The Blindboy Podcast - Chris O Dowd

Episode Date: August 7, 2024

I chat with Hollywood actor Chris O Dowd  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tumble with your uncles you thundering Duncans, welcome to the Blind by Podcast. I was supposed to be doing a monologue hot take podcast for you this week, but I wasn't able to for the most bizarre of reasons. There's an avant-garde Japanese drummer by the name of Ryosuke Kiyasu. He performs with just a snare drum. And he makes... I suppose you'd call it noise music. You might have seen viral videos of him on TikTok. He plays a snare drum in a way that...

it just sounds like a mad bastard playing a drum. It sounds like a toddler playing a drum. But from a technical perspective, he's a master. So this Japanese nige drummer, Ryosuke Kiyasu, is actually performing a gig. A gig in Limerick City, out on the street, in the streets of Limerick City tonight. You couldn't believe it. This fella's a legend.

However, wherever the fuck he's staying is quite near my office, and he's been practicing his drum for the past three hours, and I haven't been able to record because of the Japanese noise artist, Ryosuke Kiyasu, so I haven't been able to record because he's been banging a snare outside my window. I'm aware that this sounds incredibly far-fetched. air outside my window. I'm aware that this sounds incredibly far-fetched. I know sometimes I begin podcasts with a poem written by Helen Mirren that she sent me in a fucking zeppelin. I'm concerned I may have manufactured a boy who cried wolf situation, but genuinely I can't record a monologue podcast this week because Because the Japanese noise artist, Ryo Suke Kiyasu, has been practicing his drums outside my fucking window all day.

Now he's finished, he's done his gig. But it's too late for me to begin a monologue podcast. Look him up. Ryo Suke Kiyasu. He was playing in Limerick today in the street, which I think is fucking amazing. That's brilliant. What a bizarre and wonderful thing to happen in Limerick City. So while Riosuke Kiyasu was practicing outside my fucking window, I used that time instead to listen back and to edit a live podcast I recorded a couple of months ago

with Hollywood actor Chris O'Dowd and fuck me did we have a laugh. It was the biggest gig I'd ever done. I think it was last November in Hammersmith Apollo in London to a crowd of about 4,000 people. The experience was so overwhelming that I'd nearly forgotten that I did the gig until I listened back tonight and remembered how much crack we had. So that's what I'm going to be showing you this week on the podcast. Before we begin, I announced last week that I'd be doing an Australia and New Zealand tour in 2025, and the response has been huge.

People looking for tickets. The tickets aren't on sale yet. I haven't gigged Australia and New Zealand in five years, but in that time, the amount of listeners to the podcast has grown a lot over there. Australia is my third biggest listenership. UK number one, Ireland number two, and then Australia and New Zealand number three.

So that's a few hundred thousand people listening to me over there. So I'm gonna announce announce the tour now because people were going apeshit. So I'm going to be gigging Australia and New Zealand in March and April 25. So 30th of March I'm in Sky City Theatre Auckland, 1st of April I'm in Brisbane Powerhouse, 2nd April, I'm in the Enmore Theatre, Sydney. 3rd April, the Palais Theatre in Melbourne. And then the 6th April, I'm in the State Theatre part. Go to the websites of those venues. I think some of those venues you can get pre-sale tickets now, but those gigs don't officially go on sale until 9 a.m. on Friday. Local time. Those gigs are gonna sell out quickly so do

get yourself tickets if you're interested. Like I said the last time, the last time I was in Australia and New Zealand gigging with this podcast was five years ago. That was 2019 so fuck it when I'm doing those gigs in 25 that would be six years. Jesus Christ doesn't feel like that long ago. So was 2019. So fuck it, when I'm doing those gigs in 25, that'll be six years. Jesus Christ, it doesn't feel like that long ago. So my guest on this week's podcast is Chris O'Dowd, an Irish actor and a comedian. Very, very funny man. He rose to fame on the IT crowd, but then he went to America and became huge. He was in Bridesmaids, the Cloverfield Paradox, Rodden directed his own series called Moonby, and we chatted with each other in London and we just had unbelievable crack we just tried to make each other laugh. He's a podcast listener. He came to my live

podcast in Los Angeles when I did a live podcast in Los Angeles in 2019 and with a pint and a good bit of crack so I knew I wanted to have him as a guest at some point and Fuck me that I laughed my whole off Listening back to the fun we had so here we go the chat I had with the wonderful Chris O'Dowd in London a couple months back Fucking hell, what's the cra- Hello you gorgeous London cunts. This is a very very special gig for me and I'll tell you why.

When I was about, when I was a child of about three or four, my brothers used to watch, I think it was a shitty little VHS of, it was David Bowie's last gig as Ziggy Stardust and they used to watch it on loop all the time, all the time and it was here on this fucking stage that the gig was right in the Hammersmith Apollo or the audience as it was known at the time and I remember being a tiny tiny little child and not really understanding like what are my

brothers looking at, what is this, what is a gig, what is a stage because I was that young. And I eventually copped it and I said to my brothers, so David Bowie's up on that stage there, they're like yeah but like what happens if he needs to go for a shit and they're like well you know he has to stay on stage and finish the song but can't he just go for a shit whenever he wants to I said and they're like no he can't he has to stay on stage and I said to myself at three years of age well I can never do that job I could never do that job. I could never do that. And here I am in the very stage. And if I... If I need to take a shit, I'm going to hold it in.

I'm going to hold it in and the show will go on. Welcome to the Blind By podcast. I'm actually wearing a very special bag tonight. No I am, this isn't a plastic bag it's made out of satin. It's my, yeah it's my special, it's a bag that I use for television because my other plastic bags are quite shabby at the moment so I wore this because I was aware there was going to be a camera. Little health and safety announcement. Tonight's performance is technically a play, it's technically a work of fiction that gets written in the moment and the character that I portray in this play smokes of

vape. So according to the laws of the UK and also in Ireland in theatre, I'm allowed to smoke a vape on stage because it's an act of fiction. It's true! Like if I was up here, I don't know, if I got into a play and I was playing Winston Churchill, I'd be allowed to smoke a cigar before I called the army on some miners. on some miners. Holy moly have I got a treat for ye cunts. I have a marvelous guest. Please welcome you to do this like two days ago. I like to think I was at least second choice. Well I asked Darro O'Briain first and Tara couldn't do it and Darro said sure Chris lives close by. I got a text right after that from Darro going listen I've got some bad

news I gave somebody your number. Delighted to be here. Delighted to be here. Thank you very much. Do you know? Huge huge fan of the podcast. Thank you very much. I didn't know you lived, I thought you lived over in America. The last time I met you I was doing a gig in Los Angeles interviewing a woman who believed in ghosts. That's right. She really believed in them. She did. She was really not talking to her. I didn't know she believed. I didn't know that. I was just happy to get a free trip to Los Angeles, to be honest. It was the early days of the podcast. Hold on. Did she fly you over? No, no. It was like Culture Ireland or something like that. So Culture Ireland were like, do you want to do a live podcast in Los Angeles? And I'm like, fuck yeah. It was a culture Ireland or something like that. So culture Ireland were like, do you wanna do a live podcast in Los Angeles?

And I'm like, fuck yeah. It was a great gig. It was all right, but I should have done a little bit of research on the guests. So I'm up there on stage. They said something about spirituality and then I'm there going, all right, okay,

I'm speaking to someone who believes in ghosts. So let's see how this goes for the next 90 minutes. She was absolutely certain about it. Very certain about the ghosts. So when I when I said on Instagram tonight, right? I said that I was going to have you as my guest. I said, all right, my guest tonight is going to be Chris O'Dowd, an actor and comedian from Roscommon.

And some people were like, he's been to Hollywood, too, you know, almost as if because there's nothing wrong with that statement. That's a perfectly correct statement. You were Chris O'Dowd and an actor and comedian from Roscommon. That's correct. This all feels like it's legit. It's legit. But just the. What do you think that the impulse was from this?

They felt insulted that it's like like... You're underselling me. Underselling, it's not the truth. I see. The problem is how they... Well, they're fucking right. But it's how they perceive Ross Common. The problem was how they perceive Ross Common. I see, yeah.

