The Savage Truth

David McSavage has found a new lease of life with the success of his television show The Savage Eye. A bitingly funny dissection of Irish society, the series has seen the comedian regain his creative focus after a few aimless years. Initially achieving cult fame thanks to his impromptu performances in Temple Bar and audience-baiting live shows, McSavage’s career seemed to trail off into a series of all-too-routine controversies, usually centred around his arrests for street performance.

However, the positive critical and audience reaction to The Savage Eye has reinvigorated McSavage, and he was in characteristically provocative form when he sat down for a chat with Hot Press. Taking place in the lounge of the Westbury Hotel, there was a somewhat surreal twist to the proceedings: shortly after we’d debated the merits of The Vincent Browne Show, the host himself walked into the Westbury Lounge, sat down a few seats from us, leafed through a copy of the Irish Independent and promptly fell asleep.
However, this certainly wasn’t a comment on the lively nature of the interview, as McSavage talked about his past drug use, alcoholism, the Irish media, and his family’s political background (his father David Andrews being an ex-Minister for Foreign Affairs, and his brother Barry until recently a TD for Dún Laoghaire and a junior minister), as well giving a slagging to his cousin Ryan Tubridy and fellow comic Michael McIntyre.

You’re finishing the edit of The Savage Eye?
Yeah, I know, can you imagine it? The last episode is next Monday, and we did some pick-ups of group sketches called ‘Time Travellers’. They’re travellers who travel through time, ie. time travellers. I just did the voiceover today, and you have to rewrite it, and you’re doing extra vox pops, so right up to the wire you’re picking stuff up. But that’s the good thing about it, because you can look at it and fine-tune it, which is a great thing to be able to do.
If you think about it, a comedian’s got whatever, a half-hour, and he’s been working on that fucking half-hour for a year. With TV, you don’t have that luxury. You’re trying to come up with a sketch, and then you try and get it as good as you can in the edit, but we have the opportunity to get vox pops, which is one of the most interesting aspects of The Savage Eye. As long as people aren’t trying to be funny, if you know what I mean, cos then it doesn’t work. But if you’re just speaking from the heart, then it’s good.
Someone I know was caught out, actually.
Caught out? It’s not caught out. Helped out!
It was someone who should have known who you were.
What did he say?
I can’t remember. He tried to make it sound like he was funny, but I don’t even know if it got used in the show! But what’s your prerogative with doing those vox pops? Chris Morris used to do them...
The people are not the objects of ridicule. They’re trying to give the sketches a reason to exist, and they point you in the right direction. They keep the narrative rattling along, so it’s not about them. They can say funny stuff, but it’s not about them. If it is, it doesn’t work. It looks like it’s a cheap go. It’s okay in that situation if you’re making fun of people who are pompous and full of shit, like Paul Daniels. But with the average punter on the street it’s a different thing. People might think I was interested in taking the piss, but it’s not what I’m interested in doing.
The Savage Eye seems to have been very well-received overall.
The figures started off at 130,000, then it went up to 200,000 last Monday. The PR woman in RTÉ asked me, “What would be your audience?” And I said, “I’d love about 200,000.” And she kind of paused and went, “I don’t think that’s realistic.” I was quite deflated by that, but I think it’s a been a word-of-mouth thing – the PR hasn’t been great. Look, I watch the show and I just see loads of mistakes, and there are loads of mistakes, but I think there are a lot of good quality sketches, and I think people appreciate stuff that is trying to say something and has a point of view. Like TV nowadays, it’s watchable, but it’s instantly forgettable. Although things like The X-Factor... do you watch it?
No, I don’t.
Yeah, you probably do, though! (Laughs)
I don’t!
You genuinely don’t? What about the auditions? You have to watch the auditions! It’s just watchable. A guy walking in, he’s shit, thinks he’s brilliant, standing in front of a panel. It’s kind of like Victorians walking into a mental asylum, but a more sanitised version. You just see this man’s dreams collapse like a house of cards. But it is very watchable.
I find a lot of mainstream television these days is a freak show. I was watching Channel 4 the other night and there was an advert for a programme about people with deformities living with people who think they’re beautiful.
Oh shit, I saw that!
But it’s Channel 4!
I think they have a real coked-up fucking mindset there, where you’ve got some creative type going (Does London accent), “Let’s get fucking ugly cunts to live with beautiful people, you know what I mean? It’s going to be fucking amazing!” It is a coked-up idea, isn’t it? And I think I did see an ad for that, this guy with a horrible, elephant man type of... God love him, you know? And then going out to a club... oh fuck! What’s going on, you know? What an unfortunate affliction.
Have you ever had coked-up psychosis yourself?
