Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When you grow up in a border area of Ireland, people are very wary and cagy and keep their head down at all times. Don't speak unless it's absolutely essential, and don't give anything away.
I think making a documentary gets you out and about more, with people. With stand-up, you're talking at people. With documentaries you're talking with people, and you're listening a lot more.
My father was a typical Irish father. He was a nice, hard working, driven guy. His politics were very conservative and I was just a very different kind of kid to that. I was very shy and bookish.
The beauty of stand-up is that it's very flexible, it's very malleable and immediate. Whatever is in your head that day you can verbalise in some way that night. It's the medium that suits me best.
I was a terribly quiet, shy child. The comedy thing came when I was at university and I started doing stand-up, which I think was a belated compensation for all that time I spent hiding behind the couch.
From day one working in TV, I have been very conscious of the way the Irish are represented, In every show I've been involved in I read the script, take out the Irishisms right away and say, 'I'll supply those'.
Even when we had new clothes, we were told not to wear them. You just didn't draw attention to yourself. Showing off was the worst thing you could do. We could put the clothes in the drawers - but not wear them.
I couldn't make a living as a comic in Ireland and I was watching my friends from college getting good jobs, buying houses, and I had to really take stock and say: am I going to go for this comedy thing, or what?
I think Irish people pride themselves on being at the forefront of technological industries, things like the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, all those hi-tech industries, we're always there or thereabouts.
I read one of the funniest books last week by Don DeLillo. He wrote this book, 'Amazons' many years ago, under the pseudonym Cleo Birdwell. The book is very funny but I also think it's funny that he denies any involvement with it.
We didn't have an awful lot of space. There were six of us born within the space of seven or eight years - I was third. I remember sharing a room with one or other of my brothers - at one point we had three single beds in one room.
Father Ted' was written by Irish people, so that was fine, but around the time we were shooting it 'EastEnders' went to Ireland and represented it as this terribly backward society where people were going around with one eye and drunk.
There is something restless and curious about the Irish. Like everybody else, we want to make money and make our way in the world but it's not the be all and end all. We also want to have fun, we want to make friends, make connections, share stories.
I've been a Leeds fan for as long as I can remember. When you are about five or six, you adopt a team - obviously, I didn't grow up in Leeds. I grew up in a small town on the Irish border, and most of the people my age were Leeds fans, both then and now.
I think my first girlfriend and I hardly spoke to each other in the year we were going out. In fact we never even spoke to each other to formally break it off. For all I know she still thinks we're together. Maybe in a parallel universe we're very happy.
Getting up in front of the toughest crowds, you know, playing pubs in South Armagh - where people didn't necessarily even know what stand-up comedy was - you had to force yourself to do it. It went against every instinct in your body, but you did it anyway.
I think a certain amount of depression is sort of a normal state of mind to have. Deep depression is another story - and I wouldn't say I've been quite there, but you know I have been quite down at times, I have not wanted to leave the house for days on end.
In terms of being typecast, if you do something like Father Ted that infiltrates the public's imagination to the extent that it did, I think realistically you're not going to be asked to do something radically different from that very often. But it's not a problem.
Dragged out of your bed at the age of seven, my mother screaming, six kids under the age of 12. I'm not equating my experience with the people who lived in Northern Ireland. But my dad was always out and about late at night, and I could not go to sleep until I knew he was in.
I crave the variety, I really do. I'd probably say standup as I think that's what I do best, if I may say so. But it can be a really self-absorbed, obsessive way to live your life, whereas doing theatre is very collaborative and creative and intense, I'd hate to miss out on that.
I think I was always this weird, watchful kind of kid, and there was an awful lot of coming and going in my house as a result of my father being a doctor and then, later, a politician... We'd literally be having to get through the window some days because we couldn't get in the door.
I listen to WTF with Marc Maron, although I'm getting annoyed with him, he's a bit too intrusive and fawning. But he's done some great interviews in the past, like with David Simon, the writer of The Wire, and Bruce Springsteen. He gets fantastic guests. I just wish he let them talk more.
People pay far too much attention to the television and they're quite literal in some ways. At the beginning, when I was playing very stupid characters, I think people genuinely thought I was possibly quite dim-witted myself, which is a compliment in some ways, as I must have been doing my job very well.
I have a certain sympathy with politicians having lived with one. I've seen how no matter how earnest or driven or energetic they are, it's still difficult to change things. I have been encouraged to go into politics, but I don't think I could make a contribution, it suits me better to be sniping from the sidelines.
The big turning point for me was a school debate in sixth year when, against all odds and to everybody's surprise, I put myself forward... I wrote this funny speech and was determined to do my own thing, and it wasn't on topic and people were laughing a lot. I really can't describe how wonderful an experience it was.