Yeah, no, that's a shame. It's like I should have added something else on. It's like, no, no, that's actually good enough. He's an actor and comedian from Ross Common. Why is that not good enough? It's good enough for me. I don't know, it's a strange thing. When you go away, I was trying to think the other day

about we are back. The last time I saw you, we were living in California. We were living in California for a good while. We ended up being there 10, 12, maybe 13 years. We decided to come back last summer. And what the fuck was I gonna say? Oh. Well, I'm gonna pull you up and back,

meaning London and not Ireland. Well, I suppose, because we had left London to go. Oh, right, okay, fair enough, that's allowed then. That's allowed. It's a boomerang. But I was trying to think about it in terms of Ireland, because I spent most of last year in Ireland, but I've spent more time away from Ireland now than I've spent in it and so at that point you

become just another immigrant. You're gonna fucking turn into Piers Brosnan man you're gonna go but you know you know that thing that happens there's Piers Brosnan. Well I'll have to stop working out. Mid-Atlantic, you know mid-Atlantic it's as if because they say that about Pierce Brosnan, like he's from fucking Drogheda. Pierce Brosnan's from Drogheda. But I apologize. Shit, that causes scraps. It's like when you say that Rory Gaddaher's from Cork and then up in Donegal, they're like, not sure about that one, buddy. It's at this big fight they have to agree upon

Aurora Gatahar's superposition where he's both in Dunnegal and Cork at the same time. I mean you would want to claim Pierce Brosnan as if you could. What was the other claim other than Drahada? There's Navin and Drahada. Navin, oh I see. They have scraps over Pierce Brosnan you have to be very careful so I believe he was born in Navin but grew up in Drogheda is that correct? Just now. Boss, boss the other thing about Pierce Brosnan. Jesus the man can wear linen can't he? He's great for linen. Was he in the tailor of Panama? Was he in that film? If he wasn't he fucking should have been. God he just drapes off him doesn't he? What the fuck does mid-atlantic mean? I always think you ever hear of the mythical island of High Brazil?

The what? Yeah, do you not know about that? No. So there was, back in the days when people were shit at making maps. There's an island in Irish mythology, right, that's off the west coast of Ireland called High Brazil. H-Y-B-R-A-S-I-L.

And we had it in mythology as like a fairy place, but then some people were like, maybe it's real, and then we can't tell because there's a lot of mist. So that's the only mid-Atlantic place. So I'll put Piers Brazen in there, but he gets called, mid-Atlantic is when an Irish actor spends too much time in England and America, and then their accent is halfway through a plane flight. Or anybody on to FM. That fucking accent is

very strange. But that's that isn't it? That's right there. That's mid Atlantic for sure coming up. Or then you get the lower one down here guys. The traffic tonight is going to be absolutely crazy on the M50 if you're calling in 576 312 is the number to call in. Oh Tony why can't we catch a break? We are with Chris O'Dowd. Chris you've been having a good time there now over in America we've seen you in lots of films. God what a place. Can you tell everybody here tonight in London what is next for you? Joe Duffy's testicles in my mouth. It's just so lovely to be back Pat, you know. That one in the middle.

The one that's right there in the middle and that straight one that's there. That, you know, there's this new fucking Dublin accent that's emerging. You'll hear it in trendy smoking areas. They'd be like talking about fucking like Fontaines DC. I can almost Fontaines DC, man. I'm not too sure about that band. I think they'd be a bit cooler. It sounds like literally halfway between a high court judge and a lawn mower. I don't know where it's come from, it's not D4, it's just...

I like the idea of Trinity Smoking Areas. It sounds like a dating app. Trinity Smoking Areas. I met her on Trinity Smoking Areas. God, she's got the lungs of a much older woman, but what a smile. No one's smoking anymore after the pandemic. Is that it?

That was the end of it? I'd say you're a fan of a cheeky cigarette if there was a pint going around. Do you know what? I don't. I was a smoker and then I went on to the vapes and now I can't get off the vapes. I bet you, do you smoke vapes in places where you shouldn't smoke them, like up on stage at the Hammersmith Apollo? Yeah, like everywhere. I was thinking, you know that gorgeous play that you're doing.

My character, weirdly enough. I'm taking off my watch because the cunts can see it better than the camera. He might have the old puff I suppose, this character called Pascal Mescal. So tonight you're playing the character of Pascal Mescal tonight. And Pascal Mescal smokes of ape, right? My character's name is Pierce Brosnan. I'm Pierce Brosnan and in tonight's play, Pierce Brosnan smokes a vape. Wait till you see what we do in the second act.

We go, Stevie Nixit, someone has to come up on stage and blow the vape up our hoops. I'm in. That's one of those ones. Do you remember the old urban legends from when we were kids before the internet? So there was, Prince had a rib removed to suck his own dick, right? Yeah, that's true. But then there was, Stevie Nicks had someone implied to blow cocaine up her arse.

Like I fucking wrote it around. Now I can't pinpoint it directly. For the job advert. That was a thing. I don't know was it Stevie Nicks specifically, but when it got to the stage of like Rolling Stones, The Who, right? Real, real big bands and they are full on addicted to cocaine. Yeah. Like I think it was Keith Richards at one point, right, because you can tell when he's wearing a particular type of jeans that are baggy, apparently he'd be there on

stage. That's how he plays guitar, like that. And he'd lift down the back of his pants and someone would have to run up and just blow that some coke up his hoop. Because the thing is too with this. Like handing out water to a marathon runner. In the 70s they didn't really, apparently when coke became a thing in the 70s, the celebrities didn't really know that it was dodgy. Like you know... It probably

wasn't. What back then? Well, you know, before they started cutting it with shit, it was probably great. Before they put the baby laxative in it. The, you know, that film The Last Waltz, Martin Scorsese, where it's a gig and I think it's Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Van Marissen is there. The money that they had to spend in the 70s before digital editing, painting cocaine out of nostrils. Is that right? Yeah. So they had to, who was the biggest culprit? I think it might have been Van Marissen, I'm not sure, but someone. No, no, it was Neil Young. It was Neil Young. Huge big lump of coke there.

But the thing is, there's no digital editing. So they have little film. They had the same problem on Home and Away. What? Same issue, same problem. But it was more advanced. Have you ever been to Australia? I have. I've been to Australia.

I did a film in Australia. And I have a sister over there now. Because of the film? She came with me and I left her there. What film did you do in Australia? She married an Aussie fella and they've got three kids over there now. Lovely, lovely spot. It's a strange thing with...

Lovely spot. No, it's lovely. I fucking... Australia. I'm a big fan. I fucking love Australia. I really think it's great. But the thing, it's the one place that when Irish people go there that they become Australian and they stay.

It's one thing I noticed like with people my age so I saw everyone my age fucked off in 2010 you know at that recession and you stay in contact with the Australian friends on Facebook and as soon as they start following the Australian rugby or whatever you call it, they're gone. And then you start seeing good A and Struths. I'm serious. And they're gone. And then the big one, when they start getting fucking solar panels and they're like, I've got minus electricity bills here. I'm sending it back. You know?

Yeah, that never occurs to you and Kerry. It doesn't. I was in. I love Brisbane. Brisbane is like I've never been to Brisbane. It's like tropical marm and heaven. Wow. God's a big cell. Yeah, it's it's profoundly clean. Wonderful. It's you know,

it's it's like what you think Los Angeles is going to be like before you get there. Sans piss smell. You know what I mean? So Brisbane is that. Brisbane is big, lovely glass buildings, palm trees. They've got streets where you're not allowed to smoke cigarettes.

You get kicked off the street if you smoke a cigarette. And then... Sounds like bollocks. The only bad thing is they have a type of bat there called a flying fox. Now they're fucking massive. They're called a flying fox for a reason. They're cute looking if you can get close,

but they're huge. They're like that big, right? And I was drinking a fucking daiquiri underneath a bridge and a big herd of flying foxes, so big that they blacked out the sun and a lump of fucking flying fox shit landed in my daiquiri underneath a bridge and a big herd of flying foxes so big that they blacked out the Sun and a lump of fucking flying Fox shit landed in my daiquiri and that permanently marred Brisbane for me. They haven't even developed what that superstition means yet. It's so niche. You know, you get shot on by a bird and you're lucky. But you know, when the bad shit's in your daiquiri.

I think you could play the fiddle now. It's it's a lot. Congratulations. Bad shit in your daiquiri is so much funnier than flying fox shit in your daiquiri. Bat shit's in your daiquiri. Sounds like a 70s novelty song. Get back to the crockery. I had a fucking barred shit on my, the first ever Dorito I ever ate.

In like 1999, yeah. Fucking destroyed Doritos. I was in the fucking, it was in the schoolyard and one of the lads had Doritos I ever ate. In like 1999, yeah. Fucking destroyed Doritos. I was in the fucking, it was in the schoolyard and one of the lads had Doritos and I'm like, oh, I've seen those from Adverts for America. So I took one and I fucking straight up bird shat on Tom and Dorito.

And I had a thought about going, fuck it, we'll eat a bit off the corner because your man wasn't giving me a second one. Because they were Doritos, like, and come out so they were these were scarce items I do I don't remember when my mother told me she remembers electricity coming My my to tell me that what what was her stories about that? Well, because they live kind of maybe seven or eight mile outside of Boyle, which is a small town itself

So it was kind of and I think they were on generators for a little while, but they had she lived by a bridge to a right by a river. So the lights came on one by one as it kind of came over. She would have been seven. And it must have been the same view and Doritos. Arrived in Ireland. Similar like, oh, my God, things will never be the same. I have an uncle down in West Cork, right?

His name is Jameen. Now, this man is so West Cork that, you know, every so often they'll interview someone on the news just so you can laugh at their accents. Do you know that rare occasion maybe once every two years they interview a person just so everyone can go, can you believe someone talks like that? So they got my uncle Jermeen for one of them once. It was about an anniversary of the Kilmike lamb bush.