No, I’ve never... I did coke when I was very young and, oh, it doesn’t suit me at all. I can’t go near fucking drugs. In all honesty, there are certain types of people, and I’m sure you see them in your walk of life – the media types – and it’s almost like they only come alive or show emotion when they’re drunk or on drugs. It suits those types of people. They seem to be able to get away with it a bit. But I couldn’t do it. And that thing about using drugs to inspire you, it doesn’t work like that at all. I don’t think any writer has ever written anything when they’re pissed out of their mind.
Were drugs widely used in your peer group?
Yeah, and certainly in your area as well, there are a lot of drugs among journalists and in the media. I don’t think it’s big and I don’t think it’s clever; you meet people socially and they’re kind of up. You think, “Oh, he’s really cheerful. Wait, he’s not – he’s on fucking drugs and he’s actually quite a boring person.” He’s cheating, in a way. But I think people do pay a price for it – it strips you of your humanity if you do it too much. It’s a dangerous game, the old drugs thing.
Should they be legalised?
They should be legalised. That’s why Boyd Barrett was great, he made the most sense to me. If you make them illicit and illegal, you’re pushing it underground, and making them more exciting and accessible. They should be taxed. What’s the model in Amsterdam? Cocaine is illegal. If cocaine and heroin were legal, people would kill themselves off really quickly, and then it would level out a bit… I don’t know. Actually, it’s very hard to know what the correct response is to drugs. Possibly it could just be an individual thing. You give people the information, and hopefully they can make their own decision. That’s the thing with alcohol – you can tell people exactly what’s going to happen if you do this, but people have to bottom out themselves to figure it out. You have to experience things for yourself...
It’s really ingrained in the culture.
It’s socially acceptable to be drunk and falling around the place. It’s almost a sign that the economy is doing well – that man is spending money. But then they call it our culture. I was talking to an African guy and he said, “How can that be culture? Culture is learning how to play something or painting.” That’s not a fucking culture, is it? Being so socially inept that the only way you can connect with somebody is when you’re pissed out of your fucking head? Having such low self-esteem and self-worth...
Who are we talking about here?
I’m saying this about myself. I’m an alcoholic and I’m just thinking about it now, and it pisses me off. Then if you say this, you get, “Would you fucking relax? What the fuck’s wrong with you?” But there you go. We manage through it anyway, most of us mature out of it.
When I was playing football in my teenage years, if you won something and the celebrations got out of hand, it was “drink-fuelled antics”. On the other hand, if someone on the team said they’d smoked a joint, it was the end of the world! Also, there’s this attitude of, “We know how to have a good time.” Well, you don’t! Cos if you did, you wouldn’t need to drink. But then again, I fucking loved grass, I thought it was amazing. Listening to music when you’re stoned is fantastic. Hopefully in a hundred years there’ll be coffee shops selling grass. It would be amazing, wouldn’t it? It would be awesome.
To what extent did alcoholism affect your life?
The thing is, my lifestyle kind of evolved around drinking. Because you’re a comedian, you can drink after your gigs and then the next day you aren’t working anyway. But I suppose with drinking, it’s an escape, so you have to ask what are you escaping from? You’re escaping from your own life, and why are you doing that? Because you feel like you’re a failure and so on. To be quite honest, it’s kind of like a suicide, but a Catholic, Irish, self-destructive suicide. You don’t have the guts to actually kill yourself, but you’re doing it slowly, incrementally. You’re not being yourself, you’re stepping away because you don’t have the skills to be responsible for yourself socially. You drink to give yourself confidence. My drinking affected me, it affected the family, it affected Hannah (McSavage’s partner, with whom he has two sons), but hopefully I stopped it before it got really bad. I fucked up an awful lot of opportunities, but then again, I thought that was exciting as well – I thought I was artistically self-destructive. It’s that thing of, “You have no power over me. Do you think I’m going to lick your arse because you’re offering me something? Go fuck yourself!” But you hopefully mature out of that.
It upset people who were close to you?
When I was in Australia, me and Hannah had just had a baby, and she was looking after everything. I wasn’t making any money, and I was going out on binges and coming back in the early morning. I was no help to her. So it was a very tough situation for Hannah, which I do feel very bad about. I want to continue to make it up to her.
It feels like you have a lot more freedom to tackle edgier subject matter in the series than most RTÉ shows. Were you essentially left to your own devices?
Yeah, we were. Eddie Doyle, the fact that he’s in RTÉ, you assume he’s going to be telling us not to do this or that. I mean, anything religious, they’re freaked out about, they’re touchy. So you can’t say this or make fun of that... there’s all this blasphemy fucking law bullshit. But anything that I’m saying about religion, it’s not gratuitous, it has a point. So that side of things can be very frustrating. But we were generally left alone.
Have you read that Vanity Fair article about the Irish economic meltdown?
I read a bit of it, yeah. It’s great, but you knew everything that he was writing about. There was nothing new particularly.
