Brouhaha

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Ardal’s big break came when he was cast in Father Ted in 1995 – its final episode broadcast in 1998, yet the programme following the misadventures of three Irish Catholic priests who’ve been banished to a remote island is still adored today. ‘It’s timeless comedy,’ says Ardal. For a while afterwards, he resented being perpetually associated with the show and the endearingly childlike Dougal. ‘I was going on the road as a stand-up and people wanted me to be more like the character of Dougal. But overall, I’ve got nothing but happy, happy memories.’ Then, overnight, it all stopped. “Suddenly, I was drained of adrenalin. My body didn’t quite shut down, but for the first time that I could remember in 30 years, 40 years, I relaxed. Completely. And yes, my income fell off a cliff. But there were compensations. It was strange but there was a sense of almost exhilaration.”

With the Jubilee weekend celebrations well underway, Shabnam Russo talks to Nikki and Adil about her creation for the pudding competition, a rose falooda cake, which made it through to the finals. His story was inspired “by a feature-length article I read about a very strange case, about 10 years ago, while touring”. Ardal O’Hanlon, 56, started his career as a stand-up comedian before rising to overnight fame as the bumbling Father Dougal McGuire in the cult Channel 4 sitcom Father Ted. He has also played leading roles in Big Bad World, My Hero and Death in Paradise and has written two novels. He and his wife, Melanie, have three children and live between Dublin and London. What were your family circumstances growing up? I grew up in a lovely small town, a beautiful town. Very happy childhood,” he says. “And you could easily ignore the underbelly but, as a writer, you’re drawn to the dark side. You can’t afford to be squeamish as a writer, whether you’re a journalist, a fiction writer, or a stand-up comedian. You want to look into the abyss.” Taskmaster was a big deal for Ardal. ‘It was very liberating. Five years ago, I’d have run a mile. I’d avoided reality shows where I’d have to be myself because I’m quite shy, so I’ve always been happier adopting a role. Even doing stand-up you’re being an exaggerated version of yourself. But with the pandemic, I changed. We had lots of time to think, and I realised being yourself on television is not that big a deal in the big scheme of things.’

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Determined as he was to pursue another venture in writing when the right idea came along, it’s clear to see that Brouhaha is a labour of love, inspired by many times and places throughout his life. Here’s hoping it won’t be another 25 years before we see his next written work! As the son of a former government minister, was he ever groomed for politics? “No, not me. Even in my family, I would have been probably the least likely candidate. Because I sort of ran away from it.”

My kids have all kind of grown up now, I have three children and two of them live away from home, one in Australia, one in France at the moment. We’ve got one daughter at home, but she does her own thing at the weekends generally speaking. A lot of dog walking involved, maybe a bit of tennis. Yes, when I co-founded an alternative comedy club with two university pals above a pub in Dublin. We were influenced by alternative British sitcoms such as The Young Ones. I was only performing about one gig a month and it was a hand-to-mouth existence. It is through art that you inform people,” says O’Hanlon. “This is why we write, because politics doesn’t always work. Journalism can be a bit too dry and factual. Art is really the way forward. And there’s an appetite for it, particularly among the younger generation, who are totally pissed off with politics as we know it.”Sharkey finds himself joining forces with retired Garda Kevin Healy, who is haunted by the fact that he was unable to find out what happened to Sandra, and a local journalist Joanne McCollum who is obsessed with the case. Maybe together they can break through the web of lies that has built up around Sandra's disappearance and finally get to the truth? If they can stay out of harm's way...

When the kids were younger we also made it a priority to go on massive family adventures. We did a month in Colombia and another in China. That was an investment in memories. He was well-used, anyway, to having “fallow periods, when you sit at home and think the world is falling apart”. But the two-year release from performing proved a sort of emotional sabbatical. I actually put this very question to the director on the day, like “why are we doing this? Why now?” And she said, quite simply and beautifully, “because it’s a brilliant play.”I was considered for a role in Cold Feet but I didn’t like the script and expressed that. I don’t think I was a very good judge of scripts. Is writing well paid? Brouhaha certainly made for an interesting reading experience—it is a slower moving (but cleverly done) book, and written in a style that (like other reviewers too have mentioned) took me a while to get into. In my case, until the first 20 per cent or so, I was reading on—not uninterested but also not gripped. But once I did settle into the style and more so, the story (especially the puzzle of what actually happened to Sandra) began to move forward, I started to get more absorbed and really began to want to read on. And I had a similar impression of that thing I just finished watching last night, which is The Last Of Us. You know, zombie apocalypse scenario, which we’ve seen a million times before, and again the consensus, the commentary, is that it’s like nothing we’ve ever seen before. It’s amazing, and, yes, two or three of the episodes were really, really good and well-written. And the world was quite impressive, but it would fall apart eventually. The writing is good and some of the characters are really good, but we’ve seen this story a million times. There's always been this ambiguity towards the law. We all know people who are involved in smuggling, to this day. And that was considered perfectly normal and acceptable This, however, is a town dead-set on keeping its secrets. And Sharkey is already drawing attention from all the wrong quarters...

It’s like an addiction. It’s more than a job; it’s a vocation, if that’s not too grandiose a term. You know, I’ve tried to stop, but it’s like this itch that needs a scratch. The “low-level anxiety” he had lived with all his adult life – “the anxiety of live performing, getting on a plane every week, meeting new people, going on to a TV set”, suddenly evaporated.

Ardal also recently appeared in Channel 4’s Taskmaster, the game show hosted by Greg Davies where, alongside the likes of comedian Judi Love, he had to complete a series of bonkers assignments, such as thinking up a present to give aliens in an invasion situation (Ardal suggested a mirror). Yet generally, Ardal’s enjoying growing older. ‘I stress a bit about losing my hair and the baggy eyes. But in your twenties and thirties you’re hustling and competing with other performers, you’ve also got young kids and that’s all a bit of a challenge. By my fifties, I felt as a performer and a human I became more confident in my own opinions. You’re settled, not in a complacent way, but you know your place in the world.’ I’m not vegetarian but if there’s a good vegetarian option I will tend to go for it. I think that’s just another factor related to getting older. I particularly like at this time of the year when I’m actually in theatre and I’m about to launch into six weeks for rehearsals. You want to get match fit for it. So I tend to be very careful about what I eat. The razor-sharp, violent and darkly comic second novel from actor, comedian and writer Ardal O’Hanlon.Dove Connolly is dead. That’s not good for anyone in Tullyanna, never mind Dove. I found it interesting to have three main characters and to see the story from each of their pint of views, however I thought this made the book a little too long and my attention was lost. As a murder mystery the book has no problem with providing suspects, but I felt that the book ran out of steam midway through.