And he's just a, oh you want all the guy, oh yeah, they were good old lads lads there on the tent. The tens, the tens on the lobby and all those kind of things. They shot him. He's there, you know. It's so beautiful though isn't it? And his fucking dad was a war hero like, he was in the, but anyway they had him on doing that but my uncle Jermeen, it would have been about 1950 or something right and the electricity was recent enough right so Jermeen had his electric fence but he didn't know a lot about electricity so he hooked the electric fence up you're supposed to have a think a step down transformer so that the electricity just gives you a little bit of a kick okay but Jermeen hooked the fence directly up to the mains of

the house right so he didn't know like this is bad so one day he's hanging around his electric fence right and his neighbor his neighbor comes up an old fellow right and the neighbor goes what do you mean and you mean goes away getting on Tom? And they're there and fucking, Tom anyway, the old fella's complaining about his health. And he's talking to Jermeen and as he does it, right, he leans against the fence, right. And he's, his hat flew off and he shat himself.

His hat flew off his head and he shat himself. The thing was, right, he didn't know it was the electric fence. He thought it was something wrong with his body. He thought, he thought, oh fuck, this is just what's going to happen from now on without warning. I've got a disease. And the disease is my hat flies off and I shit myself without warning what do you mean I don't know what he should have known of course because the week before a bat had shot in his daiquiri. Destined. I asked people for questions for you right and then I ended up I ended up deleting questions on your behalf because people kept asking, ask him turn it off, what is it? I don't even know.

I'm not trying to get you to say it, I just can't remember the catchphrase. Ask him, did you try turning it off and on again? Have you tried turning it off and on again? I know, yeah, but that's, I started deleting them on your behalf because that's like people asking me, is your horse outside?

Well, yeah. The biggest effect that's had on my life is I can never be on a social media and ask anything. No. About anything. Have you gone into a computer shop? In the early days, I remember going into a computer shop and getting my laptop fixed. And it was like a Polish guy.

And he looked at me as I was handing it to him and he says have you tried it? He said, yeah! I said yeah I've tried to turn it off and on again. And he was like, well, I think that's all we do. He was obviously getting a bit of grief. But no, I don't anymore. I just throw them away. And who's the most famous person you've ever met? Oh, that's a good question.

You had Michael Dion. I mean, Michael D is a good one. I mean, he's famous, but I mean... Whoopi Goldberg? I suppose. That was last week. I'm trying to think of who... When we're thinking this, when I...

Brad Pitt's a good one? Clooney? Who's famous? You're kind of having that you're you're you're you're going into your chart and Heston's, but he's dead. But you know what I mean? I met Eastwood. There you go now. Yeah.

And he approached us and wanted a photo with his daughters. It was fuck off. We were at a restaurant. It was more my mate than me, I think. But it was also around the time the bridesmaids came out. And he had his daughter with him who was like 20 and was having her birthday party with eight or 10 of her mates. And he was there.

And so he had been summoned over to go and grab us for a photo for her group. So it was, hi, I'm Clint. Can I get a photo real quick? I was like, yes. That must have been mad, was this? Yeah, I was mad. He's an interesting chap.

He only started- I told him to fuck off. Did you? He seems like the type of fella that wouldn't take that well. I don't know what it's like. I can't imagine Clint Eastwood laughing. Like not a real one.

I can imagine the whole I'm laughing before I kill you. But not actually. I can't think of a sound. I can imagine him making the face. There was a. But no sound had come out. Have you ever noticed that about not to fucking whatever, but never. You've never heard Trump laugh? Like for all of the things that you've heard him say and do, I've

never heard him laugh. I don't think he's able to laugh. I think he's got a personality worldwide, just laughter is just out of the equation. He seems a little off. It's it's a terrible thing with fucking Trump because he's like I just wish that he was a Larry David character. Yeah. He's such a brilliantly written comedy character. Unfortunately he's a real life and he has loads of power. It's mad. Every time I see him, I'm like, no. Yeah. No, really?

Wow, wow, that all happened and it's still happening. That's mad. And it's probably gonna happen again, worse. Yeah, I would have thought so. It will, it will. There's no way way Biden's fucking things up. It is the old fucking... But people have gone mad. Do you want shit on your shoe or do you want shit on your knee? Do I have both? No no I'm not

affring that isn't that just this, this is the choice that America has. Oh, I see. Do you want shit on your shoe? What do you think I was going to do? Every now and again I'm like, oh, I've got shit on me somewhere. That'll be the end of my career, that's how I'm going to end it all. I'm going to shit into my hand, rub it on Chris's there and then shoot myself into the head.

Do you know, my narrative there was that you were kindly telling me that I've got shit on myself and you were asking me would I prefer. Well like. It was on my shoe or on my knee. Which one would you prefer? That's what everybody figured. But what would you prefer? Would you prefer to have shit on your shoe or shit on your knee?

Ah, you have to go with shoe. Biden. Biden is shit on your shoe and Trump is shit on your knee. Neither are great options. Neither of them are great. It's an extraordinary state of affairs that these two old men are where they've found themselves. It's not great at all. 340 million people. Get your fucking self together. It's a tough one.

Was your decision to get the fuck out of Los Angeles and to come to London like was it because America is... did you feel not great there? No, I think we came back for loads of reasons really, most of them just normal kind of midlife reasons, kids going to school and parents getting old, but definitely the last few years have felt a bit wild. And I enjoyed the 10 years before that,

that felt wild because I was being wild. But then when the world around you is wild and since kind of 2016 and stuff, California is its own mad wild bubble of kind of micro politics on a different level but it's very liberal so it the kind of the Trump of it is it it's more of a national thing than in California. But that part of it has just gone bananas in the school shootings all the fucking time. So the fact that you have to literally think about that

as a legitimate concern. Yeah, there's drills. You know, and the kids get to a stage when they start doing drills in school. It's like. So drills are normal, that's a normal thing. Yeah. And I remember reading a statistic, because you think of it as something very peripheral.

Yeah. And then I read a statistic that from the age of zero to 18, the greatest cause of death for Americans is guns. I'm like, well, that's just fucking wild. That's a big one. And maybe we shouldn't, maybe we should be somewhere else. I loved it though I have to say I loved it. It's great cracking the people are lovely but even I got offered an American tour in October and I'm like nah. Yeah. I don't want to do

12 gigs in America. Oh shit in October. A month away from the election, it's just, nah. Can I go to Canada? You know what I mean? And I was battling with myself. I was saying to myself, am I being irrational? Is this silly, is this silly, or is this a rational concern? And I started to say, okay, if I'm worried about lunatics with guns, maybe that's on

the irrational side, maybe I'll be okay. But then I thought, fuck that, the gigs will probably be shit. Because the vibe, but the vibe in the room, a month away from an election over there with Trump and Biden, the capacity to have crack would be greatly reduced. Because the tension, it'd be like... There'd be a lot of nervous laughter though, black and white. Nervous laughter, but as well, I did a few gigs around COVID. I had a UK tour just as COVID fucking exploded. I had to cancel my last...

Not related. Well, I am personally responsible for fucking spreading COVID in Ireland. I'm not joking. No. Yeah. So the first proper breakout of COVID in Ireland was it was at my gig. Bizarrely with them. I was talking to a shanakie called Eddie Lenahan, right? And Eddie's great. Eddie is we're going along.

We're supposed to have an interval now in about five minutes. I'll tell you this story. Eddie is a shanakee from West Clare. Now he's a real shanakee, like the people called Eddie a shanakee, and Eddie has been collecting the stories of the land, going up mountains, talking to all people, stories are gonna die with these people.

He collects them. But Eddie is very eccentric man. Big, huge, long beard, he'd be in his 80s, you know, profound storyteller, a fucking shanakee. And Eddie has stopped motorways being built. Like for real, there was a motorway being built near Shannon Airport and Eddie identified a very important fairy tree. And he went to the developers and said, there's a fairy tree there.

It's where all the fairies of monster meet. It's where the fairies have their GAA games. For real, Eddie's doing this. And they're going, fair enough, Eddie. And they fucking build it around it. It's not even that they believe it. It's just, they're not gonna fuck with a fairy tree. They're just, let's not bother.

