The Blindboy Podcast - David O Doherty

Episode Date: December 10, 2019

I chat with comedian David O'Doherty about musical comedy and cycling gear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Let's get down to business, you greasy customers, because I have got a very fun and amusing podcast for ye this week, alright? This is the Blind Buy Podcast. I've stopped announcing things for new listeners. There's new listeners each fucking week. If you're a new listener, lads, you don't necessarily have to go back to the very start of the podcast, but this is like episode 114 and i would strongly advise you don't have to go chronological but if you're enjoying this podcast or if you're a brand new listener go back to some of the earlier

episodes dip in and out there's a lot of stuff there to listen to so like i said a fun podcast this week so before i get down to that let's get some very quick shopkeeping out of the way so i can fulfill my contractual obligations gigs all right um my three dublin dates in january have sold out very quickly um in the sugar club and a lot of ye were fairly annoyed that you didn't manage to get tickets because I know you wanted

to get him his Christmas presents so what I have done I've just announced more Dublin dates in April in Vicar Street I'm going to be doing three nights in April 2020

Vicar Street check them out just added a date in Cork for March of 2020 these have just gone on sale check them out if you're going to be Christmas pricks and buy tickets for Christmas

and then fucking Australia and New Zealand tour right couple of tickets left for that go to troubadourmusic.com and then also my Scotland and England tour,

there are tickets left in, Liverpool, and Birmingham, so there we go, contractual obligations out of the way, also, my book of short stories, still number one in the hardback fiction charts,

thank you very much, and, like all, like all classic examples of Irish literature it's now available in Lidl alright okay that's that, out of the way

this week I do a lot of live podcasts as you know and I'm sitting on quite a few of them. That I don't, I put them out every so often, but I'm sitting on quite a few. And I went listening through them, and I found a live podcast I did over the summer. And I listened to it, and I fucking thoroughly enjoyed it I'd forgotten that this live podcast was so much crack because I'd a roar and hangover on the day um it's a podcast with a comedian

called David O'Doherty he's an Irish fella from Dublin he's a, he gave my own band, the Rubber Bandits, some of our first ever support gigs back in 2007, and he's just a lovely, lovely person, very funny, smart, interesting lad, so I'm going to give you this live podcast that I recorded over the summer it was at um Ivy Gardens Comedy Festival and it was the second night and it's a particularly enjoyable comedy festival because it's like I generally don't like festivals because festivals for me are just very loud fields and I don't like sleeping in tents so I don't actually enjoy festivals but I enjoy doing gigs at them but I don't enjoy wandering around the field drinking warm cider

and sleeping in a tent that's from a past life so I don't really do that anymore but the Ivy Gardens Festival is in the middle of Dublin city centre so I think I just I went on the lash with a lot of comedians and had an amazing time,

then what happened, I went to Whelan's and there was a lock-in, someone bought me a bottle of Prosecco and then I kind of went out onto the street, met a lot of these mad bastards from East Wall and then headed back to East Wall and just went to a house party and kind of just left the house party and went straight to this gig in the Ivy Gardens and just this gig was so much fun and I laughed so much that it was the greatest hangover cure that I ever experienced and it was not her pleasure. So without further ado, this is myself and the absolutely lovely and funny David O'Doherty having a good old chat.

I hope you enjoy it. And one last thing, how could I forget? If you're enjoying the podcast, like it, subscribe to it on fucking Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, whatever, leave a review, subscribe to it on fucking spotify on apple podcast whatever leave a review and support me and this podcast through the patreon page this is a free podcast that you can listen to for free but um i get financial support from ye via the patreon patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast if you listen to the podcast a lot please consider

becoming a patron of the podcast and all you get from it really is knowing that you are providing me with a regular income which is something that's difficult to come by if you're an artist today and if you can afford it do if you can't afford it you don't have to if you can't afford it know that you're paying for someone else to listen to it. And that's about it, really. And also, David O'Doherty, look him up online. See if he has any gigs coming up. Go to one of his gigs.

I think after hearing this interview, you'll definitely want to go and see him live. On April 5th, you must be very careful,garet it's a girl witness the birth bad things will start down evil things of evil it's all you know don't the first omen i believe the girl is to be the mother mother of what is the most terrifying 666 is the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real. It's not real. What's not real? Who said that?

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Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. Lovely surprise. What's the crack, sir? Was not at a house party last night. Was in my house where it's always a party to some extent. A sleep party. So I'm anxious because I've got the Edinburgh Fringe

starting in three days whether I like it or not. And it's 14 quid in and loads of people are coming. Oh God. So I'm trying to think of some jokes

at the moment. How are you, are you familiar with the Edinburgh Fringe? It's not a haircut. It's, it's just, like it's it's just like

we I've done a couple of fucking Edinburgh Fringes it's tough going yeah it's it's it's not a marathon it's 30 nights basically

of gigs back to back yes I think I've got 42 gigs in 26 nights and it's not a real job. It's fine.

It's just standing there with a plastic keyboard. Two a day. Two gigs a day then? I'm doing my own show, yeah, something like 33 times. And then you have to do a load of other people's shows and odd bits and pieces and lots of charity gigs and stuff like that. But I don't know what else to do with my life at this point. Yeah. other people's shows and odd bits and pieces and lots of charity gigs and stuff like that. But sure, it's like,

I don't know what else to do with my life at this point. Yeah. Like I started doing comedy. I went to Edinburgh when I was 22. Yeah. And everyone's like, who's this fresh faced newcomer? And now I'm the mayor,

I think is younger than me now. So I live for cycling. I'm obsessed with cycling. And I watch the Tour de France. Ever since I was about 12, I've watched the Tour de France from Stephen Roach onwards. And then I realize the Tour de France now is just synonymous with me getting a show for Edinburgh together.

And as they enter the mountains in the Tour de France now is just synonymous with me getting a show for Edinburgh together. And as they enter the mountains in the Tour de France, my own stress and tension levels rise as well. And then at the end, it's like, yes. And then I'm like, but they're probably on drugs. So let's just move on to Edinburgh. Yeah, you're pretty fucking... One of the first times I ever met you, because this man here gave us some of our first ever support slots.

Fair play to him. I think it might even have been here at the Ivy Gardens like fucking 10 years ago and we played support for you. I remember one in the Temple Bar Music Centre.

Yes. That was one of your first ever... I think it might even have been our first ever... No, it was our second Dublin gig. The first one was

supporting a fella called DJ Mech. Well, it was very different to that. Very, very different. But I had a jacket, and I just bought the jacket in the charity shop because I thought it looked cool. But you informed me it was a cycling jacket,

and there was a pocket. Here's the thing that bothered me about this jacket. It had a pocket where your spine is. And I'm going, what the fuck? What the fuck do I want to be storing shit in my back for? What the fuck is that about? It's awkward to reach. You've got a saggy back.

And then, so I was really bothered with this jacket, and then you put me to ease by saying, that's a cyclist jacket, and that's where a cyclist puts their banana when they're on a bicycle. It's aerodynamic around there. Yeah. And also, yeah, you can't be fiddling with down here

if you're descending at high speed. So is that a common thing with bicycling? Like, where would you, and what would you store in the spine pouch? Well, I mean, the whole outfit is quite interesting from a cycling point of view. Like, the thing about cycling is, unless you're really good at it...

Actually, let's start from the fucking head down. What is... Are you wearing one of those cycling caps that they wear? What is the deal with flimsy cycling caps that look a small bit like women's underpants? What is that? Why so flimsy? Why the tiny visor?

Because the tiny visor is mostly to do with your sponsor's name is written on the flip up of the cap like that and so when you go over the finish line you're expected to have that up and that's why they throw their arms in the air like that so your sponsor's name is revealed this is back in the day when the tour de france would have just been wasn't televised it was one photo in the newspaper and usually it would just be the winner going over the line. So you just get the name of your sponsor in

as many times from that front on view. And did that style then got co-opted by hardcore punk? The tiny peak. The tiny peak, like the band

Suicidal Tendencies. Suicidal Tendencies, also in White Men Can't Jump. Yeah. Oh, yeah! He's wearing a Colnago Italian Tour de France hat as well. Wesley Snipes and fucking Woody Harrelson. Woody Harrelson, whose fucking father was in jail for being a high-class assassin.

No. Woody Harrelson. There's a prison in America called Supermax. Yeah? And it's lovely fucking chips, man, but they don't do burger sauce. Woody Harrelson's dad

was like a proper fucking assassin. No, not an assassin, a hitman. He was one of the people. He was involved in the Kennedy thing. When they were trying to find out who shot Kennedy, he was one of the people that was brought in going, we think it might have been you.

