June 2009

Ardal O’Hanlon is explaining the difference between his comedy and that of his two companions—Dylan Moran and Tommy Tiernan, the reigning triumverate of the Irish comic scene known collectively as “The Fellas” who are headlining at The Troc in Philadelphia on Wednesday night. It’s clear he’s given it a great deal of serious thought.

“We’re quite different really,” says O’Hanlon perhaps best known in the States for his turn as the “incredibly silly stupid priest,” Father Dougal, in the BBC series, “Father Ted.” (Think Jessica Simpson’s brain in the head of a good-looking young guy in a cassock and collar.)

“Tommy Tiernan is very radical, radically different from myself, extremely high energy, bares his soul on stage. He’s quite shocking in some ways [The Irish Senate twice accused him of blasphemy], but immensely popular in Ireland. He represents the counterculture. He’s like a messiah to some people in Ireland. Tommy for them speaks the truth and I suppose he goes where other comics do not dare to tread.”

And Dylan Moran, whom most American audiences know from his roles in the Simon Pegg comedies, “Shaun of the Dead,” and “Run Fatboy Run”? “Dylan is a very cerebral comic. For me, he is occasionally profound in ways other comics aren’t. He has an Oscar Wildian wit. He’s always been one of my favorite comics. He has a lovely way with words, a lot of integrity, he doesn’t pander to the masses.”

As for himself, O’Hanlon seems to have given that less thought. “I find it hard to describe my own style,” he admits. “It’s observational, deadpan in tone, surreal around the edges. That’s it in a nutshell.”

One of six children of prominent Irish Fianna Fail politician, Dr. Rory O’Hanlon and his wife, Teresa, the Monaghan-born Ardal O’Hanlon says he’s not sure why he wound up in comedy. His siblings found their way into medicine, politics, and accounting (“They seemed like good jobs until a year ago—who’s laughing now?”), and he was by his own admission “a quiet, shy boy, always doodling with a pen” who wanted to be a writer. Then, in college in the 80s, he fell in with funny companions. Inspired by the exuberant young British comedy scene, they founded one of Ireland’s first comedy clubs, The Comedy Cellar, in Dublin.

“It was a tiny club, haphazardly and badly organized, and we would get only about 50 people there on a Wednesday night,” O’Hanlon recalls. It all might have died there had O’Hanlon and company not done what millions of Irish have done over the last several hundred years: emigrate. “Not till we moved to London enmasse did we take off. Like New York at one time, London was alive with comedy clubs where every serious comic wanted to go.”

A comedy diaspora? Growing up in pre-Celtic Tiger Ireland, O’Hanlon says, “you assumed you were going to leave. It wasn’t even daunting. It was accepted. It’s what we do.” (In one of his earlier monologues, O’Hanlon quipped that he was “typically Irish, really in the sense that I don’t live there anymore.”)

Though his father was a doctor—and government minister—they weren’t rich by any means, so O’Hanlon and his siblings worked over school holidays to make money to pay for their education. “Ireland was a pretty poor country in the 80s and 90s, and on an average doctor’s salary, you can’t put six children though college,” he says. Hence, on his resume, a stint at a British pea cannery and a season on an Irish pig farm. A pig farm? “I grew up in a pig-farming area of Ireland,” he explains. “It was a good thing. In a way, everything was easier after that. I knew it was one of the things I never wanted to do again, and although I’ve been in some horrific dressing rooms, nothing is as bad as a slurry-covered truck.”

And the move to London in 1994 was a boon too. “There you could pit your wits against the best in the business and you only got better.”

After a couple of years on the UK comedy circuit, “Father Ted” came along: a sitcom about a group of priests living on a remote island (Craggy Island) off the West coast of Ireland. O’Hanlon landed the role as Father Dougal McGuire, the simple-minded, rollerblading, non-religious priest whose choice of career bewilders Father Ted Creely “Dougal, how did you get into the church in the first place? Was it, like, ‘collect 12 crisp packets and become a priest?’”

Dougal’s failure to grasp even the rudiments of his calling endeared him to viewers.

Dougal: God, I’ve heard about those cults, Ted. People dressing up in black and saying ‘Our Lord’s going to come back and save us all.’
Ted: No, Dougal, that’s us. That’s Catholicism.
Dougal: Oh right.

But the wackadoodle priest was almost too beloved. When the series ended in 1998, O’Hanlon took his stand-up act on the road and almost quit the business when well-meaning Dougal fans wanted him to be “a cuddly priest”, not the “everyman sliding toward middle age, a man confused by the world around him” he is in both his act and in real life.

“There are certain traces of me in Father Dougal,” admits O’Hanlon, who also says he based his character on “watching dogs a lot. Dougal has a lot of dog-like naivete.

“When I first started doing stand-up I was more wide-eyed and more confused than I am now. But I still think one of the things I like about comedy is the naivete and innocence, and it’s not something I’d like to lose entirely either—this way of looking at the world from an almost almost alien perspective. For me it’s true, I genuinely am confused. The reason I love stand-up is that it’s a way to deal the nonsense.”

He eventually left the road but stayed in the business, doing two more series. He had more dramatic role in the British show, “Big Bad World,” and then he was “sucked back into fluffy sitcom land” with “My Hero,” about an alien who falls in love with a human nurse, “a shameless ripoff,” of Robin Williams’ career-making “Mork and Mindy.”

Aside from the steady paycheck and the “companionship,” series work has its perks. “You’re pampered. People bring you fruit. That doesn’t happen in stand-up,” says O’Hanlon. “Standup is more of a solitary existence. The writing side of it as well. You spend a lot of time navel gazing. That’s one reason that all of us [he, Moran and Tiernan] are happy to go on the road together.”

You can see “The Fellas” on Wednesday night, starting at 7 PM, at the Trocadero at 1003 Arch Street. See our calendar for the details.