And even, I had a buddy and he bought a house in Clare and within two days Eddie Lenahan, who he didn't fucking know, just arrives at his door out of breath. Old man with a big fucking beard and your man's like, oh who are you? I'm Eddie Lenahan and I'm a Shanna Key and I need to tell you, you're the new occupant of this house. There's a tree in the front garden, do not cut that down that's a very important fairy tree so my friend legitimately thought that he was someone's elderly da who was escaped from the house and had a bit of dementia so he did not heed

Eddie's warning so he fucking cuts the tree down the next day there's a wild bull for no reason in his garden. Stop it. And he can't leave the gaff and then from then on. This is a fucking fable. I'm fucking serious, seriously and then Robbins keep crashing into the window. But the night that I was in Glor Theatre in Ennis and I was interviewing Eddie Lenahan and we were chatting all about folklore and pishogues and everything and I'm getting fucking paranoid as fuck and then that gig was the site of where COVID happened in Ireland. Yeah so I got the phone call

a couple of weeks later some doctor had gone over to Switzerland on a skiing holiday because this was early days so COVID hadn't reached the shores of Ireland yet this doctor came to my gig sat in the middle and that's work and I was all over the papers as mr. Colbert no it wasn't great like you think of early pandemic yeah there was it's amazing now that I can joke about it it's what I what a lovely feeling but especially because we've got covered who got COVID? I told you I had COVID. You do in your fuck have you? You know what isn't it lovely that you can make that joke? Yeah. You couldn't have done that a couple of years ago, people are going all weird. No

people would be funny. No I had you for a good second and a half there and that was enough for me. But I did a few gigs then at the end of COVID. I did those gigs where people were in pods and stuff. Oh, yeah. You couldn't get crack. You couldn't because everyone is out there trying to enjoy the night, but they're all thinking about,

I hope I don't get COVID. So that's why I want to do a tour in America in October. It's going to be that. It's gonna be that. It's interesting. People will be riled up. It'll be, I imagine, quite highly charged. You can feel it coming already. I know.

The whole thing setting off with the court case at the start is just so filmic. Fucking hell. I can imagine things are going to get messy. If you showed a person from 1996 the political reality of now they'd die of shock I think they would like just but do you not know that on the spot do you know about that it's called a future shock theory the theory of at first it's a theory of how far in the future can you go that if a person saw it they would

die of shock so if you got someone from the time of Christ and you showed them a thousand years later they'd be like wow I'm okay with this though there's still horses and carts and shit fucking hell that's pretty cool iron you have over there but then if you got a person from a thousand years ago and showed them now they'd die of shock say what the fuck is this what do you think that people in the past projected though do you imagine like we imagine what it's going to look like even whether we're doing it subconsciously or not what it what it's going to look like, even whether we're doing it subconsciously or not, what it's going to look like a thousand years,

or at least 200 years in the future, because the Jetsons has been telling us and Python is into our brain. So you would imagine 2,000 years ago, during the time of Christ, they must have had some imagination of what it would be like in a thousand years time. So I looked into

around the year 600 in the monastery of Clann Macnoy's They used to have UFO sightings but the UFO, I found like there's this is written in the marginalia of manuscripts So monks had like a panic in Clann Macnoy's around the year 600 where they were seeing UFOs but the UFOs that they were seeing so they believed at the time that they didn't have they didn't believe in a round world they believed in this thing called the firmament so if you sailed too far past Ireland what would happen is there's no like world, you just go up there. The farmament was this other ocean that was up in the sky.

So the monks of Clam Macnoy's would report seeing a boat in the air and then a man swimming through the air down to them, sometimes catching fish. And what they believed was because Ireland was the westernmost point of Europe, ships had gone too far, ended up there, and now the lads are drowning in the air. But the monks used to get like traumatised panic attacks of these drowning people coming down from the air swimming at them. You know? And that's probably what it was.

So maybe that's what they thought the future was. I don't know, boats in the air. Well I wonder was that, but that's more of a spirituality thing more than anything else. They're imagining another realm. But they must be... They're not thinking technologically, yeah. Well they must say, because they not taking it technologically, yeah. Well, they must say, because they will know part of their own past and how things used to be because there will be remnants of it everywhere. So they would imagine some kind of a future for themselves that humans would make

and I wonder how much they got it right and how much they were like, oh. That's an interesting thing when you're talking about them looking at remnants of their past. Like one of my favourite cultures is the Anglo fucking Saxons, the Anglo-Saxons. You're in the right room. The ones that came here. And you see all this, you see a lot of it in Lord of the Rings because Tolkien was obsessed with Anglo-Saxon mythology.

But a lot of, so Britain was Roman, right? So we're talking, Rome collapsed in the year of 400 and then like society just kind of crumbled apart, you know what I mean, and there was no centralized power and there was warlords and London which would have been a lovely Roman city just started to crumble and technology was lost and writing was lost and then the Saxons who'd be from Northern Germany, they just started to trickle into Britain. Now some of these cultures lived in the woods and had never

encountered Rome. So when the Saxons came to London, they'd never seen a city. It's like they assumed that London, that the Roman ruins were built by giants. So the Saxons were like, we're not fucking living in there. They went off to the trees because they believed that the giants were going to come back. And then similarly, when the Saxons saw like all mounds like like Rat Kroeg and the Eheaven and Roscommon. So you go out into the countryside and you see an ancient mound. And what that usually meant is 1500 years ago, 2000 years ago,

there was a wooden castle and that was a mound that was created the wood is gone and now you're left with a mound the Saxons used to see that and they thought that there's a coiled dragon inside guarding gold you see that in the Hobbit you know yeah like a very frightened it'd be like imagine society collapses, right, and we go back to caveman times and then someone just finds Disneyland. Yeah, that would be the jump. People would die on the spot. Dad, and as well, if you're in a thousand years and you find Disneyland, you're not gonna go, ah, this was a theme park where people went to enjoy themselves. It's like, oh they worshiped a giant mouse, didn't they?

The people back then worshiped a giant mouse. Right, that's what this place was, a very important spiritual site. We've gone over, we've to give these people an interval. So ye have a little piss and a pint, don't take too long even though there's fucking loads of ye, and we're gonna come back out and chat some shit. Loads of love. Let us take the time out now to have a small bit of an ocarina pause.

I've got my big giant stone ocarina that I'm never able to play. You're gonna hear an advert for something here, I don't know what for. But I'll try and play the ocarina here. perfect for streaming lectures all day or binging TV shows all night. Save up to twenty dollars per month on Rogers Internet. Visit Rogers.com for details. We got you Rogers. This is an ad by BetterHelp.

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funded. I've got complete creative freedom to do whatever the fuck I want. I only have guests on this podcast if I'm genuinely interested in speaking to him. I know Chris O'Dowd is a big massive Hollywood man. But that's not why I have him on in speaking to him. I know Chris O'Dowd is a big mass of Hollywood man, but that's not why I have him on. I have him on because he's good crack. In a couple of weeks I could be talking to a butcher. I can do whatever I want with this podcast because it's listener funded and I'm in no way beholden to the behests of advertisers. If an advertiser wants to come on here during the ocarina pause, they do so on my terms, but they cannot dictate the content. They

can't even suggest what content I might make. Advertisers destroy podcasts, television, radio, because they start demanding bigger audiences and bigger audiences. I don't want to think about audiences, I just want to make the podcast that I enjoy making. Which ironically does bring me quite a big audience, but that's not why I do it. So if you enjoy this podcast, if you find yourself listening to it frequently, if it brings you marth, merriment, distraction, if it alleviates your boredom, if it helps you fall to sleep, whatever the fuck, whatever reason that has you listening to this podcast, please consider paying me

for the work that I put into it, because this is my full time job, it's how I pay my bills, it's how I rent out my office, it's how I might consider getting fucking better windows in this office, so that a Japanese nice music drummer can't interfere with a monologue episode. But if you like this podcast, consider contributing. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month, that's it. But if you can't afford that, don't worry about it. Just listen for free. Listen for free. Because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free. Everybody gets a podcast and I get to earn a living. Patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast. And please if you do sign up to Patreon, don't sign up as a free

member. There's nothing on my Patreon. I don't even post there. I want everybody to get the exact same podcast, whether they pay or not. So if you do sign up to Patreon, make sure you become a paid member. The only way I can get rid of the paid member option is if I start introducing tiers of payment and I don't want to do that. Upcoming gigs, um, I'm at Electric Picnic on the Saturday, I think it is. I'll have more details for you next week. So I'm at Electric Picnic, then I'm at the Edinburgh Book Festival. Check that out if you're near Edinburgh, looking forward to coming to Edinburgh.

In September I'm gigging in the Cork Opera House. I have a wonderful guest booked for that gig, I can't wait for it. It's part of the Cork podcast festival check out that festival I can never pronounce the Cork podcast festival I always end up calling it the Cork Codcast festival I can't do it November I'm in Mayo in Clare Morris and then oh I'm in Vicar Street on the 19th November up in Dublin too. And then of course Australia, March and April 25, Australia and New Zealand.

And those tickets go on sale this Friday the 9th. Now let's go back to my wonderful chat with the hilarious Chris O'Dowd. And in this second part of the conversation, this is a bit more like an interview. I ask him more relevant questions about his career and we speak about the art of directing because Chris is a director as well. I put my hat back on because this this satin bag looks too skeletal, it's too skull-like. Tonight's, I'm sponsored by Cruz Campo tonight, which I'm not. This is a, I'm not sponsored by these concerts, I've never ever seen this outside of Spain. Cruz Campo, it's not

even nice. It's just shit, it's shit Spanish lager that you drink when you're abroad, but I've never... It was an unnecessary expense in the end to get them to ship it over. No, you can get it in England. You're on the Moretti. I'm on Italian's finest. I remember so you know Mr Moretti there can you hold that up to the camera so people can see the face of Mr Moretti. Where is the cameras? I have no idea. Just cheat it over this way towards my elbow. There it is. Hold on. There it is. So Mr Moretti right. Oh fuck there's me. I went over to. Oh god. I didn't know I was back there. There's a beer from Barcelona, right, that looks the exact same as Mr. Moretti

with a different man, and it looks as if Mr. Moretti just told a dirty joke and the other fella's laughing. I mean, he put the two cans together. I hope that's what happened. You know, watching Blind Boy putting his hat back on after the interval. He saw my face.