So was he a hardcore socialist or something like that? No, just a fucking an absolute psychopath who'd take money off the mafia to kill people. So yeah, and he used to take out mayors, like any target that was high up someone who's like a judge or a mayor or a politician he used to do that so he has a lot of murders under his belt so there's a prison in america called supermax and it's like it's the

highest security prison right the the way they do it is that someone who's in there never meets another human being it's all through doors. There's no... The walls and the floor are one. It's like concrete and you have to sleep on concrete. And the toothpaste is see-through so that you can't hide any knives in the toothpaste. So Woody Harrelson's da is in there alongside just like a lot of Al Qaeda lads.

So how do we get on to this? Peaked caps, white men can't jump, Wesley Snipes, Woody Harrelson. When it couldn't get any worse, Woody Harrelson wasn't allowed back to his seat at the Wimbledon ladies' final there. Why? I don't know if you saw that.

He had gone off for... Gone off like milk. It's a sour Woody Harrelson. He was hammered. You could see that he was hammered. I didn't... This isn't a fever dream. That's a sour Woody Harrelson. He was hammered. You could see that he was hammered. I didn't, I didn't, this isn't a fever dream. That's a wild accusation now. This is, so Woody Harrelson was hammered at the Wimbledon ladies final, I think.

And the... There's a lovely sentence. There's all sorts of rules to leaving your seat in Wimbledon at the All England Lawn Tennis Club or whatever. So he'd obviously gone for a wazz. No, in fact, he'd come back with drinks in glasses. I think he was in the Royal Box and the guy wouldn't let him back into his seat while there was a game on.

And there was just shot of a really sad Woody Harrelson looking over the guard's shoulder with three drinks in a sort of ominous triangle like that in his hands. So like father like son but with less murders. Woody Harrison

hammered in the royal box. Yeah he doesn't speak about his dad much. Yeah. I mean what else does Woody Harrison do? He has pants made out of hash. Yeah. He's famous for hash pants.

He was one of the first people to be like, weed should be legal, so he used to wear pants out of it. Are you serious? Yeah! All his pants are made out of hemp. So we spoke about the top of a cyclist's head. Let's move down now to...

Here's one, right? Now, am I being mad or do cyclist sunglasses come in cans and they wrap around like those things you'd put on your wrist when you were a child? Remember those things? Yeah. Oh, snap bracelets.

Snap bracelets. Is that a real thing? If I can digress there for one moment, I'm going to record a new album soon. And there's no point. I used to release them on CD. It's like releasing a thing on a barrel now. It's an obsolete technology.

So I want to release it somehow. And I was trying to think of an object that everyone would like and would easily pay three quid for. And on the back of it will be written the download code for the album. So I'm releasing it on Snap Bracelet. So

it's a foot long and it looks like a stiff piece of ruler and then you hold it over a child or your own wrists and you strike the child but rather than them feeling violence from the strike, they're like...

Yeah. That was the joy of them, actually, wasn't it? You think you're going to get a slap, but you actually get some type of embrace. So the cyclist's sunglasses, I mean, they do tend to be very ugly sunglasses. Yeah, oh yeah. But the thing about cycling...

To be worn casually with jeans and shoes. Yeah. It's one of those... Well, the ones that are blue and they don't even go around your ear. They just go straight, don't they? Yeah, I... I don't know a lot about cyclist sunglasses.

I'm kind of putting all sunglasses into one category here no that's fair enough i was in a shop recently and someone said are you a cyclist you'd really like these and they showed me the ugliest sunglasses i've ever seen the full mirrored sort of frontage but then they had headphones in them as well that you could like on the end of the thing. And what was your feeling towards these glasses? My feeling was, what if you just wanted to listen to the music? You'd have to wear the sunglasses.

Oh, my God. Like, what if you're just walking into town at half six on a Tuesday in November? Oh, my gosh. So yeah, cyclist sunglasses are very ugly. I mean, working our way down now, you might have a snood. No, what the fuck is that? Ah, a snood.

Sounds like a nude sleep. A snood is a... It's like a polo neck. A polo neck jumper. One of those ones. But sans jumper. Sans jumper. With just the polo. Literally a polo, actually, now that I think about it.

Shit, is that why they're called polo necks? Why the fuck are they called polo necks, man? Because of polo m actually, now that I think about it. Shit, is that why they're called polo necks? Why the fuck are they called polo necks, man? Because of polo mints, maybe. It's like a jumper with a massive polo mint attached to the top of it. Actually... You never see people

playing polo wearing them, certainly. I don't even know what polo is. Well, what is it? It's like you're on top of a fucking horse and you've got a mallet.

It's like very violent... Is that polo? It's violent golf. But there's horses involved though, isn't there? Yeah, it's horseback hurling. It's one of those sports that I've just dismissed

because it's only ever really posh people and the royal family. But as well, it's you can tell it's a sport. It's basically, it's like Cromwell practicing for the sacking of Drahida. It's just like, I'm up on my fucking horse and I'm going to cut the paddy's head off.

And it's that, isn't it? It's war practice. It's like, we're the Brits, we're up on horses and we're going to smash their heads. Yeah, it's one of those sports that, like, I'd possibly be good at it, do you know what I mean? But I'll never know. And there's a tragedy in that.

You have to. Have you ever been on top of a horse? No. See, that's a difficult... Have you been on a horse? I have many a time, yes. Really? Yes.

And what's the... Do you feel that sort of sense of power? Do you feel the... Do you want to colonize when you're sitting on a horse? You know what I mean? No. Do you look at the nearest village and go, I could kill all these people now?

No. No, I don't think Irish people feel... For the Brits, it's war practice. For Irish people, it's just, I'm on a horse, I'm having crack. Yeah, the... For them, it's like, I'm on a sack of village. I think the Incas didn't have horses,

or they didn't know to sit on them. Did you know what, yeah, when the Incas, do you know what they thought when they first saw the horses? So when the Spanish and the Portuguese came over, they'd never seen people riding animals, and they used to think that the warrior on the horse was one thing. They thought this was a creature.

Wow. It scared the fuck out of them. So they were like, we're not fighting humans here. They're these new things with four legs, like a centaur. And they thought that

because they had no context for jumping on the back of something. They were going, why would you jump on the back of a creature? They only had alpacas. It'd spit into your mouth. There was an alpaca in Limerick.

Did you see him about a year ago? The lads who had the horses down in Limerick, they decided to get an alpaca. So there was just this alpaca in Limerick. Did you see him about a year ago? The lads who had the horses down in Limerick, they decided to get an alpaca, so there was just this alpaca wandering all around Limerick. Everyone just, what the fuck is going on with this alpaca? And he was spitting at everyone. Because that's what they do, they spit into your face. The horse won't mate with the...

No, hang on. The donkey will mate... Something's a... An ass. An ass is... The donkey's a die with the... No, hang on. The donkey will mate... Something's a... An ass. An ass is a... The donkey's a dad and the mother's a horse. Because generally a cross species that you won't mate. You know what I mean?

No, it has to be kind of forced. Although dogs don't seem to mind. But they're not cross species, though. They're just different sorts of... I mean, but if you're a... Presumably a Dalmatian can't mate with a poodle or a chihuahua. When I'm very, very bored, I type into Google Images

what different dog breeds look like, and let me tell you, every single dog breed you can think of exists. So, I mean, I'm going to go to... A poodle Dalmatian would exist. A fucking... What did I go for? It was a pit bull terrier and a pug.

People do this shit. And if they can't mount the other animal, they get equipment involved. I can imagine that because if you I always think if you gave Botox to a pug

it would look quite like a pit bull then if you smooth all those wrinkles right out it would it would but I don't

it would be an awful thing to get arrested for wouldn't it why is he in jail he was Botoxing pugs you know the boom is back in Ireland when people was Botoxing pugs. You know the boom is back in Ireland when people start... Botoxing their pugs.