I just read it last night, and what stuck in my head was the scene on the night of the bank guarantee. You had ministers sitting around the table without a fucking clue what was happening. And the advisors in Merrill Lynch they were listening to had a vested interest in the banks being bailed out!
I know! It’s not good.
The other point the writer made was that there has been uproar in other countries during the global recession, but we’ve been fairly timid here. We should be angrier. We get pushed and pushed like he said. How hard do you have to push the Irish before we break? I think we’re confused. Part of us is thinking, “Should we be rebelling?” We’re kind of a peaceful island people in a way, and the only reason we have this impossible reputation is because we have been pushed so much, maybe. If you push anybody enough, I suppose, they’re going to stand up. But all the doom and gloom and all the rest of it... some people are hurting, especially young people leaving the country. There’s about a thousand a week or something. Did you hear that statistic?
I think that’s the saddest aspect of it, people who don’t have the choice to stay in their home country.
I think it’s a good thing as well. Cos it is such a small island, people should be leaving anyway. I wonder what percentage of those people will come back though?
But if people don’t want to leave, that is quite sad.
Yeah, it is.
(Laughing) But you think it’s pretty good!
No, I don’t think it’s good if people don’t want to leave, but I would encourage... (does mock authoritative voice) I would encourage people to see other parts of the world. We forget, it is quite insular.
I don’t feel compelled to riot. I think if I lost my job, I’d be outraged.
(Laughs) That’s so true though. We need to hire French people to protest on our behalf!
Do you know many people who’ve been affected by the recession?
Well, no. I’m in the comedy thing. The film thing is very healthy at the moment. There are lots of films being made, lots of production, lots of TV work. We are quite resilient, you know. I don’t see people suffering that badly. (Suddenly unsure) Jesus, I hope not anyway. I don’t know.
What do you think of the standard of TV in Ireland generally, whether it’s drama or comedy? What about the kind of satire Oliver Callan or Mario Rosenstock are...
(Interrupting) That’s more impressionists, isn’t it? It’s not satire, as such. Would you say? I don’t think it’s satire. Well, Rory Bremner does satire and impressions as well. He’s amazing. I saw your man, Rosenstock, actually do Vincent Browne and I thought he was very funny. You know Vincent gives you that sly look, and it’s sort of evil and scary. Do you watch Vincent Browne?
I do.
Do you not like him?
I find his sighing and general arrogance kind of terrible. I mean, I find it entertaining, but I don’t find it informative, particularly. The Après Match guys did a brilliant parody of his show last summer. But you enjoy his show?
I do. I saw him interview Joan Burton and I was laughing me head off. It was so funny.
She was getting hysterical.
She vibrates at a strange frequency, that woman. She looks very agitated. Why is she popular? Is it that she brings out the school kid in people? That they see her as a school mistress?
I don’t think she is that popular. Again, to refer to the Vanity Fair piece, it mentioned that she annoys a lot of Irish people. I think she’s intelligent, but for some reason, when she gets going on TV or radio, she starts shrieking these clichéd phrases.
She’s a super Emer. You know women who (adopts high-pitched voice) talk like this.
Joe Higgins is like her male equivalent.
It’s like Eastenders. To me it’s a soap opera. You sort of tune in and see what these people are yelling at each other. I think people enjoy being outraged. You know, looking at it and going, “Fuck, listen to that fucking bullshit.” That kind of stuff.
Did you ever meet Vincent Browne?
No, I didn’t. I needed a little bit of legal advice from him for a sketch about Mary Harney, because people are so litigious here. Like, in the UK, I think the laws are a little bit easier. He’s a smart guy. I think somebody like him would be a great writer. Even Eoghan Harris... I don’t know if you have an opinion on Eoghan Harris, but I think he’s a very creative person, very smart, and I think he’s completely wasted and in the wrong business. He shouldn’t be a senator at all. He should be writing stories and coming up with ideas. When I interviewed him, the amount of stuff he was coming up with... he had such a vast reference and he was so well-read. You might think that he’s whatever, because of his political affiliations, but there you go.
Someone was saying to me they enjoyed the interviews in The Savage Eye with Harris and Fintan O’Toole, because the cutaways to vox pops had the effect of ridiculing their pomposity.
I don’t think that was the aim. I was very happy to have Fintan O’Toole on the show. You might disagree with him, but he’s a very fucking smart person and he knows how to tell a story. From my point of view, it adds weight to what I’m doing. It’s not about making them look foolish. I hope it doesn’t come across like that. It’s a bigger thing than that. We’re trying to tell this story, and if they’re experts, it adds a weight to what I’m doing, therefore the sketches are funnier.
If the sketches have a solid basis of truth, it just adds a believability.
It would be interesting to see a TV show in Ireland that had a go at people in public life. I think Harris and O’Toole can come out with unbelievable bullshit sometimes, in the same way that lots of people can, right across the spectrum, from celebrities to politicians.