But even with the bag on it was just such an extraordinary moment because you never see that really just watching somebody put a hat on to a bag. It was really quite if you were if you worked in fabrics. Tell us about Roscommon, will you? Well, it's the oldest population in Ireland, and I think it's got some of the newest ideas. And I'm here with the video. No, Roscommon is great. I mean, I've actually spent a good bit of time there the last year.

We've been filming in Ireland a good bit. And I love it because it just feels like a very normal place. So, and a lot of the places I've been since then haven't felt like that. I feel, I think Roscommon is deeply, deeply important because there's so many, but there's so many fucking... Thank you. Thank you. Fuck you. is deeply, deeply important because there's so many, but there's so many fucking. Thank you. Sit down, sit down. Just sit down, everybody for the podcast.

Everybody's standing up here. Get out, guys. To get bloody chat to get on with. There's. Sorry, what did you just say? Just fucking risk coming. I was I was trying to find out, the river Suck, right? You've got a river called Suck. Yeah. And usually when I see an Irish place name,

I wanna go right to the fucking etymology of that because it's always a brilliant story. Yeah. And I looked up the river Suck and the actual, they couldn't find the origin of the name. And when I looked up a journal, it said, "'The root word is wrapped in a web of uncertainty and lost in the mists of time. We hide our river as well. But ye have as well fucking Ratcroghan. There's a place in Roscommon called

Ratcroghan. Now Ratcroghan is this giant mound right and on this they used to have like a fair, but I'm talking maybe 1500, 2000 years ago. Everyone would gather from all the villages that you could see and they'd go to the top of Rathcroghan and it was like an electric picnic. Whatever the electric picnic was 2000 years ago, that was happening.

But what makes fucking Rathcroghan's? Candle picnic. Candle picnic. Candle picnic. So when they were having the candle picnic in, this is what's class about Rathcrogon, right? We have an Irish epic myth called the Tarn. You know about the Tarn? So the Tarn is, it's like our fucking Iliad or Odyssey. It's this huge, massive, gigantic story. It's about.

Back when we didn't have money to those years ago, the king was whoever had the most amount of cows and the queen was whoever had the most amount of cows. So it's about a cattle raid. It's about someone stealing the magical bull and then a war that ensues because of the magical bull and then who is involved. It's massive, it's about someone stealing the magical bull and then a war that ensues because of the magical bull and then Cú Cholainn is involved. It's massive and it's huge but the time when you read it is several hundred pages long but we only got writing in like the year 500 when Patrick came over with Latin so we

had these stories that are the equivalent of thousands of pages so how the fuck do you remember them? And what's so special about Rathcroghan is that before writing in an oral culture, people would remember a story by the environment around them. And if you go to the top of fucking Rathcroghan and you sit on that mount,

you can tell the story of the taan, which takes about six hours to read, by going, it starts on that mountain and then that happens there. And the druids, I hate saying the word druids, but like the philad, the poets or the bards, they would have to memorize this massive story and they would use the environment by sitting on this mountain. Like that's amazing. You know what I what I mean? That's a story that's so big and you remember it because of this one place and the mountains and everything there. And then you have as well a cave called Onigat. You don't

know about the Cave of the Cats? Oh the Cave of the Cats, yeah. Fuck me. No, no, no. This is, lads, this is a cave. It's down at the end of Cave of the Cat Street. It's where fucking Halloween comes from. Halloween comes from this cave in Roscommon. It's people would have been worshiping it and gone down to the cave for several thousand fucking years. But the story is that. On Halloween night, right right which is Samhain

right so that's like the end of October on that night all the fucking so that cave is is the portal to the other world the gates of hell are basically there and fucking Rascall in this cave and I've been down this cave I've been there I've been decayed been in there and what they say is the night of Halloween all the fucking you know the demons and what they say is the night of Halloween all the fucking, you know, the demons and everything come out for the night, but then the day after this one-legged three-headed horse blasts out of the cave on the 31st of October or the 1st of fucking November, and then lays waste to all the land and what that is

is winter. When you don't, when you've got a culture you can't write anything down, you don't have fucking clocks so what you have is mythology and this mythology tells you it's gonna get real fucking cold the same time, same as it did last year and the same as it did the time before that. So you need this story of a fucking three-headed one-legged horse comes out and just strips the leaves from everything and makes everything freezing. It's basically depicting like the Monday of Glastonbury. But I know that you, I was working on a show recently where there is a kind of a fake Irish thing within it, like a fake Irish story that's been made for television quite badly.

And one of the characters is kind of talking about, and you came up in my head when I was kind of writing it, because then, not to paraphrase, but you talk about the idea of folklore being the idea that it's like history telling us how to better deal with nature. Yes. To better protect ourselves moving forward. And I have a character in it who kind of thinks the opposite, I suppose, where it's like history is what we tell ourselves about what we've done as best we remember it, and folklore is what we tell ourselves when history is too boring or too brutal to remember. And I think there's

probably truth to both of those things but I like your idea more. Are you talking about, I can't remember the name of it, Small Town Big Story? Oh yeah that's hey! You have a new thing coming out, this is the only relevant question I'm gonna ask all night. You have a new thing coming out with fucking Paddy Considine and Christina Hendricks. Yeah. And you wrote it, you wrote and directed it. Yeah. It's going to be great.

Tell us about it. Why are you allowed to tell us about it? Because it's not out yet and I don't want you getting in trouble. No, I'm in the edit for it at the moment. And it's about a big TV show, kind of like a Game of Thrones type show that comes to film in a small Irish town. Wow. And it might be Boyle or somewhere nearby. And we reveal in the course of the story that this producer that's come back has a secret from the town.

And it becomes kind of relevant that they're making this big show, the kind of Game of Thrones thing, is about Celts. So it's like, I am Celt. You know, grammatically incorrect from the off. You're letting people know where they're at. But it means that we kind of get to delve into some of those stories and some of the mythology

behind some of the fake stories in the show, which has been good crack. And then we have Eileen Walsh, the wonderful Eileen Walsh from Cork, who's playing this history. Oh! Cork, Jesus, nobody talks about Cork, do they? Ha ha ha ha ha!

I just wish somebody would give them a shout out from time to time. You couldn't say that if you're from Dublin, you get away with that from Roscoe. But no, but that's been interesting. It's been interesting and great and great being and filming in Ireland has been really fun because I haven't done it in ages. Were you behind the camera for that? Yeah. Are you in it? A little bit, but it's Paddy and Christina's show, really.

I come in later on and do a couple of really over-the-top performances as the overall writer of the bad TV show, where I'd go full fucking dandy paisley fake teeth kind of vibe That I think people will enjoy How how did you eat from cork? How did you go from just being Aladdin Roscommon to ending up on telly I Slept my way to the middle. But like, how did you, where did you, how did you end up in IT crowd? How did that happen? So I came to drama school here in London. We're in London aren't we? Yeah.

Came to drama school. I went to UCD and I was studying like, what was I doing, politics? Politics and something else. And sociology. Yeah. and I was studying like what was I doing politics and something else and sociology yeah and that was a grand but while I was there I started doing plays under the stairs they were little drama society and I found it very refreshing I didn't really come from that world I was more like a football fella you were fucking you played for Roscommon the GAA didn't you played a bit of minor football for Roscommon yeah which is good craic. And that was great craic but it was a new vibe then because I didn't know an arty crowd so much and then it's kind of just basically

a bunch of delinquents under the stairs kind of all reaching out to find their new people and I found that kind of admirable. Had you ever thought of acting before that point? I'd know, I think I'd done a part, a small part in like Grease the musical, but other than that. That was Paddy Considine's first role as well. I had Paddy Considine with me in knotting him. Oh yeah. And I was asking him how he started off

and Paddy was like, I didn't know I could be an actor, I didn't know anything, and then he got a role in Greece. And that's what changed it all for him. Yeah. God, that's funny. Well, he he did this. He was good at this because Paddy said his thing was is that. So he grew up in a town called Burton on Trent. Oh, yeah. Close to Nottingham.

And there weren't a lot of Irish people there. And Paddy's dad was terminally Irish. Very, very, you know what I mean? Every stereotype you can think of. And Paddy was like, everyone thought of him as his dad's son. And then as soon as he went up on stage and played that role in Greece, then they thought about him differently.