Botoxing all pets, really. Whatever your pet is, Will, Botox... That'd be a good name for a DJ. Botox Pugs. Wouldn't it? Class name. Do you know the reason why

bulldogs and pugs have the wrinkles in their faces? How that was bred into them it was so the bulldog they were actually like if a farmer had a bunch of fucking cows and there was one bull and the bull was a lunatic

he needed a dog to be able to defend him right so the bulldog was bred basically so that it was a dog that was tough enough

so that when they latched onto the bull's nose no matter how much the bull shook the dog would still be there, right? But what happened is that they would drown on the blood of the bull so they started breeding them to have these wrinkles in their faces so when the bulldog latches onto the bull's nose

the blood will drain away through those wrinkles. That's the reason. That's how fucked up humans are. How's that dog? I don't know, but in 50 years, his great-great-great-grandson will have wrinkles on its face so he doesn't drown in blood. There seems to be a very active period

of breeding dogs for specific purposes. My grandmother was a Protestant, so she had eight dogs. And they were miniature wire-haired Dachshunds, as in sausage dogs, those ones. Dachshunds? Dachshunds, yeah. Dachshunds?

We call them Dachshunds in the kennel club. Okay. And there's pictures of me as a baby lying in a crib, one-year-old me, with just six, because they were really protective of me, with like six of them just lying the length of my body, looking out in different directions for predators.

But apparently they were... Not those sort of predators, Jesus. That's what you do to keep the priests away. Get a load of fucking sausage dogs and sell it to your child. Protestant sausage dogs. The priests will be running over hedges. The ex-Liverpool winger from their many trophy-winning 1980s teams

was an Australian guy called Craig Johnson, who on his retirement turned into an inventor, which is something you don't hear very often. You don't just turn into an inventor, yeah. And he's famous for two inventions in particular. One, he invented the thing in hotel rooms where when you move a can of Coke, it charges

it directly to your account. Oh, what a bastard. And the other is, he invented a football boot that has rubbery bits on the sides so that you can spin, you can curl, you can bend it like Beckham. And he named that boot the Predator.

Yes, I remember that. 1997. Everyone had to have him even if you didn't fucking play soccer. Yeah. Yeah, they did. Yeah. Walking down the street in clunk, clunk, clunk.

Walking down the street in fucking Predators, yeah. Well, he... Yeah, I always wondered whether he regret down the street and clunk, clunk, clunk. Walking down the street and fucking Predators, yeah. Well, he, yeah, I always wondered whether he regretted it affected the sales of it, that name. Did he call him the Predator, though,

or did Nike call him the Predator? Adidas. Adidas. There we go. There's the, there's the boots guy. There's the representative

from Adidas that I, that sits in every one of my gigs in case I tarnish the brand. When, when Stefan Edberg won Wimbledon in 1986, he had Nike. Nah, he had Adidas.

I was double checking to see if the Adidas guy... He... What were we... What were we shitting on about? We were talking about whether he regrets calling a fucking shoe Predator.

Oh, yeah, but maybe they do. Yeah, because the word Predator now, like, okay, I remember when Predators came out, and when I saw that shoe, at no point did I think of paedophiles. The paedophiles might wear them. Yeah, I was thinking, oh, Predator, that cool film from the 80s where the alien has dreadlocks. Oh, yeah.

That was Predator for me. If that movie had been released in Ireland, just Predator, you know, you wouldn't have been expecting an alien with dreadlocks. No. It would have just been a guy who worked in Extra Vision. I think, I don't know, he was going for the whole puma, cheetah. Yeah. You know, it's that, just like an accurate cat. But I love the slight semantic differences.

There was a film once called The Courier. I think it was called a grim Irishish 80s film and uh hot press gave it a one word review and it was just one of those vicious films where someone gets blasted in the first minute yeah yeah just sit in the cinema for an hour and a half going and uh the one word review was just brutal right and when it got released in London then, it had a one-word review in the poster, and it just said, brutal. Brilliant.

Because to them, brutal implies a gritty fucking film about the real world, whereas to us, it's just like, this is fucking brutal. Yeah. Yeah. Have we nearly... I can't read that clock. Is it 20 past yet?

Because we're supposed to have an interval. No, it's 11 minutes past. 11 minutes past. That is a good clock reading, sir. So, moving on to the shoulders now of the cyclist. We're only at the snood now. So we've done the snood. We really have.

So this jacket that I had, you actually were able to name it it had something it was Italian it said zap on the back and you were like this is a specific jacket from Italy from this period and I was going wow that's a lot of stuff about bike jackets that this lad knows I wasn't expecting this

but I think it was I mean it's 12 years ago and I don't remember all your jackets but I think it might have been the Zed Pujo team I mean, it's 12 years ago. Yeah. And I don't remember all your jackets. But I think it might have been the Zed Puget team. Yes, it was. Which was a French team of the mid to late 80s. That Ronan Poncek was their leader.

They were, Zed was a, this is the thing about cycling. I have, like, the way that some people have loads of lyrics of songs in their brains I just have the sponsors of mid 80s continental like Fagor

Stephen Roach cycled for Fagor one year which is a Eastern European brand of fridge freezers and I've always

wanted one are they still going I've never seen one in the real world what about those fucking fridges I don't think they're around anymore. They're called

smeg. Yeah. They're a very fancy fridge now, yeah. Smeg, smegma is an oily sebaceous substance that occurs on the top of human penises and vaginas. So why would you name a fucking fridge after that? Maybe because it's like product placement So why would you name a fucking fridge after that?

Maybe because it's like product placement, whereby if you happen to suffer from it, I don't know if you suffer from it or you just wash it off. No, you just got to wash your dick, that's it. So maybe every time you look at it, you're reminded of the... I better go down and open the fridge. Maybe people who have them just have huge jars of recently removed...

Guys, I didn't... I know it's funny, but there's someone in the world has decided, I'm making cheese out of my dick. Didn't they make fucking, didn't they make cheese out of Ryan Tuberty's armpit or something? There was some person on the late late and they were showing how you could make

cheese out of any type of bacteria and they swabbed I think this might have happened in a dream. Oh no. I'm nearly sure. Do you know why I think it happened in a dream? Because I'm envisioning topless Ryan Tuberty on the

Late Late Show and I'm going, that didn't happen. But it might haveberty on the Late Late Show and I'm going that didn't happen. But it might have been on the radio then. They fucking swabbed Ryan Tuberty and made cheese out of his armpit.

That happened. Topless on the Late Late Late Toy Show special. Imagine that. Imagine he just walks out Late Late Toy Show. Everyone's watching and getting on ground

and Ryan just walks out with no top. Wouldn't that be fucking amazing it'd be really hard to be the next thing do you know what I mean like the person suffering

from Hodgkin's lymphoma or whatever and he's just still sitting there with the with his top off and he's trying to be really sincere

yeah well you're just telling the story of how you can't get these drugs on the in the hospitals. It's fucking hot. He's just slowly turning a churn, which is trying to get that cheese.

I don't know much about making cheese, but at the moment I've become obsessed with composting refuse into a bin and trying to get the components right for whatever that anaerobic Do you add, because the most important thing for the anaerobic thing is to get a lot of oxygen in there Do you have one of those compost bins where you turn it?

No, I go at it with a shovel and the problem with that is that a million tiny flies live in it. And they all come up. And then, I mean, let's go in deep. It's late enough. It's ten past five. I can be as rude as I want to.

So I was given instructions to pee into it. Yes! And the problem with a thousand tiny flies and peeing is that sometimes... You're supposed to piss into the jar and throw the jar in, man, not fucking climb up on your... Climbing up on his garden fence. Pissing into the compost. There's other ways to do it.

That does make more sense now that you mention it. Up on the garden shed. It's a nightmare vision where you look down and there's 40 flies on your peen and you're still trying. I mean, yeah. I've no smegma though to report. Do you add any additives to the compost?

Other than piss, what's your ratio with hay and straw? A bit of paper as well goes in there. And then you try not to put citrus goods. Anything acidic will fuck that shit up. Unless you're growing

rhododendrons. Oh really? Are they good to go in there? They enjoy an acidic style. Yeah, I'm still very much learning. I'm trying to get the mixture right. But the problem is it's a very small garden, and so I think it's bringing a lot of flies into the area generally. But that's good. It's good.

Would you have any interest in cockroach composting? Like if we were to breed cockroaches? Well, no. One of my guests on the podcast, Kali Ennis, he's an expert in insects up in Trinity College, but he has these Japanese hissing cockroaches. They're fucking huge and they hiss and scream, but like he composts with them.

But they'll do what your compost bin does in six months, these cockroaches will do in a week. So he throws all his fucking kitchen waste into this bin. And the cockroaches eat the fuck out of it. Wow. And so he posts videos and you just hear him scuttling and hissing.

