and I was back on the dole four weeks later.
The short-lived TG4 fashion show?
Yeah. That was that stupid thing we did where everyone was fired off, and we got £117 a week, and I had to go in and ask them for my cheque. And I was thinking, ‘Is this the world of television? Is this what it’s all about?’ And I was back on the dole then. I kind of remember jumping around the kitchen with excitement when I first got the gig. Then I realised it wasn’t a theatre of dreams, or red carpets, or caravans full of make-up artists doing your wardrobe for you.
Do you dwell on stuff?
No, I let it go. But I do live in my head. I’m always thinking all the time. I used to be mad into going to Shiatsu and Reiki and all this sort of stuff, and I do agree with minding the body a little bit more than – you know, we have no problem in this country with washing your car, taking care of your car, cleaning it. Do we take care of our bodies and our heads? Do we take time out to chill, and stuff?
Do you believe in God?
No. I don’t think there’s anything there, but I do believe that people have to cling on to something. My mother is a very religious woman, and there’s a ‘man above’ for her. I believe in the power of ‘something’ being there. Now that I have young kids, you know, we try and go (to mass) once or twice a month. My missus brings them more than I do, but it’s important for little lads to make their own decision when they come to 14 or 15. I’m more believing in being a good person. There’s people in this world who don’t say ‘hello’ to each other when they leave the house in the morning – and they’re next-door neighbours. I think that saying hello to somebody, and shaking hands, and stopping for two minutes – no matter who they are – is a very simple thing that we need to get back to. And laughing. Being a good person, that’s my ethic. Being a good person is far more important than believing in God.
What’s your ambition in life now?
I take it one year at a time. Because I never have a masterplan. Every January I get this, sort of, after-Christmas feeling: ‘Oh Christ! Have I any TV shows lined-up?’ ‘No’. ‘Have I anything lined-up at the moment?’ ‘No’. The proof is in the pudding, as in, I’m only as good as my last TV show. So, we don’t plan too far ahead. Canada came up upon us in February of this year. We have done it now. The radio came from something that me and Tommy did. So, I have no ambition. I just want to keep doing what I’m good at.
You’re often mimicked by Mario Rosenstock on Gift Grub. Does it bother you?
Oh no, not at all. Jesus, if it makes people laugh, it’s fantastic. I don’t mind that at all. I’m more interested in finding out who this guy is on Facebook who is impersonating me. If he doesn’t have red hair, I’m going to cut the balls off him. He’d better have ginger pubes, or he’s for it!
Do you have a motto in life?
Yeah, my mother says, ‘All good things come to those who wait’. I remember being 31 years of age, and I had no car, I was on the dole, I was living in Galway. I was going, ‘What is this all about?’ I was getting a bus back to Navan to celebrate Christmas. The bus was stopping in Athlone. (Adopts nasal, bus driver tone) ‘Ah, stoppin’ in here anyways’. And I went into this shop, and I got a sandwich with cheese and ham that was made four days ago, and a takeaway cup of tea, and I was there going, ‘What am I like? Thirty-one, man. This is cat’. And then I got back to Navan and once I went inside the house I said, ‘Mam, when am I going to get a car? What am I doing?’ And she went, ‘All good things come to those who wait’. Johnny Murtagh – the jockey – yesterday told me, ‘If it’s for you, it won’t pass you by’. I’ll leave it at that. He’s riding in the Arc du Triomphe on Sunday for a five-million pound race, so hopefully nothing will pass him by. But my mother? I think Irish mothers, we can get a lot more wise-ness out of them. My mother is a wise, wise West of Ireland woman, so I’m trying to get as much wise-ness from her as I can.
Or wisdom, even.
Or wisdom. Ha! Wise-ness! Hate them or love them, they are the best cooks. Now, it’s way past my bed hour...

Hector hosts Breakfast With Hector on 2fm, weekdays from 7am-9am. He comes to the Radisson Live Lounge on October 23 as part of the Bulmers Galway Comedy Festival, where he’ll be hosting an evening with Rubberbandits, Hardy Bucks and Grandmaster Cash.