And he got a buzz from that. And he's like, I wanna fucking do this. That's interesting. Thank God they hadn't done a production of The Field that year. Man, The Field, the film The Field is fucking gassy. It's wonderful. The fact that they're swinging for the fucking boundaries the yank see they couldn't in in the play it's a brace but they made the film in like 1990 and they just couldn't have because of the fucking troubles they couldn't have a British

person so they brought a yanking is that it's a right so that's why they brought the yanking but I kinda I preferred the yank yeah Much more, but the thing is, in the field, the field is a play by John B. Keane written in the 1940s or 50s, I believe. What it's about is a fella called the Bull McCade. He's a patriarch down in Kerry. He has this field. This field is very important to him.

His dad looked after the field, he looked after the field. This field is fertile because of him. There used to be rocks there and he pulled them out and he brought the seaweed in and made it fertile. But he's only ever been renting this field his whole life. And then in the play the field goes up to auction. So the bull is like I'm gonna get the field, it's my field, of course it's my field, it was my dad's field. Even though I don't own it, when it goes to sale I'm buying it. So the bull gets his money together to buy the field and then a Brit comes in and the Brit turns up at the auction and the Brit

has more money and the Brit gets the field. Now that's it in the play. In the film it's an Irish-American Yankee, it's a Yankee whose ancestors had fled Ireland and now he's back with all his money. And I think there's actually more complexity to that than the other. Because when it's the Brits it's like, okay this is about colonisation from the Brits, I get it. Well it's about the threat of modernity rather than the threat of your past. The film makes that way more obvious because the Yankee is like, I'm gonna put a hydroelectric dam there on that waterfall.

And then the way he just gets his son Sean Bean, whose name means old that way more obvious because the Yank is like, I'm gonna put a hydroelectric dam there on that waterfall. And then the way he just gets his son, Sean Bean, whose name means old woman in Irish, and to beat up the Yank, and he's beating up the Yank underneath the waterfall. That's a fucking great film. And John- I bet the Yank was always thinking,

Jesus, I'm just so glad it's so picturesque. It's such a picturesque beating, wasn't it? I wanted to be beaten to death underneath that waterfall. And fucking John Hurt, man, John Hurt was incredible as the part. They're all absolutely wonderful in that film right there. That film breaks my heart. It's you know what breaks my heart about films when they're available for free on YouTube?

Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? You'd be looking for a classic film and it's like why hasn't anyone's done a copyright strike? Yeah. Is this not important to somebody and the field is up there on YouTube. Will it have ads though? No it's just they're lonely since 2009 and Universal, whoever owns it, doesn't care enough to have it taken down and when you see that about a film it breaks my heart. Michael Collins the same. No. I thought Michael Collins was a big deal.

But it's on RTE2 every week. It is. And all of the films of John Cassavetes, sadly. No, shut up. Did you ever get into John Cassavetes? Oh yeah, I love a bit of John Cassavetes. I fucking love John Cassavetes. Yeah.

Love a bit of Mikey and Nicky. And fucking Husbands. Oh, Husbands is great. Opening night. We went to see it on stage there recently enough as well. I love John Cassavetes. The Mikey and Nicky. And fucking husbands. Oh, husbands is great. Opening night, we went to see it on stage there recently. Enough as well, they did it. Was Cassavetes, did it start off as a play first or? I don't think so.

I think they adapted the film. Okay. And it's cool, it works, but it's got screens everywhere. But the film is extraordinary. Are you familiar with the work of John Cassavetes? He's just, he's an amazing film maker. It's all free on YouTube, sadly. Just like John Cassavetes.

That's great news. There'd be no fucking Tarantino. There'd be no Scorsese. Like he invented so much shit. The most beautiful thing I find with a John Cassavetes film is when you can get a film right and you have trained actors and then members of the public who've never acted, and it works. Now, Ken Loach does it beautifully, but Casavites did it as well.

And I think what Ken Loach took from Casavites is, so everything in a Casavites film is shot from fucking miles away. You can tell because the camera's a bit shaky, but he's fucking hidden away in a bush. So then you've got your professional actor, your nobodies and then before you know it, it's this incredible electric scene because the nobodies, they don't even know a camera's there. He's hidden away in a bush and Ken Loach does that as well. He literally has camouflage and everything, you know? Yeah and the way Mike Lee does it, I remembered I did a short bit in the Mike Lee film and he does this weird thing where they, he had set up the room, you work on the character

for weeks and months, even if you're only doing a couple of scenes, and then eventually he had hired this hospital somewhere, I did this little film called Vera Drake, and he had rented this hospital that was now defunct, kind of 1970s hospital, and dressed a lot of the different wards and rooms as different parts of his set of 1950s London which is where the film was set and then it eventually come to your day of filming and he'd get you into costume and he's

like okay go down there you're going to go down there and buy a suit. There's no script so you go in and then you go open this door, and then Danny Mays is standing there, and he's dressed immaculately in 1950s kind of garb, and it looks extraordinary, like a suit shop from Savile Roar from somewhere else of the period. And then you see that there's blacks like this, these kind of big pieces of cotton or whatever.

these kind of big pieces of cotton or whatever. And there's somebody hiding in it. And they're writing down everything that you say in this scene. Wow. And then they kind of go, okay, cut. And then they show you, let's say, you've kind of been talking for three or four minutes and buying this, so you're like, okay,

well, this is what you wrote, this is what you said, so now you just need to learn that for tomorrow, we're going to shoot it. Which is kind of wild. And why do you try to capture it as natural as possible in your making up the dialogue as you go along? Yeah. I don't know if he does that. He wanted, I suppose, my character to feel totally out of place, because he kind of wads. And so I don't know if he does it exactly the same every time, but I thought it was so smart as a way of capturing something really fresh the first time.

And it's interesting we see people who rely on that kind of fresh take of something. Christopher Guest does an interesting thing as well. He doesn't because he doesn't have any scripts either. Have you worked with Christopher Guest? A few times. Yeah. Fuck off. You've worked with Christopher Guest. Yeah, he's great. On what?

What did we do? So we did a whole show for HBO called Family Tree, where they follow like a guy's family routes through, starts in London, and then he kind of finds a lot of American friends through his fucking, like a DNA story kind of a thing. But with a lot of his people. And was it that classic Christopher Guest mockumentary style? Yeah, I think so, yeah.

Christopher Guest is like spinal tap, if you don't know, like he pretty much, it's fair to say Christopher Guest invented the mockumentary. I think to an extent, yeah, I think he fucking pioneered it. Yeah, I think they're doing another one, I think they're doing another spinal tap. Another spinal tap? Yeah. I hope that's not shit one. I think they're doing another Spinal Attack. I hope that's not shit.

It's gonna be very tricky. It will be very difficult. I think it'll be great though. Cause they'll bring in funny people and those guys are funny. Chris is so fucking funny. The crew, like Harry Shearer and all them. Yeah, yeah.

We had Ed before he passed on and yeah. Mike McKean played my dad in it, which was cool. Yeah, it was fun. But my point was going to be- What's your favorite Christopher Guest film? I mean, I fucking love Spinal Tap. It is. Isn't it heartbreaking?

I love Best in Show as well, though. Best in Show is astounding. But like, I remember watching Spinal Tap as a kid, and just it was so mind blowing. And it's one of those things where it's so fucking influential it's hard to watch Spinal Tap like it's hard to listen to the Beatles it's hard to listen to the Beach Boys yeah they've been too influential he died on vomit who died on vomit we don't know if it was his vomit you can't oh yeah it's dust for vomit it's... How much improv do you think was

involved in it? All of it I would say. I've worked with him three times I think and it's all improv but it's great but my point was going to be he shoots everything in a mid shot first rather than kind of usually it starts wide and kind of slowly move in until you end up in a close but he's like I want to get the fucking fresh shit. And so I want to be in a shot that I'm going to use most on screen, which is, you know, going to be more like. So he'll shoot a mid shot, get everything there.

And then when he's like, I know what I like, can we get a close up of this line that was brilliant? Then he's looking for gravy, really. That's it, but you're looking for the stuff to tip on to it. He's looking for gravy because you're going to get it you need to go out for the wide you're going to get the geography of the scene and then you're you're going to push in it will just be for the little bits on top. When you are directing your own stuff did you how much did you ever pick up a book about directing or was it about I've been around enough directors to know what to do

Watched a lot of stuff watch a lot of directors talking about directing Talk to a lot of directors that suppose about it, but mostly just kind of picked it up along the way Just being being on set going I can have a crack at this being on set Yeah, and we kind of I directed the season of Moonboy so I kind of got used to it and that was easy because we kind of too, we'd Ian Fitzgibbon and Declan Lowney direct the first two seasons and they're just two of the best who do it. So I'm just standing on their, over their shoulders just kind of being annoying and learning. You don't play GAA anymore? Not lately. I played a game for the Los Angeles Cougars. And we trained a few times.

They're a GAA team? Yes they are. Why the fuck are they called the Cougars? Well, I think you know. Tell it, baby. Lovely bunch of lads, honestly. But what was funny was we were trained a few times. I said I'd go out with them.

