The Great Young Offenders Pink Pussy Purse Debate

They may be sitting round a Dublin 2 table today for contractual reasons, but you can tell from the mischievous grins, howling laughter and finishing off of each others sentences that Hillary Rose, PJ Gallagher, Alex Murphy and Chris Walley are a tight bunch.

Their respective roles as Mairéad MacSweeney, Principal Barry Walsh, Conor MacSweeney and Jock O’Keefe in The Young Offenders mean that for the next five Mondays – Season 2 kicked off this week on RTÉ2 – there won’t be a child washed in Ireland between 9.30 and 10pm.

I know a Dubliner who booked themselves into a Belfast hotel in order to watch the whole series the moment it went live on BBC Three, which has the UK binging rights.

Having also managed to devour it all in one sitting, Hot Press is pleased to report that it’s even more underwear-soilingly funny than The Young Offenders’ first televisual runout. SPOILER ALERT: STOP READING NOW IF YOU HAVEN’T ALREADY WATCHED EPISODE TWO!!!! Along with the regular crew we get to meet Gavin Madigan, Jock’s ratboy of a former best friend and his equally horrendous teacher Mum, Nancy, who both pitch up unexpectedly at St. Finan’s Community School. The search for a missing pink pussy purse results in Conor being wrongly being accused of theft, and him and Jock urinating on Principal Walsh’s shoes in protest at the injustice.

Destined to join Bishop Brennan being kicked up the arse; Del Boy falling through the bar; and Basil Fawlty telling the Germans precisely who started the war in the pantheon of great sitcom scenes, it caused this writer to snort a mouthful of tea out through his nose and then spend five minutes coughing up a lung.

“That’s the reaction we were going for,” beams Hilary Rose who in addition to her screen mammy duties co-writes The Young Offenders with her husband, Peter Foott.

I’m guessing that she’s the one responsible for the pink pussy purse.
“Guilty as charged,” she deadpans.

“There were a few variations of it,” PJ jumps in. “In the first version I learned it was the ‘pink piggy purse’ but then it changed to ‘pink pussy purse’ which is far funnier – especially when you’re saying it six times in quick succession. Rule one of comedy; you can never overdo a good joke. I forget what the other variations were but on the day of the shoot I was saying all of them except ‘pink pussy purse’. The crew were looking at their watches thinking, ‘We’re not going to be in the pub by six, are we?’”

Trained actor or not – PJ studied at the Gaiety School of Acting before going the standup route – it can’t be easy keeping a straight face while delivering lines like that.

“Yeah, especially when you’re doing scenes with Alex and Chris,” he notes. “They’re very provocative. What you don’t see are the looks the feckers are giving you when they’re off camera. Then they’ll whisper little things in your ear. I don’t know how many times I’ve corpsed because of them.”

Hilary has the same difficulty being on set with PJ.

“I die a death any time he’s in the room,” she resumes. “There’s a scene in the first episode where we’re all sitting down in the hospital talking about the adoption of the baby and PJ just went off on one. I actually hid myself behind Jenny, who plays Siobhán, because we were under time pressure and I didn’t want to ruin the shot. I had tears and snot streaming down my face. I was watching it last night and thought, ‘No wonder they cut me out of most of the scene.’ You see me nodding and going, ‘Yeah, right, sure’, but that’s it.”

To ensure that Principal Walsh really gets the message, Conor and Jock remove all of their clothes before number one-ing on his shoos.

Luckily for viewers they have their arses to the camera, but did PJ get to see the lads’, er, lads?

“No, we had our modesty pouches – or what we call ‘ cock socks’ on,” Alex Murphy reassures me. “You’re born naked so it’s getting back to your roots. Er…”

“What are you on about?” Chris Walley interjects.

“That’s his defence if he’s ever caught being a flasher; ‘Sorry Guard, I was just getting back to my roots,’” PJ adds.

“We’re comfortable and such good friends with everybody on set that when it came to taking our kit off, we just did it,” a giggling Chris takes over. “It’s weird how quickly stuff like that becomes normal. You’ll be chatting about the most benign thing – ‘Did you see the match last night?’ – whilst balls naked.”

“There was a brilliant moment when you were standing there in the nip with the cock sock and the wee machine going up your leg, and you went, ‘I’ve won a BAFTA and an Olivier,’” PJ roars. “‘What’s my motivation for pissing on this person’s shoes?’ It was class.”

“You were fine, weren’t you, until the piss hit your shoe and the sound of it cracked you up,” Alex recalls with glee.

“I got my head around it being cold and wet but, yeah, when the piss bounced of me shoes I couldn’t stop laughing,” PJ nods.

Asked whether there are similarities between St. Finan’s and the secondary school he attended, Gallagher shoots back: “They’re identical. Our teachers were so desperate to get away from us that they were the ones who mitched off school to go drink cans in the park. They really didn’t like these young people interfering with the smooth running of their school. That’s how Barry sees it with the two lads; he just feels that the whole world would be so much better if they fucked off to another planet.

“When people say about my old school, ‘It’s really good now; the class sizes are normal and they have all this counseling’, I’m like, ‘Are you serious because it was a shitbox when I was there.’ Our lessons were 25 minutes of ‘Shut uppppppp!!!!’ followed by ‘You out, you out, you out!’