But they turn it into this perfect black compost, right? But then what he started doing, because his whole thing is conservationism and the idea that moving forward as well, humans are probably going to have to start eating alternative forms of protein and insects is seen as the best source of this because

insects don't have a huge impact on the environment. You can farm insects, you can fry them. So he gets his cockroaches, purges them so that they shit out whatever's inside of them and then he stir fries them and eats them. Not like every Thursday. But it's something he did

just to prove a point of you know, this is perfectly normal in certain Asian countries. It's very good protein. The only reason we don't want to do it is like our heads tell us not to. But I'm eating fucking cockroaches here. It's environmentally friendly and I grew them out the back garden. Yeah, I I'll say no.

But I would, like, I think I'd go plant-based before I would. But, you know, but then... Or cockroach-based. Yeah, and I don't necessarily... You know that really fancy coffee that travels through the digestive tract of monkeys? Oh, coffee.

What the fuck's it called? Copiluac. Yeah, you can get it in Limerick. It's 60 quid a cup. Yeah, I don't need to try that. I think I'm grand. Apparently, it's one of those things. I haven't tasted it,

but anyone who tastes it is just like, it just tastes like regular coffee, and whatever fanciness exists in this coffee, my palate is too common to taste it. It's like when someone gives you a drop of a bottle of champagne that's 300 quid, and you're like, it it's like when someone gives you a drop of a bottle of champagne that's 300 quid and you're like it's just like cider yeah i don't know do you think there'd be i mean because the podcast is so popular i think there would be a market if you

started swallowing coffee beans and they went through your digestive tract they were blind boy i don't think this specific type of animal they're known as a palm civet and they're they're like little small pandas I don't think they're cats they're related to the wolf

so they have a unique digestive system so I don't think my digestive system is similar enough to that of the palm civet whereby I could digest raw coffee beans. I'd just be selling people bags of shit.

It'd be a good marketing tie-up, though, because you'd be like, why not put on the podcast and brew yourself a nice cup of my shit? That's a fucking tagline man why not put on a podcast that brings yourself a nice cup of my shit

I want that in a fucking poster alright here there's an interval now you can get yourselves a lovely pint and have a small little piss for yourselves god bless we'll be back in about 15 minutes. Okay, we're going to try and ask some actual questions.

Well, we've only got as far as the neck. I know, and I really, really want to fucking... I really want to follow that thread. Because... Are you interested in finding out about cycling garments? I will ask a question. I just need to continue the bit about the jackets because we didn't talk about it backstage. We saved it for stage.

How have cycling jackets evolved? Is it still the pocket in the back of it? This business that cyclists, they suck gel out of tubes. Yeah. Tell me about that. When did it start? What's it called?

How do I start doing it? Cycling is, I can't, like if you were just to randomly pick on this podcast, it seems like I am a professional cyclist or my expertise is there, where I'm just shitting on here. But I do know for a fact that cycling was full of, up until the 80s, just these myths.

So Bernard Hinault was the French cyclist who won five Tour de France. He believed that your body wasted a lot of effort breaking down food. So he would eat a steak every night with his dinner during the tour and he'd cut it into tiny tiny bits yeah so that his body wouldn't have to do the chomping for him he also believed climbing stairs tired you out for the stage the next day so his teammates would would would lift him up the stairs into his room. So they were all eating the wrong food. Like, you know, if you look at...

Like, that's highly eccentric. What are you doing? I'm cutting my steak off with the little bits. Now carry me up the stairs. I'm a cyclist. Like, so the original, the first Tour de France is what, 1903? Look at this now. The helicopters have come down now to drown the noise out

in case he says some truths about the cycling world. MI5 and the CIA above. Here's the difficulty with cycling, and I say this with the law hovering overhead, is that so I cycled, I raced for a team until I was 14, and from the age of about 13 onwards,

we were given Claritin, the anti-hay fever remedy, in the winter when there's no hay fever around. Because it's kind of like speed? No, it opens up your airways. You get more air in. So you understand how easy it is to creep drugs into cycling then. From the age of 12, you've just been told, take this.

This is what all drugs into cycling then. From the age of 12, you've just been told, take this. This is what all the pros take then. So we would just take whatever the thing was. In this case, a hay fever remedy. Are you allowed to do that in the Tour de France? Are you allowed to do a lot of Claritin? Well, the Tour de France, they have all these drug tests, but the teams have so much

money, they're always one step in front of the drug testers. So this year, there's a non-illegal drug that a lot of the teams are taking called ketones, which is a new sort of energy. Ketones is when your body burns fat instead of carbohydrates. Yeah, it messes with the maths of how they're burned. And they're not illegal yet,

but they'll probably be illegal in a few years. So cycling just operates at this level where they're constantly doing stuff that's not quite illegal yet. My uncle was kicked out of Greyhound Racing for feeding his dog's teabags. And was that as a performance enhancer? According to him, he was like, if he was giving the Greyhounds tea bags and because of the caffeine. I mean, I would have given them the raw tea as opposed to the bag. Yeah, it's the most country

Irish. Give him coffee, will you? And he would have been, what's coffee? Maybe in a Keith Richards kind of a way, you could hammer the tea bags up the hoop of the greyhound. Take a few bags. We've given him six bags.

Watch him go. Poor greyhounds. I know, man. Poor old fuck. That sport's going to be illegal soon enough. What I've never understood about greyhounds is they're the sleekest, fastest at running dogs. They're the sleekest, fastest at running dogs. They're the sleekest, fastest at running dogs.

But I don't care about that. I'd be just as happy if I went to the dog track and it was Cocker Spaniel Night or whatever. Very cool. And so they've just put eight spaniels in the different things. Yeah, and they're looked after and they're having crack. Yeah, they're your dog, just your dog, and you enter it in. And your shoe is just hanging from the back of a wagon

that's driving around. Yeah. That'd be good, wouldn't it? Yeah, it's not greyhound racing. It's just all animals. And then you bring the Botox into that then. Fucking a lot of Botox-style sessions

running after a pizza box. Cycling shorts. Oh, yeah. The big change with cycling shorts has been... Do they need to be that... I remember bicycle shorts from when I was a child. Yeah. That's it?

You don't see them a lot anymore. No one's wearing bicycle shorts. What's that about? I mean, you'd see them. The dancers in MC Hammers, you can't touch this, are all wearing cycling shorts, but they existed before that.

For cycling. For cycling. And the padded gusset is the thing. I know him. Now, over time, gusset is the thing. I know him. Over time, I feel that the sponge is getting more sophisticated. So we go back to Bernard Hinault,

the French cyclist of the 80s. He apparently would have a thin piece of steak for the mountain stages. Are you fucking serious? And he'd pop it down there. Are you taking the piss? I'm not taking the piss. The whole difficulty with...

Was he to eat the steak or for the steak to act as padding? I mean, he might have it in the evening after the stage. I don't know if he's telling the truth or not because this same man wants people to carry him upstairs. So it's quite possible

that he did have some type of... I believe he would... Steak pad. He'd place it down there because it retained its... It was a bouncy membrane. And yeah, he'd have it down there for the day. And then the other thing is you have to... So you shave yourself.

And then you need to lubricate yourself massively as well. What's that about? Wind resistance? No, you shave yourself is more to do with germs and stuff like that. What? So if you cycle, you get germs on your legs if you have hair. Yeah, I think the germs hang out in the hair a bit more than... Like there's a horrific thing when they crash. What?

Hold on, what? I mean, so when the cyclists crash... So if you caught yourself and there's germs in your leg here, that can be bad. Well, if you're having an operation, they shave the area. And that's to make it as clean as possible. So cyclists have these bunch crashes a lot of the time. Yes. And they get tremendous gashes on their legs.

Okay. Now, the problem with one of them is they scab. Okay. And it limits the movement in your leg. So the pro cyclists have to do this horrible thing where you go into the shower with kind of a very astringent brush, and so you don't let it scab. And people wonder why cycling isn't as popular as it used to be.

Do cyclists wear knee pads? Because I've never seen knee pads. It's just a lot of bare knees. Yeah, bare knees. Bare knees. That fellow goes up mountains and drinks his own piss. Yeah, no, you wear the minimal. I mean, you're trying to be as light as possible.

And that's where cycling's got dodgy. Since the time I was very into it in the kind of late 80s, early 90s, they're now like a stone or stone and a half lighter than they were then, the cyclists are. So they're wearing- Like jockeys. Yeah, they've got lighter and lighter. Because they worked out the maths of cycling bicycles up mountains.