I just think Ireland is too small for that. It’s such a small country, for me, making fun of these individuals, it almost gives them more credibility than they deserve. But I know what you mean. Maybe that is the way to do the next thing. It’s a good point actually, because we are here thanks to opinion-makers, and people who can possibly cause change. So let’s go to the horse’s mouth as it were, and try and ridicule them.
Sort of in that area as well, do you ever look at magazines like VIP and feel baffled as to why they’re so popular?
Well, that’s aimed at a certain strand of society, isn’t it? And we’re not that demographic. Just watching pictures of somebody’s house... I don’t know what to say about it. Things that are popular or mainstream – somebody like you, you use your mind and have an opinion, and you look at it and go, “That’s vacuous shit!” You almost take it like they’re trying to personally insult you.
But it’s hard not to feel insulted by certain aspects of celebrity culture.
But you see, popularity... it’s like a fast food restaurant. It’s popular. And then the restaurant down the road that uses organic vegetables, and sources its food and really knows what it’s doing, has to shut down.
Charlie Brooker did something on this topic on Newswipe.
He’s very good, I love him.
He had this great rant one time about how even serious presenters on shows like Newsnight will fawn over celebrities, and never challenge them in the way they would a politician.
Yeah, well that was the thing that was good about Dennis Pennis, wasn’t it? He was having a go at celebrities, he was showing them up in a way you hadn’t seen before. They’d always been given a free ride, and then he comes up and starts ripping into them. Now, if the celebrity isn’t up his hole and doesn’t take himself too seriously, it doesn’t work. But I remember he asked some actor, “Do you like trees?” And the guy goes, “Why yes, I do.” And Pennis says something like, “Makes sense – cos your acting is so wooden.” Comedy, to have some bite, actually has to have a bit of tension in it. Character stuff and sketches are okay, but a show that’s trying to get at something or make a point – I think comedy is great when there’s loads of tension in it.
What do you think of Brendan O’Carroll’s sitcom?
He says it harks back to those kind of family things twenty years ago or whatever, and he knows what he’s doing. He’s not setting that up as high art or something, he knows who’s in his audience, and he knows how to write for them. So, you know, you have to fucking pat him on the back. (Laughs) Quite hard. I was watching it, it’s okay, it’s kind of funny, him dressed up as an old woman. It’s okay, but I wouldn’t be watching it like I’d be watching The Larry Sanders Show. Anyway, he knows what he’s doing, and he’s making good money.
Who’s the worst Irish comedian?
I am. I can be. No, I’m just trying to think of performances I’ve seen... it’s that kind of thing, there are shows on, and you see that Hello magazine or whatever, and I’m watching some comedy shows or panel shows, and they’re kind of not really saying anything. They’re getting huge laughs, and I’m kind of going, “What the fuck?” But people need to laugh, the jokes don’t need to be that funny, likeability is hugely important. Michael McIntyre, he’s not that funny – I know comics who are a lot funnier than him, but they don’t have whatever. But there’s that likeability, that thing... and there are different demographics. Some people want this, you want that.
And what about Ryan Tubridy?
Well, he’s good at the political interviews. I was actually watching Graham Norton doing some interviews, and it’s so easy, and he’s bringing people out of themselves, and then you cut to Ryan... it’s almost like he skipped a generation. This generation has kind of just turned into the generation before last, without any intermediate stage. Where’s his youth? He was talking to two young men – he’s a young man, he should be having a bit of the craic, you know? I saw this interview he did with the Gleeson brothers, and it was very fucking stiff, and unnecessarily so. And you’re just thinking, “No, that’s no good.” He’s bought into this image of himself as a little Cary Grant.
Did you know Ryan much growing up?
I didn’t. He’s a very nice guy, Ryan, and he’s a very good interviewer when it’s based on politics. But with the other stuff, I don’t know.
Has your dad seen your show?
He loves the Bull Mick. There’s a character in it who’s very racist, homophobic and misogynistic, like people were back in the ’60s and ’70s. He likes that. Again, he’s more interested in the politics and all that shite.
Do you have a good relationship with him generally?
Yeah. I think he and Barry have more in common obviously, he’s a chip off the old block. It’s kind of funny, I went canvassing with Barry a few days ago, as a minister. And we filmed it, just for a laugh. So I was dressed as the minister from the show, and he is a minister. It just goes to show how bad things are going for Fianna Fáil, that he’d have to get his brother, the comedian, to go round with him. The black sheep has been welcomed back to the fold.
Is there going to be another series of The Savage Eye?
I don’t know what we’re going to work on next to be quite honest. I literally finished this series today. The show has saved me, definitely, because without that, I’d just be fucking waffling around. I do need a structure.

David McSavage plays the D Hotel, Drogheda on April 28