Patrick Kielty: ‘I haven’t had a conversation with Ryan Tubridy or Pat Kenny’

In the gardens of the Radisson Blu St Helen’s Hotel, just off the Stillorgan dual carriageway, Patrick Kielty erupts into laughter as the Irish Times photographer tries to take his picture. He has just realised there’s make-up left on his face from an RTÉ shoot earlier in the day and it’s occurred to him that he might be beige.

Kielty has a winning ability to find most things at least partly funny. I last interviewed him 15 years ago when he was performing A Night in November, a one-man play about a unionist football fan written by Marie Jones. (At that time he said: “I’ve been living and working in London for the past 10 years, so a lot of people in the North think I am a unionist.”) He’s currently starring in Prasanna Puwanarajah’s excellent Co Down-set feature film Ballywalter, the moving and funny story of a depressed man befriending a similarly troubled taxi driver, played by Seána Kerslake. It’s being released in September. “I genuinely thought the thing I’d slated for September was this film,” he says with a touch of real bewilderment.

He didn’t know, back then, that he would also be starting as the new host of The Late Late Show this month. I suggest that people aren’t that interested in The Late Late Show and we should just talk about the film. Kielty says: “I think that would work.”

In Ballywalter, Kielty plays Shane, a middle-aged man who’s adrift in life and taking painful stand-up comedy lessons. Kielty is not usually an actor. The last time he acted was in the play I interviewed him about back in 2008. On the first day on set for this film he was told that the make-up person would be over to make sure he looked sufficiently depressed and tired. “The make-up girl comes over and she takes just one look at me and says, ‘Yeah, that’s absolutely fine.’” He laughs. “So, basically they said, ‘We want someone that’s not funny and who looks like sh*t and we thought of you.’”

Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV+: 10 of the best new shows to watch in May

---

Is Dublin still an option for first-time buyers?

---

Anthony Boyle: ‘My dad had to go to Gaelic training, and the same British soldier would throw his kit in a puddle every day’

---

He’s joking. He’s thrilled to be part of this film and to act alongside Kerslake. The real reason they hired him is more nuanced. “I’d just done a documentary called My Dad, the Peace Deal and Me and they said they saw something in that that could be in this character. They said there was a sort of honesty, a vulnerability in me on screen.”

This makes sense. Parts of Ballywalter explore how comedy can be used to channel trauma, especially in a place like Northern Ireland. One of the characters says that the only non-sectarian venues during the Troubles were gay bars, the punk scene and comedy gigs. This is something Kielty knows a lot about. When he was 15, his father, Jack, was murdered by loyalists simply for being a prominent Catholic businessman. A few years later Kielty was making jokes about sectarianism and violence in the Belfast Empire’s comedy club, The Empire Laughs Back. Could he relate to the idea that comedy could be used to make sense of terrible things?

He starts to speak, hesitates and starts again. “Okay, I’ll just say this and see what you think. When I was starting out and doing comedy, I didn’t think that any of that comedy was about me.” He pauses and adds: “Discuss.” He laughs. “Weirdly, I thought that my dad being killed made me part of a club that allowed me to go and do comedy without anyone calling me out, but I thought I was talking about other things. I thought I was doing jokes about the IRA or the army or the British government. It wasn’t until much later that I realised it was all about me.”

[ RTÉ's new season: Rugby, the climate crisis and a ‘very different’ Late Late ]

[ ‘I’m really, really happy about this choice’: Ryan Tubridy believes Patrick Kielty has ‘the chops’ ]

When did he figure out that the roots of his act were actually deeply personal? “It’s only having done those documentaries, and maybe having done the film,” he says. “I didn’t realise I was still going through a fair bit of trauma back then... As time passes on, you look back at stuff that you thought was normal and you realise that it wasn’t normal.”

Like what? “The idea of your mum nipping up to the supermarket to get some flour to make an apple tart and the car on front of you is an armed Land Rover with two guys up top pointing the guns at you. The village that we’re from, Dundrum, Co Down, the biggest army base in the North was Ballykinler and that was just across the bay. We used to have two TV aerials in Co Down, one for the BBC and one for RTÉ because we lived so close to the Mourne mountains that you couldn’t get a straight line to Dublin... There’d be interference on the TV and it would be the army helicopter. Stuff that you didn’t think anything of because it was everyday life.” He pauses. “I’ve said a couple of times now, that when my dad was killed people said ‘sorry’ but nobody said that they couldn’t believe it.”