And it turns out the main thing that slows you down is your own weight. And you can keep your power right up, which they can do with modern training. It's a question of just not eating at all. Yeah, so that's the thing. So are cyclists not eating enough? Or are they just looking for very slight men or slight women to be the cyclists well i never made it uh they're looking for nine stone weaklings jockeys yeah kind of you can be tall now because that also the long levers does help you but that's why they take those little sugary

they're called gels those things you were talking about so that's about all you get to eat then it's not like the old days where you and And that's pure sugar pretty much. Yeah, it's just pure energy, the whole thing then. When did they start becoming... Like this business of the banana pocket on your spine. Yeah. Did the gel tube replace the bananas? Yeah, you don't see as many bananas

getting eaten these days. Which, you know, I guess there's a danger with the famous banana skin danger. But you still see... I've never in my fucking life slipped in a banana. I've never seen someone

slip in a banana. Who invented that? But you still see bananas getting eaten in Wimbledon. So there is still, I think there's a slow, there's a slow potassium release from a banana.

Yeah, high carbohydrates, a lot of potassium. Prevents your knees seizing up, apparently. I don't know. The fuck do I know? Fuck, I don't know. I'm a Mr. Banana expert here. They're yellow and long and they have their own packet. They do.

Yeah, they're perfect that way. They're great like that. And do you know what? They're not actually a fruit. They're a herb. Fuck off. Yes. A banana is botanically a herb.

Not this. I hate this. I know, yeah, I know, I know. You know the way like an avocado is technically a mammal? Yeah. Or peanuts. Peanuts are not nuts.

They're of the potato family. They're tubers. Do you know? So let's not get into tomatoes. Yeah, I know. Just let people eat the fucking fruit. Don't be going, well, actually, that's a vegetable. I don't care. It's tasty and red.

What's your top fruit, just before we move on to the questions pineapple fucking pineapples are great they are great, some people hate them some people have a real issue with them some people do, pineapples have a chemical called bromelain which

can be used to clear the tongues of people who can't swallow really? so you drink pineapple juice then? you drink pineapple juice or? You drink pineapple juice or you can use it to tenderize steak. So if you were to get the steak and put it down your crotch for a cycle,

you can first, you can, how about just go over to Edinburgh and you tell people, because Edinburgh's got loads of stairs, that in order for you to do musical comedy the way you do it, you need people to carry you upstairs.

We haven't spoken about comedy once. Or what you do. And like, you know, there's Greeks listening. There's going to be Greeks and Turks listening all around the world. And what have they learned so far? Here's a man.

How to dress for cycling up to the nipples. What is it for the Greeks? What is it you actually do? I do a sort of comedy that is popular with some people. And those that don't like it, contact me on Twitter to raise the issue with me personally. And nearly always those people are

Proudfather is the first part. Like, I fucking hate your comedy. Get off my television. Like that. It's Proudfather, the name of a football team, and then a flag. Be it an Irish

flag or a Union Jack, usually. It's interesting, that particular type of tweet, that's known as Da Twitter. Right. Yeah, they're called Da's. So it's not someone who's a father, it's they're a Da. And I think what they are is

lads who've joined, because they are always they are is lads who've joined because they are always lads lads who've joined Twitter specifically to say mean things to footballers right yeah yeah I think because that's

they tend to be it's very soccer-y yeah and they're there you know I don't know any I don't know Steven Jarrett

is he a soccer player? not anymore just whoever give me the name of a soccer player. I will say... Pele. Okay, yeah. So these lads...

Mo Salah. These lads are on Twitter and you just see them, Pele's a prick, and then they start going off-brand and decide to start talking about things such as David O'Doherty's musical comedy. Yeah, and Brexit very often as well.

They're very into that. And then they veered away their proud fathership doesn't exclude them for commenting on boobs of ladies down on the telly as well. So it's a strange mixture of... Yeah, it's terrible.

Anytime someone needs to talk about how class apparent they are whether it be on their body or in their twitter bio you always know you're fucking up and you feel the need to tell everyone like a world's greatest dad uh elizabeth duke ring from argus doesn't necessarily mean that person not at all yeah but i know i mean this in the nicest possible way every i mean this sincerely ring from Argus doesn't necessarily mean that person has... Not at all. Yeah, but I mean this in the nicest possible way. I mean this sincerely. Everyone is an expert on comedy in that

comedy is like farts. It just happens. It's just a sound comes out of you due to atmospheric conditions. I do my thing and if that sound doesn't come out of that thing, they're legitimately allowed to say, that man is not a comedian.

I can't really argue with them on that point of view. It's such a personal thing. As a creative, I think that's the best approach to have. Because what I say to myself is, there's people who love, I don't know, Red Hot Chili Peppers, no they're alright Coldplay right?

I'm not into Coldplay lads right? But there are people who love Coldplay and what I say is that this person, they live in a world their day to day life, they live in a world where Coldplay are brilliant and I live in a world where Coldplay aren't brilliant and it's grand

so when someone goes that song you did was shit or I didn't like that thing I just go they exist in a world where I'm shit and that's grand yeah well my dad's a jazz musician so my entire youth was going to these gigs

where I hated the music so much like every fibre of my being tried to the age of 14 to like, I actually thought he was taking the piss. Do you know that way? Do you know sometimes you hear metal that is so discordant? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the lads in your class be like, this is the best thing I've ever heard. Yeah. How do you not love this? And it's just like, it's a fella taking a shit or something. And similarly with jazz, I actually thought they were just annoying me.

I thought it was a huge Truman Show style prank where there was radio stations dedicating to pretending that people like this music until I got to about 15. And then I remember it was, my gateway was fucking Steely Dan. Oh, that is a total jazz gateway, isn't it? Yeah, I hated Steely Dan so much. And then I remember,

because my brother, he had the bedroom beside the bathroom and he used to listen to Steely Dan. And I remember, you don't have to call nobody else and me going like that's quite good oh no I'm feeling jazzy and I love jazz now I'm obsessed with it and even the even the that your dad was bringing into that because there's certain jazz the stuff where it's like um I don't know the musical phrases for it but it's like it's not being melodic

it's deliberately trying to be really difficult and I don't know how people can listen to some of that Yeah, fire in a pet shop jazz Yeah, is that What? What? It'd be how I would describe a certain genre

Okay And Yeah, but like It'd be how I would describe a certain genre. Okay. And yeah, but like you, like I think the problem used to be that having grown up in a sort of FM radio era where the music is very tonal and chordal and everything's playing nicely together in these melodies. If you hear just piano, bass and and drums and particularly on those old records where they're just spread out wide across the sonic spectrum you're just like these three people don't know each other and are playing in different parts

of the country yeah but then you stay actually start to mesh. And then you get, you remember the key thing, which is they're actually reacting to each other. That is the class thing about jazz. It's people having a conversation up on stage with music. Yeah, I always think the best thing in the world could be about to happen. And it probably won't. But there's a chance that it might.

And that's the beauty of jazz whereas like if you go a pop song is just like here's the best bit here's the not so best bit and here's a bit that's almost good and if you go to the live gig you'd be like they did it very similar to the version that was on the radio like well done yeah you go to a jazz gig and they go on, you know, like I love the non-showbiz of it, especially like at my dad's gigs, which were generally upstairs in pubs in front of 28 people and then me down the back reading a book about cycling. Your dad was doing jazz back in the 60s in Dublin, wasn't he? Yeah, my dad is so much more subversive than anyone else that I know. In as much as in conservative, like mid-50s devil era, they were trying to ban jazz. It was seen as Negro music was the description of it.

And it posed this moral threat to the uh women of ireland that they might i don't know what would happen if they necessarily heard it yeah but it was a threat that they perceived didn't exist from listening to uh more traditional music and a dad heard charlie parker and what you know wouldn't there wouldn't have been there would have been one photo of Charlie Parker on the front of the sleeve and it changed my dad's life as a 15 year old such that he just dedicated himself from that moment on, which is

like, it's not even like joining a punk band in 1977 because then there were other punk, it would be like joining a punk band and you're the only punk guy in Papua New Guinea basically and where the so they used to

have to pretend they used to have to say what they were doing where it wasn't jazz they'd have to say so they couldn't call it a jazz gig ah well they would

call it a dance band was the way around it so what show bands were grand but jazz wasn't grand show bands came a little bit later then

and so so what are we what are we talking, 61? So my dad... Late 50s? Yeah, my dad was born in 39. He's 81. He's still around.