They'd been going a while. And they play against another club that's a few hours up the coast. And they play a good bit. And I was like, oh, there's a game coming up. And I was like, Oh yeah, sure. I'll play a game. These lads went hard. These mid Californian fucking carry men coming at you. It's fucking elbows. I was like, I thought this was going to be expat fun. This is fucking in the ribs. Bastards. What's your favorite type of dog?

So we've got two new dogs, right? So I feel weird, but I'd have to go with a hound. Why? I like their curiosity. I have to go with a hound. Why? I like their curiosity. I like how kind of loyal and shaggy and silly they are. There's no mind games. Do you not feel that hounds- I'm sick of playing mind games with dogs.

I find that hounds harbor a sense of impending doom Do you not find if you're around like a bastard hindered spirits? I don't know about what type of hound. Well this guy that we have now. I don't he was just a floppy and droopy Oh, yeah, you're into that. Yeah. Oh, yeah Floppy and droopy. Are you saying that like those aren't positive? I just think there's a lot of flaps, a lot of flaps going on that you need to wash. They smell if you don't wash them.

I don't trust. But it's true. When you're thinking about a dog, you're thinking about hygiene. Fucking get a good bang of a cock or span your ear if it hasn't been properly groomed? So I'm thinking about flaps and folds when I'm... We have a dog with an awful bushy tail and you can see awful things inside it sometimes. There you go, fuck me, the bushy... and what do you do when it cakes and hardens?

Sometimes it might wag at the wrong time, you know, and it'll take on a life of its own blind boy. Awful bushy little tail on the fucker. This is why I enjoy the humility of a Labrador. Yeah that's right. Because they're not as short haired as a Jack Russell's, you don't have to deal with their musculature. You can get a good old fucking rub but a fucking hose once a month and a Labrador is fine. Yeah. They don't want slobber too much. Yeah. Smart, but not too smart. I don't like a dog who's too alert.

Yes. I always want to be one step ahead of the dog. Have you ever seen a Belgian Malinois? No. Fuck off. It's like a dog with cat hardware or cat software. They're these new type of attack dogs, right? They look like an Alsatian if you give it a lot of speed.

You know what I mean? They have Alsatian kind of the body of an Alsatian, but they're smaller, terrifyingly alert. They can run up the side of buildings. Theyian but that they're smaller terrifyingly alert. No. They can run up the side of buildings, they can do fucking somersaults, they're fucking mad. It looks sounds like a fucking creature from Dante's Inferno. Yes.

No, no I want it slow droopy and silly so I feel like the smart guy in the room. How are you about a Dashunds? I like a Dashund. I like a dashund. I wouldn't throw a kick to a dashund. I'd let him go about his way. I'd fucking, there was a dashund, actually it was before I was born but my family keep telling the story. A dashing call Roy, near my house, and he'd managed to get involved in some fucking barbed wire anyway, but every fucking Christmas,

talking about the insides of a dashing's testicle. Oh no. In 1979. No, that's not ideal. No. We had a donkey growing up because there was a little field out the back and dad kind of worked from home because he was a sign writer. So he had this

field out the back and we decided to get him a donkey and we had enough money to get a donkey for the day. A donkey for the day. Was that to calm him down like you would a racehorse? Which the dog? No, but like you'll get a you'll get a you'll get a donkey for a racehorse to calm it down. Oh, yeah. Yeah, little bitch. Yeah. So it was to calm your dad while he was writing in case he got too excited while writing his signs. Well, I thought I thought we already had a dog, I think. And he thought, oh, there's a bit of land there and it's cheaper than fucking trying to mow the bastard.

Mm hmm. So. Well, we had enough money for the donkey, but we didn't really enough money for a fence for the donkey, so the donkey would just go wandering, you know, and you'd get a call off early in the morning going, shall I have your donkey here, would you not hop over? And when you're, that's fine for a while, when you're hitting kind of 13 or 14, you don't really want to be walking through the town with a donkey. You've got other things on your mind and this isn't one of them. My dad used to tell me a story about, in West Cork, I actually think it's half a good idea

and half a bad idea. So my dad said this, when our lads would go to the pub, they could go to the, like, rural, so it's fucking a half an hour from the pub to their house but that's a problem now because they can't do it because of drink driving yeah but back in the 30s and 40s you could go to the fucking pub go along with your donkey and cart get fucking shit-faced go into the cart and the donkey takes you home and that used to happen but my my dad and his friends they were like fucking 10, right? And they'd be getting bored. So this one old lad anyway got rat-arsed in the pub,

summer evening, got into the back of the cart, donkey took him all the way home, brought him into the yard. Your man's plan was, sure it's fucking June, the sun is gonna come up, I'm just gonna sleep out here. So my dad and his friends followed him home anyway. And while he was unconscious in his yard on the donkey and cart, they took the fucking wheels off.

They took the cart off. They brought the donkey into the kitchen, reassembled the whole thing. And your man woke up the next day inside in his kitchen with the donkey and cart. No. Yeah. And he didn't know what to do, so he had to go to the priest. And the priest, the fucking priest didn't know what to do either because no one's thinking rationally here. No one's going, oh, I see what happened here.

Some children disassembled it and they went, no, no, no, no, the emotions are too high. So the priest is like, I don't know what I can tell you but you need to stop drinking and your man stop drinking. And then they used to fucking, they used to have packs of beagles, you know, beagle dogs. And they used to chase drunk, they'd find a drunk lad coming out of the pub. When you said they here, who's the... My dad and his friends like... They'd find a drunk... I thought you meant people from the past.

I thought you meant people from the past. There'd be an old lad coming out of the pub and he might walk home, right, and my dad and his friends would fucking, dark boharines, like no fucking lights or nothing, so they'd go up and they'd tie bits of meat onto his coat. Your man would be chased over fields by a pack of eagles and he doesn't know why they're chasing him. And that's what you did when there was no internet. You know we still can. That'd be a crime now, that'd be a crime. That'd be a crime now that'd be a crime We give up on these things too early I Wouldn't throw a second look if you if I was to see somebody now tying on some meat to somebody's coach

I'll be like all they're doing the beagle gang Watch out because of Did they ever tell you about the time I was over in Spain right now? I go over to Spain to write. It's where I'd be drinking this Cruz Campos, which you'll sponsor in tonight's event. I go to this city called Cardabao in Spain to write. And I was going to this cafe all the time sitting down writing my book on my laptop ordering fucking cheap Spanish fucking beers lovely staying there all day getting radars and writing and I kept coming back to do it

until eventually the waiters in this restaurant this Spanish restaurant they came up to me and they said sorry sir excuse me we noticed that you know you keep coming back here to write me and the other waiters were wondering, what are you writing? So I said, fiction. Your man heart fishing, right? So he gets it into his head that I'm a fishing writer. And I'm there, and then all of a sudden he comes over with, these are the best prawns in all of Andalusia, right?

So he's handing me fucking free prawns, like brilliant prawns. Now, my ma was allergic to shellfish growing up, so I can't eat prawns. Well, I probably can. I don't want to try. So I'm like, fuck, I'm being inundated with free seafood. And this cunt is telling every single fucking waiter in the town, that fella's a fishing writer. Give him free fish because he will write favorably about your fish in his periodical.

So eventually I'm getting all this free fish. I don't want to be rude. I don't want to get into a conversation with someone whose English isn't great. Actually I said fiction and fiction and just like take the fucking prawns man. So while I'm writing, luckily this city then I mean there's fuck loads of stray cats right? So I'm writing away and then there's a fucking little black cat over there so I... I'll eat the cat. No. I throw the fucking prawn over to the cat, right? And then the cat starts eating the prawn, and then the fucking, okay, problem sorted.

I'm typing away, they think I'm eating the fish, I'm giving all the free fish to the cats, but then the cats start talking to each other. And now I can't go fucking anywhere to write in this city without a gang of cats following me. I called them the name for prawn in Spanish is gambas. I called them the gambas gang. For some reason, and I know you wouldn't have had at the time, but I'm hoping that you had the bag. Everything's funnier when you imagine the bag. When you're being followed by cats.

By shellfish driven cats. And you look like this, I think it'll just have, I don't know, some kind of an ethereal quality to it. Do you think children get excited by knocking on people's doors and running away anymore? Oh, I don't know. I wonder if they get excited by it. Speaking of that type of jovial activity. Do you think that they would? Do you think it works? Like that they would get a gag out of it?

When I was a child, knocking on someone's door and running away was tremendous fun. But how do you do that? Now with when Pokemon exists Yeah, do you think it's just too much? It's the the adrenaline highs that they get from their own entertainment is too much And it's just like what's the point of knocking on the door and running away? Because it is fucking great Again something that we've abandoned too quickly. We've abandoned it too quickly. I

Think the kids probably still do it though, don't they? Do they? Okay, good, I'm glad to hear that. When was the last time any of you had your doors knocked on? Two days ago. Halloween I suppose, but... Yeah, a bit of that. No, but I don't know about what the nine-year-olds... There's still a lot of running and jumping and shit. Fairness to them. They're still keeping the old trad stuff going with the walking and running. What was it like having a psychotherapist for a mother? It was a very learning experience. Was your Ma psychotherapist for all of your life or is this something she did later in

life? She went back to Trinity, she raised five kids and then went back at my age, at 44 and went back to college when I was around 13 I think. And she was, it was kind of it definitely one of the things that stuck with me as much as the profession that she went into was more that she's like oh yeah I'm just gonna try something else now and then her whole life since then has been you know 30 40 years of being our local psychotherapist I say that as if our local family psychotherapist.

