Mike Rice: "My mother thought Father Ted was mocking the clergy. If she saw my latest show, she’d faint"

Mike Rice was seven pints deep when he decided the rest of his life.

“I was hammered, so I thought it went really well,” he says of his first ever stand-up set, upstairs in the Stag’s Head in Dublin. “I was with my friend and I said to him: ‘I’m going to do this forever now.’ I’ve never wavered from that decision. It didn’t matter about doubts. I was very depressed at that age, early twenties. I just wanted to pursue something I’m interested in.”

That set got three laughs, a strike rate of roughly one per two-and-a-third pints. His last tour sold out 67 dates. When we meet for a black coffee outside Mish.Mash café on Capel Street, he’s looking ahead to the Olympia in October.

“I used to live on North Circular Road in a little basement apartment, in a room with no windows,” Rice says. “The only thing I had on my wall was to sell out Vicar Street. That was really my only tangible goal in stand-up. I honestly did not really think I would do it. I thought I would be like a good club comedian, who would make a living from it.”

If you’re wondering where the low expectations came from, consult a very Irish upbringing.

“It’s funny, because Ireland gets talked about as the land of saints and scholars. But growing up, creativity was not encouraged at all,” Rice says. “You were never given an inkling that you could get a job as an entertainer. Which is understandable. It’s a fairly big gamble.

“I was told by a career guidance teacher to study finance. So that’s what I did in UCD because I had no other clue. That depressed me to such a level. I was so unexcited about my own future, but that gave me ultimate freedom, because I really was just like: ‘Well, if I don’t want to be here, then I might as well just do whatever I want.’”

What he wanted to do was stand on stages saying filthy things, before apologising for them. His first special was called An Irish Disgrace. The second was Nasty Character. The current show is Cruel Little Man.

“You can see a trend here,” he says. “It’s a collection of funny bits and stories about my life. I wouldn’t say my show’s about anything really. If it was about something, that’d be up to the people who are watching it. I would say it’s probably not for the faint of heart, if you find dirty material offensive.”

Those who do include people at home in Greenridge, Co. Kilkenny, where Rice was reared in a farming family he describes as conservative Catholic.

“They like it now,” he says with a laugh, when asked what they make of his job. “Sections of my family were negative about what I was doing. I’d be talking about sex or drugs or whatever, just the truth. They thought what I was doing was crass and crude and disrespectful and generally unpalatable.

“I don’t want to paint anyone in my family as bad or regressive, because they’re not. I’m the one who went and did a completely different thing that was against a lot of their values. My mother won’t come to a gig, but she’s very supportive of me.

“She thought Father Ted was mocking the clergy. If she saw my latest show, she’d faint. I get on great with my mother, I brought her to the opera in Italy. I bring her everywhere, but she doesn’t need to see that.”

Rice’s father, on the other hand, has embraced showbusiness.

“He just needed someone to take over the farm,” says the comic. “Once my little brother did that, I could go start an underground communist movement for all he gives a shit. He gets a kick out of it because it gives him attention. When I brought him out at Vicar Street, he got a standing ovation. And now he believes he’s famous.

“He said to me recently [does thick Kilkenny accent]: ‘I was talking to Pat Mulcahy there, and Pat Mulcahy said that you wouldn’t be where you are if it wasn’t for me.’ Pat Mulcahy is just another farmer. I was like: ‘Pat Mulcahy is nearly 80, Dad, and he doesn’t know how to use a mobile phone, so I don’t know why he’s the authority on my career.’”

Pat Mulcahy might point his research to the US instead. Rice cites time spent gigging around Chicago, at rooms like the Laugh Factory, as formative.

“I was afraid that my friends back home would slag me off, or that I wouldn’t be as accepted,” he says. “Going to America was incredible. I had always wanted to be a much more honest person about my anxiety, mental health, and being able to talk about the darker sides of myself.

“When I went over there people were more open. Also, they just love you because you’ve an Irish accent. I probably would’ve stayed. I’m really glad I didn’t, the way things have turned out. But if there was a way for me to get a visa, I would probably still be in America, and I’d have an American accent right now. And that would be a bad thing.”

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Rice lives in London these days with his Irishness, voice included, intact. And while he’s reluctant to say the shows are about anything, his Catholic upbringing continues to seep through.

“There is a strong undercurrent of Catholicism in every show,” he explains. “I say awful things and I’m immediately ashamed. I refer to myself as a cruel little man, I’m a rotten little man. That little device allows me to get away with saying terrible things, because I’m instantly hating myself for it, which allows the audience to get onboard easier.

“I grew up very Catholic, praying every night, going to mass every Sunday. The religion itself just slid off like water. But you still have the Catholic tropes within you: shame and guilt and ideas of what’s right and wrong. Which in some cases are good.”

“My father was born in 1953 in a small village,” he continues. “Everything’s run by the church, so there’s only one story being told to you your whole life. You’d have no reason to disbelieve it. I think it would feel fucking class to believe in a higher power, to thank him for this weather and your health and all that. It takes pressure off you: if you live by these rules, you’ll get to heaven.

“These days your life is a failure if you’re not achieving optimal success within the capitalist structure. And sure it’s all a recipe for narcissism and misery, because it’s never going to be enough. Now, it’s almost like you have to become God. You have to become this great, powerful being. But we’re not. We’re just smelly animals who are going to die, that are full of hot poo most of the time.”

The smelly animal in question has done well out of the machine he’s describing. Away from the stage and alongside fellow comic Vittorio Angelone, Rice hosts Mike and Vittorio’s Guide To Parenting, a weekly podcast about child-rearing presented by two men with no children.

The duo have built their audiences the modern way, circumventing the TV route by posting specials straight to YouTube and clipping their content to social media.

“The internet has made it so that it’s almost like a meritocracy now,” Rice says. “If you were funny and if you were putting out a good product, you could gain a following. And that’s what happened. So thank God for the absolutely diabolically corrupting force that is the internet.

“I’m completely complicit. I’m horribly addicted to my phone to a point that’s just gross. All my business is on Instagram, that’s how I market my profile and sell tickets. Because of that, I’m just on it, looking for comments, affirmation, this, that, and it’s disgusting.

“It’s not good for the human mind, and yet I need people to be on it for my career. It’s beneficial that people are addicted to this poisonous thing. If Instagram got taken down tomorrow, it would be a very positive thing for humanity, but a disaster for me.”

• Mike Rice brings Cruel Little Man to the 3Olympia, Dublin on October 30. See his full list of upcoming shows here.