And he's still gigging. And he, in the 50s then, when he was still in school, he set up a jazz band called the Memphis Five. It's just such a funny name for some kids from irish town to call their band and there was three of them in the photo the one photo it's on my phone i took a photo of his only copy of it there's only three of them turned up for the photo so they they like it's just these beautiful so dad dad played the piano and then he got one of ireland's first hammond organs wow and he couldn't make it sound like it did on the on the uh jazz

records but then he bought a there's a brother jack mcduff live album george benson's first ever album from like 61 or 62 and there's a a picture of Jack Macduff from above. And you can see where he has all the knobs set up on the organ. Oh, my God. So Dad bought the album, brought it home, and moved all the switches, because there's about 30 switches on an organ. And suddenly was like, ooh, I've got a jazz machine here.

Like, up until then, I think Dad had just sounded like he was playing at the back of Mass or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Suddenly he made it sound funky. uh yeah so he uh he did that he uh he moved to london he was back and forth uh to there and were you doing session stuff or what yeah my dad was in uh early show bands and then he came off the road with the show bands to produce music he was would have played a million sessions you know from like the reality of being a session musician in Ireland in the 60s 70s was you do a Daniel O'Donnell gig and you do a Phil Linnett gig and you do a like that my

dad um played on the late late he was the musical director on the late late show when there was a house band on the late late show uh no there still is but when you played with the visiting artist yeah yeah and in the same month in 19 i think 71 my dad played with fred astaire and bob marley on the late late show so it was just like he did to him i mean it's a wank it's a wanky thing in the john he did see genres of music but he didn't see one as better than the other or whatever they were all just interesting things you could do and it's it's interesting to talk to him about that period in ireland in the 60s where the rocky road to dublin the movie would be about just how shit and terrible ireland is

yeah how there's books being banned and the the GAA is a vehicle for Catholic men to learn to fight the Brits. And you're just like, yeah, there was that. But there was also lads snaking off to basements to smoke jazz records, was what I was about to say. And I think that captures what I meant. is what I meant. So your dad is this really

accomplished fucking jazz musician and you play comedy songs on a small electronic keyboard.

Yeah. Is that your act of rebellion? No, I definitely wanted to be, it's funny, my dad dad has dedicated his whole life to this minority music form that...

So his sidekick was Louis Stewart, who's the greatest Irish jazz musician, who died the year before last. So my dad and him have been playing together for 60 years. So there's a funny thing when your sidekick passes away then because like dad's still gigging but he'll never have that thing yeah yeah that he had uh with that person and there's also something beautiful about that that you know i remember at the funeral dad just saying you know one of the saddest he said at the eulogy that's one of the saddest things is there's

less of us every time we all get together for one of these but there's also something beautiful that the music literally the beat literally goes on

that this you know weird you know American art form of the 20th century wound its way

over to Ireland in whatever weird form and then he dedicated his entire life to it yet for my father

the only tunes that anyone in this country will ever remember him for was my father wrote the theme for Wonderly Wagon and the Safe Cross Code brilliant brilliant like when did you start

I'm going to do songs that are funny i wanted to be a piano player like dad uh but dad's thing was he never forced any of us to do music lessons or anything we had to ask him how to do it because i think he taught a lot of kids piano lessons when they clearly hated it and were being made yeah yeah by their folks or whatever so when i was 16 i asked him could he show me how to do it and so his idea of a piano lesson was he just put on the radio and he's like all right hear that just let's try and play that yeah and then so i'm like okay and then he's like let's try and play it a sad version of it and then i'm like okay and he goes and now let's play it like it was a fast dancey version and like you know the the song is uh whatever a song from la la la la la long long long long long

or you know and so da has made it into this sad choral version of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was about five minutes into him teaching me how to play the piano, I was like, oh, there's more to this than I imagined. And then you add into that, there's another factor, which is a very positive factor, which is one of the greatest jazz musicians in the world now is a guy called Brad Meldowda who's a piano player and uh he used to spend time here he's a guy who he had some uh health issues and some drug stuff he went he was a genius kid piano player and i think he went on the road with tepeche mode then and that's

not a great place to be no me immediately i, okay, I can see where things went wrong there. The worst possible. Yeah. And so he used to come here to do shows and just hang out generally. And so I ended up spending a lot of time with him. And that was really bad also from the point of view of someone. Well, certainly when I started playing then,

because he would be like, I remember one time we were in the car going somewhere and there was this ad on the radio for all the tiles you'll ever want, tile market. All the styles you'll ever want, style market. And like an hour later, Brad just sitting down at the piano and being like, hey, do you remember that ad for tiles earlier and him just playing it exactly?

And then him being like, it's actually, reminds me of that taboosy thing and then playing part of a symphony and me just going oh fuck i don't have what these lads have i just didn't have the ears like you can you know there's your 10 000 hours and all that yeah there's also be fucking good in the first place. You gotta have something in here. Yeah. Yeah. And I didn't, I definitely, you know, I could have kept plugging away for years and got okay. Now the other thing that the other sort of family business was, or not family, my dad used to write sketches for the radio,

comedy sketches. And there was always a big comedy house from the point of view of, oh, my granny lived in Ackle, so that was a six-hour drive. So we'd listen to these tapes of old Goon shows and Monty Python tapes and Round the Horn and Last Night at 58 Show, all these like classic BBC comedies. And he took us to Kevin McAleer when McAleer sort of broke. Freddie Star. You know what I mean? We'd go to whatever the big comedy gig was in town

and there was never a point where I was like, oh, I want to do that. But I saw a Randy Newman gig on my J1. I went to America in 1996 and he was this weird hybrid of the two.

Had you heard Randy Newman up until that point or was this, you just stumbled upon Randy Newman in America? My friend was into Randy Newman and said, you have to see this. You will like this. And you know when someone says that, every part of your body is like,

I'm going to do my best to hate this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I sat down and it was in a Borders bookshop in San Francisco when I was working as a stationary courier, which is a contradiction in terms, for the summer. And he sat down and like he went, he played some deep cuts. He sat down and like he went, he played some deep cuts. He played ghosts. And I just, it fucking blew my mind.

And then I was around that time. There's a live Tom Waits album called Nighthawks at the Diner. Oh, that's fucking gorgeous. Where he talks a lot on it as well. Yeah, I love it. And I, you know, growing up in Dublin as well, I'd always gone to a lot of rock gigs, a lot of singer-songwriter gigs, and I always loved how,

do you know with singer-songwriters, very often when they're tuning up, they tell an anecdote, and it's very often a shit anecdote, but everyone's hanging on every word because they're going like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. And then for lunch,

we actually didn't know where to go, and we ended up just getting chips for lunch. Anyway, this song, and you're like, oh, I thought this was going to have an ending. I loved that idea. And I think that was definitely, I was like, I could do that. I could just play jazz chords and talk over the top of it. Because there's a thing as well about your type of musical comedy.

You use deliberate mistakes for comedic effect. I'm not very good. But, like, there... Yeah, no, no, no. I get, yeah. You're probably better than how you do it when you're, like, you do, they are deliberate mistakes, aren't they?

Yeah, I like I like to I'll try and hold a riff. Yeah, it's quite hard to talk and play the piano at the same time. But I like I figure no one's there for the piano playing. Do you know what I mean? No one at my gigs is ever like I try and tune out the talking and just really feel that groove uh whereas I mean it's the opposite yeah yeah yeah so yeah definitely I didn't have the chops to to be a proper uh that's a that's a jazz term not one from uh butchery uh I didn't have the chops. And so I, yeah, I saw a way of using, I still, I love music.

I still love music. And I love the way that a musical comedy, I love what it does with energy. You know, that you can play a sad song and bring the energy in the whole room, right? That everyone's concentrating, hanging on every fucking word. And I like subverting that

by having then songs about total horse shit. You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like early on in some of my first gigs, I used to support bands a lot. And I used to support David Kitt. Yeah. The Moldy Peaches and people like that. And you'd go off and I'd come on with the little keyboard.

I was always into those little keyboards. And people would be like, wow, it's a really serious singer-songwriter here. And I'd have a song about how much I love the Fiat Scento. Yeah. And people would, the penny would drop halfway through and they'd be like, oh, there we go. He's taking the piss. Ah, he's doing a different sort of a thing, you know? Like, there's Tom Waits songs that, like, for me,

I try to write songs about things that are important to me. Yeah. And then I write stupid songs about finding a dead mouse in my water tank as well. How do you feel about that? Because it's, obviously, we do fucking music as well, musical comedy, like the bandits but I've always

found music is one of the few art forms where as soon as you include comedy in it it somehow becomes it's perceived as being creatively devalued

the term novelty which I fucking hate the term novelty because I believe that all acts have novelty like even someone like Bob Dylan who's, you know, at his height

really cool lad who smokes fags and he's all moody. That's his novelty. Do you know what I mean? It's just a personal brand. So it's like if your songs are funny, therefore the music must not be good. I mean, it's...