Do you... So you've got a job that isn't great for the old mental health. Sure. I mean, just being recognised everywhere is very, very difficult and I don't think we're equipped for it. I wouldn't know much about it, to be honest. I know. Well, that's it, you lucky bastard. It's good. Smart.

It's too late now for me to pull out a bag. But it would work in reverse. I'd have to wear the bag in public. They'd take it off when I was working and then I'd want to work all the time. Has your Ma ever been useful for you when it comes to the stress of just having the job that you have? Definitely. I find she's very calming and finds the whole thing. I honestly don't get too caught up in the highs and lows of it anyway. I find the thing I find, and to be honest it's not that hard. I think the highs are so great and we get so much cool stuff from it in terms of the love that you get from fucking people. It's such a...

But then again, I don't think that's natural. I don't think humans are supposed to get the level of adoration that a person in the public eye gets on a daily basis. Well, that's the Catholic guilt speaking now. LAUGHTER But no, I do agree with you, though. I think that it's an unnatural situation.

But I think as long as you're okay with that situation being the situation in your own head, that you realize none of this is normal or whatever. Have you ever met a person and like a stranger in public and they basically think that you're the character in whatever they saw you in? No, but I've had people think that I was characters in other shows Where they'll be like, oh my god, I loved you in this in fucking Grey's Anatomy

But you were so mean to that woman. I'm like, well, she was cheating on me or Or whatever or I've started doing this thing where I was in frequent It would happen every now and again. Yeah, I've heard like East Enders actors in particular have a difficult time in real life Well, I remember you fucking prick. I can't believe you did that on the telly the other day Well was this German I read the thing with like Trevor from East Enders Because he was playing like a wife beater in it and he was horrible and lonesome and that actor was brilliant I can't think of his name. He was just in what you call it as well the Chernobyl oh yes yes yes but anyway he was saying that people would really attack him on

the streets and like and spit at him and stuff yeah because you know English people are bananas but someone who had that someone who had an awful time with that as well, I don't know the name of this fella now, so do you remember a TV show called Oz? Oh yeah, the prison drama. Yes, do you remember the character of Vern Schillinger, the Nazi? Oh yeah.

And the guy who played him who was also in Spider-Man? J.K. Simmons. Him. So J.K. Simmons, right? The character that he became famous for was this Nazi in prison in Oz. A horrendous character. But J.K. Simmons was astounding at portraying him. He had great difficulty existing in real life.

The character that he made was so horrible that it bled into his real life. Cause he was so good at occupying that, you know? And then I was watching, even me, I was watching interviews with J.K. Simmons and I felt like he was manipulating me when he was being a nice person. And I said, no, no, no, he might actually be a nice person and he was acting.

Yeah. I mean, I think in any of the roles that you take on, you bring a little bit of it, depends on how deep you go into it. But I find if I'm playing a dickhead, I'd in any of the roles that you take on, you bring a little bit of it. Depends on how deep you go into it. But I find if I'm playing a dickhead, I'd be more dickish. If I'm playing a lot of warm characters, which I do, I feel like, oh, I'm constantly coming up with a fucking joke at the end of every kind of thing.

And it puts you in a different mindset one way or another. When you're playing a prick, right, or if you're playing someone who's a bit angry, like, do you have to embody that and set all the time, or do you just go back to Chris as soon as the cameras aren't rolling? I think you try and keep yourself to yourself a little bit because you know you're gonna be edgy.

If you're doing lots of, I don't do an awful lot, on Get Shorty we did a lot of intimidating kind of scenes where I'd kind of be beating somebody up or a lot of arguments I suppose. And there you would kind of scenes where I'd kind of be beating somebody up or a lot of arguments I suppose and there you would kind of I'm not good enough to just be able to shake it off and then put it right back on again so I kind of stick around in the mindset for a bit and walk around on my own. The character you played in Girls was was kind of a goal. Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah what a nightmare. I fucking loved you in that.

No I really did. It was fantastic. It was amazing. He was a real fucking, yeah he was a real piece of work wasn't he? Yeah. He tries to have a threesome with the girls and then he marries one of them I think. Oh that was wild. I haven't seen it in about fucking eight years. Was there something with a nappy or something? What was his unique fetish when he tries to have the threesome? Oh I actually can't remember either. Was there something with a nappy or something what was his unique fetish when he tries to have the treat some oh I actually can't remember either was there something about was he that weird that he was wearing a nappy there was something pathetic was there not was there something speaks to how well things have gone since as I can't remember wearing a nappy but I might

have did he not want to get treated or spoken to like a baby, no? I thought he was more like a dominant kind of a guy, but maybe that was his projection. No one remembers that episode of Garlous while I speak to the fella who was in it, no? No, I can't remember it either, but he does go bananas. I think his whole thing is he's a possessions guy. He's like a venture capitalist and they it's all going well And then they spill some wine on his fancy road. Yeah, and he loses the shit The thing about girl like I fucking love girls. I love like it's it's fucking brilliant people I don't know why people don't shit on it that they don't like Lena Dunham or something

I've got girls is fucking amazing brilliantly written. I love it but I think something I do know what I think people's problem is with girls. Girls has a capacity to make you feel fucking uncomfortable and nothing else is like it. Yeah. It's the every character in that embodies the most unlikable parts of a human being. Like Lena Dunham's character of Hannah, she's so selfish. And it's a selfishness that speaks to the selfishness that we all have that we don't want to admit to ourselves. And I think Girls was brilliant for that. And a lot of people go, I fucking hate it.

And it's like, you don't hate it. You hate the way it made you feel because it showed you a mirror to yourself, these parts that you don't like to admit about yourself. You know? Because I can't understand some of the, sometimes people, I'm like, how could you not like it? It's fucking amazing.

It's interesting because it's hard to get unlikable characters on television because characters don't need to be likable. I think this is a, but they do need to be lovable. Like for characters, stick around. You can't love... there's a few lovable characters. Shoshana is fucking lovable. I think that you love in the same way that you can love... I think you can love all of those characters. But their unlikability is kind of central to that. Very. Because you feel like oh you can relate to the most

turgid parts of them in the same way that you can relate to your own. And it's the unlikeableness with girls characters too is. It's not like they're a nasty person, they're a mean person, they're a violent person, it's a specific type of pathetic. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. The entitlement is a difficult thing to watch for people, I think. Yeah.

Were you a fan of girls before you appeared in it? Because you were on like, was it like season three when your character? No, I actually come in at the end of the first season. So fuck off is it so it hadn't been on So you didn't know but you're just like there's this new thing on HBO. I'll give it a crank judge was producing it and I just work with him on something on this is 40 I think or and Thanks and What was I gonna say oh, yeah, and he, and he sent me tiny furniture, which was Lena's film. She seemed obviously very smart. So I think I was shooting Moonboy at the same time,

so I was going over between New York and Wicklow, and that kind of month or so, which was kind of mad. I'm asking too many relevant questions now, Chris I apologize, this has turned into an interview. I'm going to open some questions up to the audience, I think. Jesus, there's loads of you, fucking hell. Oh wow, God, oh you're really close. You smell crazy. I just have to get a photograph from my man.

She doesn't believe me. She's like, this better not be a dick pic. What? Imagine that. He says to me backstage, do you ever go up on stage and you'd be afraid you'd say something that would end your whole career? Imagine that live dick pic on stage. Gonna send a photo of my glands to my mother.

There's your hammer smith Apollo, man. Do you want me to get, did you get in it? What, no, it was a photo of them. No, you were to get in it. Ah, no, no, no. No, all right. What? I've got a bag in my head.

There's no point. Hold on, hold on. I'll take it. Hold on. I'll send it, hold on. I'll send it to you. If you wouldn't mind, yeah, thanks. Just, are the audience in there?

Thank you very much for that. Class, well done everybody, thank you. I'm gonna leave it there. I'm gonna leave it there because I did do some audience questions, but it was such a raucous night in London. A lot of the audience were drunk, so there was quite a lot of drunk questions, which were great fun if you were there, but not so much fun in the sobriety of the morning

listening to it on a podcast. Okay I'll catch you next week, but a hot take of some description. Hopefully the acclaimed noise drummer Ryosuke Kiyasu won't be drumming outside my window next week and I can do a monologue podcast for ye. In the meantime, rub a dog, wink at a swan and genuflect to a worm. Dog bless. This is an ad by BetterHelp. What are your self-care non-negotiables? It's hard to make time for the things that keep you healthy, but being consistent with

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