When did he realise how strange it all was? “You only make sense of stuff when you change your location,” he says. “I lived in Dublin for a few years. And then I lived in London for a good while and then I went to America. It’s just looking at life [elsewhere] and realising that our lives didn’t look like that.”

Was he always funny? As a teenager he wasn’t the class clown, he says, but he was a good mimic (“Billy Connolly, Barry McGuigan; it was the ‘80s”). His GAA coach and PE teacher Pat O’Hare persuaded him to perform at their Christmas concert. He was terrified. His father said: “You’ll be grand, just lean on the leg that shakes the most.” Kielty laughs. “Not bad advice.”

[ Late Late Show trailer introduces Patrick Kielty, and brings back the owl ]

[ Don’t force the audience to clap in time. Plus nine other golden Late Late rules for Patrick Kielty to live by ]

In retrospect he thinks the Empire comedy club in Belfast was hugely important for him and other comedy fans as both a way of making sense of the world and a means of escape. “For people to see comedy which was about their lives, that was a massive source of strength,” he says. Later he says: “There always has to be a truth in comedy. And sometimes that truth is uncomfortable.” That’s why, he thinks, comedians often turn into decent dramatic actors and, potentially, interviewers. “They’re tuned in to looking for the truth to begin with.”

Was comedy useful for helping him process his experiences at the time? “It was useful to me because it helped me to survive. I didn’t maybe realise it at the time but it was good to feel there was something else and to feel that there was a wee bit of purpose [to life].” He pauses. “We’re very good at saying people died for something. Sometimes that idea that a lot of people died for nothing - that’s the hard one to get your head around. I think getting through it, that can’t be underestimated.”

We were looking at the set in the studio last week and I turned around and there was a huge picture of Gay Byrne in a director’s chair, an old black-and-white picture of him, and I had a bit of a moment

Although he has hosted BBC Northern Ireland chat shows such as PK Tonight and Patrick Kielty Almost Live, Kielty never even considered the idea of hosting The Late Late Show until he was contacted by RTÉ’s head of entertainment, Alan Tyler, last May. He never thought it would be an option before that. “You do go back to being eight years of age in Dundrum, Co Down, sitting on the arm of your Da’s chair watching Gay Byrne… The Late Late Show was one of the first pieces of TV I ever did. [There was] a comedy competition and Alan Shortt won it and myself and Dylan Moran were on... To grow up watching it and to be a guest, that’s a big deal, but then to be the host...”

He keeps being struck by the significance of it all, he says. “We were looking at the set in the studio last week and I turned around and there was a huge picture of Gay Byrne in a director’s chair, an old black-and-white picture of him, and I had a bit of a moment... [Another time] I walked into a hotel around the corner to get a coffee and sitting there right on front of me was Gay Byrne’s wife, Kathleen. She looked me and I looked at her and the two of us were gone…”

Do you mean emotionally? “Yes. Because I hadn’t seen her when Gay died because I was in America when he died. There are all of those things to get your head around.”

Did he talk to Ryan Tubridy about taking over the job? “No. I haven’t had a conversation with Ryan and I haven’t had a conversation with Pat [Kenny]. I didn’t talk to too many people about doing this show. I think you know if the time’s right and it’s something you want to do. A good rule for life is to follow your gut.”

Twenty years ago, he says, he had a meeting with David Letterman’s producer Robert Morton, who told him he was talented but that he wouldn’t be ready for a chat show for another 20 years. “I was crestfallen and he said to me, ‘You haven’t lived enough’ [to host a chat show]. And I now know what he means... I’m not sure I’d have been ready for The Late Late Show even five years ago.”

Did he expect all the revelations about RTÉ’s pay deals that emerged after he took the job? “How could anybody see that coming?”

During the media storm he quickly revealed the details of his own €250,000-a-year contract and he chose to waive a clause that allowed him to claim the expenses of his weekly commute from London. Why did he do that? “People wanted to know. There was so much stuff that was being hidden from people and so both those decisions were really easy for me. I’ve worked for a public service broadcaster before. When you work with the BBC or for RTÉ, you know that those earnings are going to be published. For me, the idea of expenses, that was the only part of my deal that I at that point didn’t know… And I sure as hell wasn’t going to guess them and for a different figure to come out at the end of the series.”

Did he ever think that taking the job might have been a mistake? “Absolutely not. Who was it said, ‘Events, dear boy, events’?” (It was former British prime minister Harold Macmillan.) “All of that is noise. That stuff’s kind of none of my business, really. If you’re doing the show and one of those players [in that drama] becomes a guest on the show, then it’s your business. But at the minute, it’s not my business… I don’t think there’s anything about that that hasn’t already been said.”