I do get it as in if someone walks on stage with a guitar, I'll be like, oh, fuck. Yeah. And I think it hits me especially because I'm like,

oh, guitar comedy. Well, at least. That's because it's very cliched though. Well, it is sometimes. But then, so I was having all these doubts

in 2002. Huge doubts about like, what the hell am I doing? This is so stupid. And then the show after me in my room in Edinburgh was Flight of the Conchords. Yeah. With Taika Waititi, who now made Eagle vs. Shark. He was doing the lights for their show.

And I met these, they, just because I could see it being done in this way and carrying a whole room along with it for an hour like probably the best hour of comedy i've ever seen and that made me be like oh yeah hang on there you can there is a way of doing this yeah now and they're musically proficient and they sing beautiful harmonies. And I'm not necessarily those things. But I definitely doubled down after that. I was like, I'm going to try and figure out my own way of doing this now. And I ended up playing piano with them and still do sometimes.

Oh, really? Yeah, I support them sometimes when they... I'd say they're good chaps, are they? Yeah, well, it's very funny, from an Irish point of view, we played Whelans to no one, What? in 2003,

Okay. and they sold out two nights in the three arena, in an hour and a half, Wow. last year, so, you know, it's,

it's a beautiful, and it's a beautiful thing about YouTube, you know, same with Bandits, like, that stuff lives on. And Concordes came back with a, they hadn't done anything for about five years,

and they were like, we'll book 500 seaters, see if anyone remembers us. And then everything sells out. Because the YouTube just has it, it keeps going. YouTube just keeps it going then, yeah. And also, like,

it's hard not to sound like a total prick, but they put their hearts into that. They did their best. Some of the songs are really stupid, but they all have a sort of sincerity and a beauty. They have a song called Bus Driver that is one of my favorite songs. And if you do that, people remember you. It means something to people yeah and that's a that

that's a really nice thing that you get certainly from musical comedy as well it it it gets in people's heads the way music does well i mean it means your joke can have a hook yeah i mean it's you can walk away humming a joke completely yeah so yeah. So, I mean, that's handy, yeah. Yeah. And also, I mean, I'll really defend stupidity a lot as well, as in this comedy that I love, this incredibly profound, articulate, beautiful, this Daniel Kitson, you know, this Josie Long

doing beautiful political comedy. But there's also like Mitch Hedberg and people, you know, I saw Mitch Hedberg when he did Kilkenny Festival in 98 and he comes out and he's like, Pringle's original intention was to make tennis balls and the potatoes arrived and they were like, let's do it anyway.

And you're just like, this is so pure and beautiful. I love this as well. And the nice thing about comedy is it's possible to have, like Bill Hicks used to do gigs with Mitch Hedberg, you know, and that's a beautiful thing. And everyone would have been laughing at two entirely different ends of it. It's clowning. I mean, it's one of these things too.

Like sometimes that's why I have an issue with the word satire because sometimes they throw satire on things to say, oh, it's comedy, but it's the smart type. Do you know what I mean? Instead of just going, no, it's kind of not just be funny. Yeah. Do you know what I mean?

Like, what was I thinking there? My hangovers after getting the better of me and I forgot the next thing I was I thinking there? My hangovers have to get in the bedroom. I mean, I forgot the next thing I was going to say. So if you'll continue. Well, if I could use your own work, you know, like the puppet Gabriel Byrne. Yeah. Who is currently in my house.

I left the house, obviously, to do this gig. So I have Gabriel Byrne puppets sitting on the couch. So if a robber comes in, they'll just be like, fuck that, I don't know what it is, but I don't want to see it, I'm out of here. It's like a very small toddler with Gabriel Byrne's head. It's fucking terrifying. So I have this on the couch.

So, well, the Bandits had a song, If You Want to Fuck a Fella, Go Out and Fuck a Fella, that is sung by a ventriloquist dummy, Gabriel Byrne. And on many levels, that is really stupid. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But on another level, it's a very succinct, nice, blunt message. And I think that's an example of something that's simultaneously reasonably profound

and also reasonably stupid as well yeah there's a great like we like doing things to be honest that was more of a not a personal attack on Gabriel Byrne right but because I've nothing against Gabriel Byrne he's a gent it was more myself and Chrome kind of going

we made that video like the Gabriel gabriel burn element was just because we had envisioned he's gonna open up youtube and he's gonna have to look at it he's just gonna have to wonder but it was mainly just i was going gabriel burn opening a laptop and it's like someone has put a lot of effort into making a very small me and why is the small me why did they have this message about why it's okay to be gay and just for him to

wonder because there's no and the thing is there's no answer do you know what I mean yeah sometimes but I mean I've done things that I don't even understand like I I remember Don Coburn used to read the news yeah Things that I don't even understand. Like, I... I, um...

Do you remember Don Coburn used to read the news? Yeah. Well, I don't, but I've seen videos of him. He was, uh... He was just a down-voiced RT newscaster. Tammy Tiernan was talking about him yesterday as well. There must be Don Coburn in the air. Yeah, he was, yeah.

So the night before the Tour de France came to Dublin, or came to Ireland in 1998, me and my friend got up at four in the morning and drove up the mountains with a bucket of white paint and wrote Don Coburn's name on the roads. You know the way normally you write the name of the champion cyclist? We just decided it'd be really funny if it just said Don Coburn. It's so stupid.

And again, I'm guessing there's the part here that you want that to reach Don Coburn and for him to just go, why? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Did I do something? Is it a warning about something that I'm going to do? Why?

So we did it, and the idea was that the helicopter shot you'd get, and we'd be able to take a photograph of the telly as it went over. But if anyone remembers the 1998 Tour de France in Ireland, debacle, there was fog and the helicopter couldn't go up. So our work was completely lost.

I'm sorry. Recently I did a thing as well. So I have a story in my book. I can't remember the name of the fucking story, but it's about a girl who's experiencing crippling anxiety and panic attacks, right? And how she's getting through it. But halfway through the story,

she meets Sam Neill, who's dressed as Bart Simpson and he becomes a kind of a spiritual guide for her to get out of her anxiety he might even be a figment of her imagination but again I'm just like I just want Sam Neill to open up this book and go why, this whole story

is about a 19 year old girl experiencing anxiety, why am I in Bunratty Castle in Clare? Why am I dressed as Bart Simpson? And why am I urging her to piss on the seats of an Italian tourist bus? And again, it was just, I want Sam Neill

to open it up and for him to go, why? Why? It's kind of a, I don't know what it is. If you have that ability that platform just to get into someone's head for no reason and it's not malicious yeah just make them wonder there was like it's something related to to my comedy like one of the first things one of the first kind of public prank things i ever did before i was doing stand-up was when i was in college

i made up posters for a fake bank and like do you remember like in the 90s banks for the first time brought sort of marketing to young people into it and so it'd be like graffiti written you know the content with the current plus account and like there'd be a rap you know god the content, the current plus account. And like, there'd be a rap, you know. Oh God, yeah, yeah, yeah. It'd be like Fresh Prince of Bel-Air type writing on it. And so, yeah, I made up a fake bank. But it reminds me of, I remember once talking to Arthur Matthews. Yeah.

Who co-wrote Father Ted. And this was, someone else was there and they were talking about this series, How Much Ireland Had Changed. And there was a series of letters in the Evening Herald in the 80s. And it was, the first one was, I saw two young people kissing on Dame Street

and I was disgusted. It was horrible. The way they were doing it in the modern style. This should be banned okay and uh the next day someone else right modern kissing someone responds and it's like um the uh yes i've seen this too and i've seen it on public transport is there a way that it can be raised the doll and then someone else uh wrote in the next day and was like i think people should be able to do whatever like times have changed in granddad and the next person was like where's this gonna end it's gonna end with people fucking tables or you know whatever yeah yeah yeah point and anyway it went on and on for several weeks this thing about should people be allowed to kiss

in public and arthur matthews just ended the whole thing by saying oh yeah I remember that I wrote all of those letters so he wrote the first one and he wrote all of the contrary views as well and he just kept the thing going for ages and that is a beautiful sort of prank that's the thing I wonder about

sometimes I look at artists who are class, like Arthur Mathews is class, someone like Flann O'Brien, and I wonder, had they have had access to the internet, would they have ever made a career? Yeah.