“Their answer to my not turning up eighteen days in a row was to exclude me. ‘What the fuck? They’ve now made me officially not let in.’ The moment I hit sixteen I was gone, not that any of the teachers noticed. It was ridiculous.”

If there were an IFTA or BAFTA for Most Heartfelt Use Of The Word ‘Cunt’ it’d go to Hilary Rose for her coruscating episode two put down of Nancy Mulligan.

“Aw, thank you, I appreciate that,” she beams. “I don’t know if you remember the scene in series one where Principal Walsh is saying to Conor, ‘You’re addicted to Jock. If Jock was a powder you’d be snorting him.’ The conversation moves on to what constitutes a swear word, and Conor says ‘cunt’ but not with as much conviction as Mairéad manages this time round. It’s actually Oscar-level swearing.”

All of which suggests that RTÉ have done away with the traditional no boobs/no willies/definitely no C-words ten o’clock watershed.

“They issued us with an official swear count,” Hilary reveals to the astonishment of PJ who says: “So you’re allowed four fucks, three wankers, two pricks and a cunt? I never knew that. Can you trade a prick for a wanker or are they ranked in order of offensiveness? Where are arse and bollocks on the scale?

“Getting back to Gavin and Nancy,” Gallagher continues, “they’re the first Young Offenders characters that have absolutely no redeeming qualities. That ‘They might seem appalling but here’s who they really are…’ thing you get with, say, Billy Murphy and makes the show a bit teary sometimes, doesn’t apply. Gavin and Nancy are fucking rotten to their core.”

Are they based on people Hilary knows?

“No,” she says sounding a trifle unsure. “No, really, they’re not but they’re the perfect nemeses for Conor and Mairéad who have all their buttons pushed by them. Usually she’s the one going, ‘You shouldn’t be doing that, Conor’, but this time it’s mother and son getting stuck in together. It’s rather sweet…”

The Young Offenders
Picture: Miki Barlok

The drawback if you’re Alex Murphy or Chris Walley of starring in The Young Offenders is having to have that awful short, back ‘n’ slap haircut. Do they go, “Oh, fuck…” when the clippers come out?

“It grows out so fast that we have to get it cut every morning,” Chris rues. “You’ll be thinking, ‘My hair doesn’t look quite so awful today’ and then Jenny or Maeve will say, ‘Get in the chair.’”

“I’m the opposite in that I have to grow my hair and a moustache, which because I’m so lacking in testosterone, I started doing in February,” PJ takes-over. “I’m in a permanent state of Movember trying to sprout facial hair, which I then can’t wait to shave off. As soon as they say, ‘That’s a wrap’ I’m reaching for the razor.”

As PJ alluded to earlier, Chris Walley is a RADA trained thesp who gets to appear alongside Andrew Scott, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dean-Charles Chapman, Richard Madden, Mark Strong and Colin Firth – dream cast or what? – in the upcoming Sam Mendes war film, 1917.

“Mine’s only a minor part but, being at the read through with that calibre of actor was incredible – as was being on set with Sam Mendes who’s one of the most successful directors on the planet for a reason,” Chris enthuses. “Without giving too much away, it’s shot as if done in one take with all the characters – and there’s a lot of them – appearing only briefly.”

Premiering Stateside at Christmas, it’s already being talked about as a multiple Academy Award-winner.

“I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it is,” Chris says.

Determined not to have any time off this year, he also joined Olivia Cooke, Ben Hardy, Alec Baldwin, Colm Meaney and Dylan Moran for the shooting in August of Pixie, a Northern Irish heist-gone-seriously-wrong comedy thriller, which has been picked up by Paramount for mid-2020 release.

“I filmed that during The Young Offenders, so I got to go up for a few days, wear an interesting array of hats to cover my hair, and then come back. You’re being super-professional while at the same time thinking: ‘That’s the guy who played Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live!’ It’s a mad story and a mad cast, so it should be good.”

Having wowed us last series with his unique interpretation of The Frank And Walters’ ‘After All’, might we be getting another big Young Offenders musical production number from Billy Murphy?

“Whether through the soundtrack or people singing, Peter loves incorporating music,” Chris says. “So there may be something along those lines coming out. ‘After All’ was such a great way of bringing all those people on the bus together. It’s the National Anthem for Cork people.”

“I went to Bohs v Cork City in Turner’s Cross six months after the series had finished and both sides of the ground were singing, ‘After all I really love you, after all I really care...’ at the top of their voices,” PJ recalls. “It’s the first time I’ve been at a game and everybody’s belting out the same song. Shane, who plays Billy Murphy, was on the pitch giving it loads. It was amazing.”

“It’s one of those scenes that gets funnier every time you see it,” Alex enthuses. “Another that always cracks me up is the episode with the fish. Peter said, ‘Forget about the script, I just want to record ye trying to get the fish in the trolley.’ It was a real tuna as opposed to a stunt fish, so as the day went on it got progressively smellier. The show wasn’t as well known as it is now so we were getting seriously suspicious looks as we pushed it around in the trolley. They don’t tell you how to manhandle fish at RADA, do they Chris?”

And with that Hot Press must take its leave of Hillary, PJ, Alex and Chris who if we were to come back in three hours time would probably still be talking about their favourite Young Offenders bits among themselves. As that wise man Sly once said, it’s a family affair!

• The Young Offenders can be viewed on the RTÉ Player

The Young Offenders
Picture: Miki Barlok