The Late Late Show has always had that thing of ‘everyone should be treated the same’. There’s a real egalitarian nature to the show

Does the extra scrutiny worry him? “Look, RTÉ is a national broadcaster,” he says. “People pay their license fees. [The Late Late Show is] one of the biggest shows, of course you’re going to get scrutiny. Of course, people are either going to like you or not like you. Some people might hate you. And for me, that’s kind of how it should be. Coming from a [comedy] background, when you put a poster up, there are people who will see the poster and come in [to the show] and people who will just walk past it. And some people will write ‘knob’ on it with a black felt tip pen.”

What’s special about The Late Late Show? “It’s the only live chat show in the world. If you look at Graham [Norton]’s show and Jonathan Ross’s show, they’re all pre-recorded… There’s something about it being live. It could be great and it might not go great. The moth-to-the-flame thing of ‘live’, the fact that this could go wrong, that’s still a driver for me.”

[ New Late Late Show host Patrick Kielty reveals €250,000 salary for 30-show season ]

The Late Late Show is also very different to those other shows tonally. “That’s what makes the show completely and uniquely Irish,” he says. “I think it’s one of the things we do very well as a people. When I go back to Co Down and walk in to the local pub, you can be standing talking to someone having great crack, and then somebody walks in and someone has just died and you have a serious chat about that and then somebody’s singing a song, and then somebody’s talking about politics, and then somebody tells them they’re talking out of their arse and then somebody sings another song… You don’t get that in an American bar. You don’t get that in an English pub… The Late Late Show has always had that thing of ‘everyone should be treated the same’. There’s a real egalitarian nature to the show. For me, when I’m talking to anybody, you want to know what their story is because if you can’t work out what their story is, everything else is kind of irrelevant.”

Does he have a sense of how long he’d like to do it for? “I don’t, really.” He notes that the season is now shorter, with 30 episodes as opposed to 35 or 37 episodes. That gives him space, he says, to do some more acting if he wants, or a run of stand-up gigs.

He will be commuting from London every week. In 2020, he and his wife, the English television presenter Cat Deeley, and their two children returned from the US, where Deeley had been presenting US TV shows such as So You Think You Can Dance. It coincided with the pandemic. “We timed that really well. We managed to swap a house with a garden and a swimming pool in California for a three-bedroom flat in North London just before lockdown.”

Some reports erroneously suggested they had returned to the UK because Kielty had been at a restaurant in a mall with his seven-year-old son when it was locked down then swarmed by a SWAT team. A man had set fire to something in the Amazon shop. “The SWAT team all start going past and, because you’re from the North, your spidey sense is going ‘I’ve seen this before’. He laughs. “If you went to get a burger in Belfast when you were 16 there was going to be armed police on front of the burger joint.”

It was not the reason they returned from the US. The real reason was to be nearer their extended family (Kielty’s mother still lives in Dundrum; he’s driving up there after our interview). Does Cat understand the cultural significance of The Late Late Show here? He laughs. “The penny is starting to drop,” he says.

As well as the series length being shorter, each episode will now end at around 11pm as opposed to 11.30pm. Will there be other changes? “I think it’s a big enough change just being you. I was reading this week about some changes I’d made. Apparently, I killed off the owl and I didn’t want any music on The Late Late Show.” He laughs. “Report that verbatim. I’m joyless.”

How does he feel about the big Late Late Show specials such as the Toy Show and the Country Special? “My dad was a showband promoter. We used to go around Ireland thinking we were going on our holidays and would end up at some carnival in the back of some tent listening to a band… That’s always been part of who we are up there. And Toy Show-wise, you’re not the star of the Toy Show. The kids are the stars. You have to go into that show more than happy to take all of the cream pies, metaphorically and physically, on the chin.”

He and the Late Late Show team are currently, he says, in the midst of organising everything for the first run of shows: the sets, the guests. I suggest he should invite the RTÉ board on the first show. He pretends to type it into his phone, nodding sagely and saying the words aloud: “The. RTÉ. Board ... Yeah, I’m sure it’s not the last we’ll hear of all of that … It hasn’t happened until it happens on The Late Late Show? Isn’t that what they used to say?”

The Late Late Show airs on Friday 15th September, 9:35pm on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player & Ballywalter is in cinemas on 22nd September