Tough Mother - TV Highlight of the Fortnight

The novel premise of Baz Ashmawy’s new Sky show, 50 Ways To Kill Your Mammy, finds the presenter participating in a series of adventures with his mother, Nancy, who displays a remarkable zest for new challenges.

Throughout  the series, she and Baz – amongst other escapades – participate in sky-diving, alligator wrangling, gun-shooting and wake boarding.
  “Mum asked me one day would I do a sky dive with her,” says Baz, sitting with Nancy in the Ormonde Hotel during Sky’s Kilkenny Cat Laughs festival. “And I sort of laughed it off, and said, ‘Aren’t you a bit old to be doing a sky dive?’ But mum was obsessed with this 70-year-old nun who had done it, and then we started Googling it and so on.
    “At the start, I was a bit dismissive of the idea, but then you look up these various sky diving places and you see there’s a 96-year-old doing it, an 87-year-old, loads of people. And then it clicked, and I thought, ‘Screw that, what if we just went around the world and did a lot of the stuff that I’ve done, but this time I’ll do it with mum.’ It was like my bucketlist of things I thought she should try.”
    And was the sky diving experience what Nancy thought it would it be?
  “It was better than I expected,” she enthuses. “I’d always wondered what it would be like to go out into the clouds, and it was absolutely brilliant.  I’d do it again.”
    Nancy and Baz certainly have a great chemistry, and there are terrific comedic moments in the series courtesy of Nancy’s humorous reactions to the unlikely situations in which she finds herself.
  How did Baz go about getting this unique show made?
    “I’d been chatting to Sky for a couple of years and I knew they wanted something in the travel genre,” he explains. “But it’s kind of a bit exhausted, that format. I wanted something that felt good. I’d done How Low Can You Go? for five years with the boys and had a great experience with it, but a lot of what made that special was the relationship. So I wanted to make a series that was in these amazing places, doing these amazing things, but at the root was really about this mother and son. And Sky just got it instantly and were behind me 100 per cent.
  “Things here were quiet, and the vision I had was quite big and expensive. It was great to have a player in Ireland that invested in Irish talent. And they didn’t want gimmicky Irish, they wanted something real.”
    As Ashmawy lists the places visited and the activities pursued in 50 Ways To Kill Your Mammy, it becomes obvious that the production was one on a vast scale, with plenty of scope and ambition.
      “There’s white water rafting in Thailand, and there’s flying 1942 war birds upside down,” he begins. “And then you have LA bounty hunter raids, handling snakes, riding ostriches, and sleeping on a desert island. Not to mention my mum trying to tattoo me and the biggest bungee jump on the planet... it was the biggest things I could think of really.”
    For Nancy, at 71 years of age, the demands of shooting such a show seem like a lot to take on.
    “Well, I didn’t think of it like that,” she replies. “I suppose I’m the type of person who takes every day as it comes, and for me it was an amazing experience. Anything I did was fantastic. I mean, even the fact you’re travelling with the crew, and you’re on the road for three weeks, they become like a family, and that’s another great aspect. And also the chance to do this stuff with Baz was wonderful. I knew nothing bad was going to happen to me, because he wouldn’t allow it to happen.”
    Would Nancy say she has been a particularly adventurous person during her life?
   “I’d have like to have been,” she reflects. “I was a nurse and that was it. I retired in 2009 and then I did the usual things, like walks, and playing Scrabble and cards. Then when this came up, it was like winning the Lotto. I’ve been so lucky to these things, and not many sons would want to bring their 70-year-old mother to work with them!”
    Does Nancy think she’ll find herself getting recognised by the public when the show is broadcast?
   “Whatever about being recognised, that doesn’t worry me,” she responds. “But I’d hope that people my age would say, ‘Well right, if she can do things like that, then we’ll do things.’ I was saying to Baz, as you get older, people kind of ignore you, they look through you. I’m 71 but I don’t feel 71.”
   For both Baz and Nancy, 50 Ways To Kill Your Mammy seems to have been an extraordinary opportunity to travel.
   “The thing about doing telly, and it was something I was always trying to explain to Mum, is that you get access,” nods Baz. “It’s stuff that other people don’t get to see. Like, we did an intercontinental rally together through the Sahara, and we swam with great white sharks. We did things that were just an amazing opportunity, and I wasn’t sure in the beginning what way my Mum would take it, but she really embraced it. The crew were just willing her on as well, she has that effect on people.”
    What was the most surprising aspect of making the show?
    “It’s funny, in the beginning, I thought it would bring us closer, but I found that we’re already close,” notes Baz. “I suppose I’d have these moments where I’d be in a hotel, and someone would walk in, and I’d blurt out that Mum had just done the highest sky dive in the world, and it’s kind of like if you have a child, and they’ve just won an accolade. It’s that kind of pride. I’ve always been proud of Mum, but I think when people see it and see what I already know about her… I don’t know, I’m just very proud!”