Because if Arthur Mathews is getting his kicks out of anonymous letters to the fucking Irish Times, that means that had he been born later, he just might be a really funny person underneath the journal that he comments and not go on to write Father Ted. Same with Flann O'Brien. Flann O'Brien had multiple different personas

that he would take, and I kind of go, if you get Flann O'Brien the internet, he wouldn't be writing books. He'd be arguing with people online all day and being really funny and smart, but ultimately not creating any work. Yeah, I mean, there's definitely a phenomenon now where particularly my uh like exactly my age i

got the internet when i was about 20 i'd say and so i've seen it yeah and then what you now see is people who speak like they're on the internet yeah in real world. Yeah. You know, would recommend, like that sort of thing. Yeah. It's just taken directly off TripAdvisor reviews. Yeah. And you also realize there's a world on the internet of people arguing and they're not getting anywhere. And they're just going to be there forever

going round and round in circles like the characters in the third policeman you know what i mean yeah yeah i also think there will be a movement now of people the internet is just seen as a thing and well well obviously technology become more and more integrated and people will use it for messaging and all of that but the idea like i am of an era where basically you knew everything that was going on on the internet yeah someone would be like have you seen um what was the what you call when uh you see a lady's gi through the front of her trousers camel toe yeah like when sorry for saying that but it was the only way I could think I remember someone going cameltoe.com

have you seen us yeah it was family photos that was nuts where people had just little camel toes on the front I know but that was an era

where you knew everything that was weird but like now there's wheels within wheels within wheels yeah you know it's like but it meant as well

like in 2006 we say did you see that YouTube video? Things went viral through word of mouth and things like that. And like you said, a website. What was the one with the man's bum? I remember cake farts.

Goatsy. Don't look up that. And me conning at a man's bum, I've really, it's way worse than a man's bum. It is a man's bum, but it's the worst type of man's bum you could ever see.

You know Goatsy, don't you? No. Okay, good. But the, yeah, so I think there may be, like that thing is just sort of eating its own tail now. And like the fact that it's led to a global situation where there's basically an ironic president in America and an ironic prime minister in England now,

I think is the logical conclusion of everything having lost all meaning, where people are just having lols and lols. Absolutely, yeah. You know? Absolutely. So, I mean, my hope is that things don't go any further. Like, you know, it reminds me of brit britain and

america remind me now of years ago i remember a university they uh because the student union had no power they elected a dog president of the student union just for a laugh and because the way the constitution was written the dog just got to live in the office for a year yeah like they couldn't vote the dog out or whatever. And that seems like what's happened. Yeah. Particularly in England. And now everyone's pretending that they agree with the dog.

Do you know what I mean? Yes. Everyone's sort of like, I know I've always hated shoes. Yeah. Let's all shit. Let's all shit wherever we want. Let's all fucking shit,

snip each other's fucking arses and eat out of tins. I'm going to get a couple of audience questions here if anyone has any. Is there a microphone going to run the place on the lanyard? Who's got a question? One question over yonder.

Wait, no, we've got a microphone. Ah, bollocks. I should have gotten the questions closer to where the mic was. Where is somebody? Hello. How are you? I always think it would be so cool if the audience member just went off with the mic. It's probably 150 quid worth of mic.

Fucking run out. Into coppers with the mic. I won't. Sorry, go on. I have two questions. So coppers with the mic. I won't. Sorry, go on. I have two questions. So, Blind Boy, hey. How are you? Just wondering,

did the Tommy Tiernan podcast record yesterday? Yes, it fucking did. And then, David, do you have your keyboard, Richard? I do. It's in a little cabin around the back with all this. Do you want to do a song? Is that rude?

I mean, I can do one. Can you hold a fort for like... Yeah, it'll be grand. It'll be grand. I should have said that. I should have said, here, the man who does musical comedy, you'd never bring your keyboard on,

but I wasn't thinking. Double dropping yolks. Double dropping yolks we'll get him to do a bit of that swanky keyboard bag how does this work now we're going to have to use your mic

over the sound hole actually someone else is going to have to come up and hold this over my face then as well do we have any what do you call those things that mics go on microphone stands Actually, someone else is going to have to come up and hold this over my face then as well. So can we... So, madam, can you do it? Do we have any... What do you call those things that mics go on? Microphone stands, yeah.

All right. I mean, that lady can hold it. I don't mind. Hold what? She can hold it over me, and you can hold it over the speaker. No, do you know what? You can sit down and be part of the audience and enjoy yourself, and I'll go for a double hander.

You have a stand. I'm fucking two mics now. That's not a stand, it's a railing. Sorry, two seconds. God bless. So you can go for the mouth, the mouth, Mike. Yeah, I'll take that on the mouth. And then can you...

I'll go for a... Oh, shit, I'm not sure it's the right... A Johnny Listen Hall. I'm going to jam this in. That'll do. Okay, hold. I'm going to jam this in. That'll do. Okay, great. Sorry.

I feel bad for the Greek fella now. He's like, what the hell is this? The poor old Greek will be listening. My one Greek. Walking along It feels like I'm free What's that sound? A cat purring in a tree Hey, Mrs. Cat Why you meowing like that?

I say She runs away Can't blame you to be honest, cat. One little can and I'm chatting to the cats. On the night, I went out without my phone. I'm sitting on the bus, but I'm not looking down. I'm staring out the windows, seeing the lights of the town. This is my town. Tonight I

feel part of it. Hearing conversation from the strangers beside. Karen got back with Liam when his mother died. Poor Karen. I hope she's not making a mistake

sorry for your trouble Liam the guy behind me singing Eminem to himself but the only words he knows for sure are lose and yourself this is chaos this is life but I bloody love it

I should always go out without my mobile phone I get to where I'm supposed to meet my friends. I'm half an hour early, but I'm happy to spend the time watching a busker. She's doing The Boys Are Back in Town. And I'm like, I'm the boys. And this is town. And I'm back.

And that's the greatest Irish rock song ever written. And this is the best version of it I've ever... This version is so good. I look down and my legs... I'm dancing. There's six strangers in the drizzle at the top of Grafton Street. And we're all dancing.

This never happens when you've got your headphones. And then I look over there and some prick is filming us on their phone. Oh, now you've fucking ruined that. phone and then I look over there and some prick is filming us on their phone. Now you fucking ruin that. An hour later, my friends still aren't there. There must have been a change of plan along the way somewhere. Not to worry. I'll just go get some food on my own. That's what I'll do. I'll read my book that I've downloaded. Ugh, bollocks. But the first restaurant's full and they recommend another place. But I can't find it cause I don't have maps. Tell you what I'll do.

I'll get a pint. Go to an old fella's pub. I'll reconnect with the soul of this nation. Then a guy comes up to me outside the pub. Says his coat's been robbed. Asks if I could phone the cops. But I say, would you believe it? I actually can't. And he calls me a miserable bollocks.

I'm sitting in the pub. And this old fella wanders over Cause he says I look lonely Starts telling me about his brother Who lives in Tennessee Says he can't come home Cause he doesn't have a visa And he misses him whenever Ireland have a match

They listen to it together on Longwave And even if they don't, they're not together They feel like they're 12 again and they are together While they're listening to the match I'm like, Jesus, this is so beautiful. This is what I needed. But then he moves on to how the country's full. There's no room for anybody else. We need a Trump to secure our borders. And you can't even tell who's Irish anymore. And what do the women want? What do the women want? And I wish I'd brought out my mobile phone.

I can't even book a taxi to get the fuck out of there. Walking home in the rain. It's amazing how much more you notice the smell of piss when you're not listening to a podcast. I get home. I've got 12 missed calls. My friends are like, where are you? You're missing the greatest night. They started putting photos of the night up on the WhatsApp group that like 50 of my friends are. My friend's waking up in Buenos Aires, but the friend's in Auckland. She's seeing the pictures of the night out and they're all like, oh, it's nights like this that I wish I

still lived at home. And I'm like, to be honest, when you're actually here full time, it's something of a mixed bag. Like it's getting better. I think it is getting better. I'm pretty sure it's getting like it's grand. It's absolutely grand. If you just remember to bring out your phone. But don't check it too much. Unfucking real. All right. I'll leave you go because it's fucking half six. Thank you so much everyone for turning up.

You were unreal. Thank you to David O everyone, for turning up. You were unreal. Thank you to David O'Doherty. He's a legend. Have a good evening, lads. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th, when the Toronto Rock host the Rochester Nighthawks

at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com.