My great-grandfather was born in Wexford, and he and his brother ended up in Artane industrial school. Their mother died in childbirth, and the dad had epilepsy. When they were of the age to be coming out of Artane they needed someone to sponsor them, and there was a cousin in Rostrevor. So my great-grandfather made that journey from Wexford to Co Down, and then he married somebody up here and suddenly Ireland’s partitioned, and he’s living on the northern side of the Border.
There was never any doubt in our minds that we were Irish. We were a Catholic family across the road from the GAA pitch in Dundrum, Co Down. It was only as you start to grow up that you realise, “Oh, hang on a second, there are other people that don’t feel Irish, and they live in the same village”. You could tell the Catholic houses because they had two TV aerials. There was a little switch that switched from the UTV aerial to the RTÉ aerial, and you had to crawl under the TV and switch over from Brucey [Forsyth] playing your cards right to watching Gay [Byrne] on a Friday night.
Every other summer was spent in Wexford, seeing the family. You would allow an extra half-hour to cross the Border, just in case you were [in] the car that was pulled in and had the suitcases checked. It was a weird thing. All of the touchstones in your life were Irish, based on this all-Island way of living, and yet at the same time, it was a different type of Irishness, because you were sitting in a place alongside other people that didn’t share that view. An effort had to be made for you to be Irish.
If you were moving from the South of Ireland to London, well, you were from the land of saints and scholars and poets and drinkers and “Sure Jesus, aren’t we all great craic.” But if you have a Northern accent and you’re moving to London, it’s different. It’s quite tricky to get through Heathrow airport aged 18, called Paddy, with a balaclava in your bag as a prop for a stand-up show. The northern part of that Irishness definitely brought a different frisson when going to England. There was a second chapter of that when my wife Cat and I were living in America because that’s more “Oh my God, You’re Irish!” Irishness is celebrated in America... Irishness was accepted in the UK, but it was never celebrated.
In England they didn’t really know or care what I was talking about. The political stuff that I was doing in those days had no resonance over there. And so that’s when I started to get into hosting, and I stepped back from stand-up for a while. The most recent stand-up show I wrote would have been much more about me, what I was going through growing up, and identity and perception and all of those things. For a long time, I didn’t think I had any trauma. How Irish is that? “Jesus, I’m grand.” Then you realise you’re carrying it every day.
There’s a thing in Irish people where we pretend we’re friendly, but we’re really just nosy
One of the things I’ve realised doing The Late Late is that everybody’s carrying something. And the second that you realise that, it gives you more of a connection. Nearly every week on that show, somebody would be telling the story and people would be reacting with a round of applause or a laugh, I’d be sitting there thinking “Jesus, you’re hosting The Late Late Show.” The power of the show is undiminished. I defy any Irish person to stand behind that curtain and hear that theme tune and it not create some sort of reaction in them.
I have a weird theory, which is probably nonsense, that The Late Late Show still works in Ireland because it approximates the type of night that you would have if you went out in Ireland on a Friday night. You could be in a wee pub down the hill here in Dundrum [Co Down], and you’d have somebody come in, and they’d start telling the story. And one minute, you’re absolutely pissing yourself, and then you’d be told to shut up, because someone’s playing a song. And then somebody would come in, whose mother had just died, and everybody would go serious and go, “Geez, I’m awful sorry about that”, and then somebody will tell a funny joke again and that’s the night... I think that that parlour nature of The Late Late is why it still endures. It reflects the social interaction that you have in real life in Ireland.
There’s a thing in Irish people where we pretend we’re friendly, but we’re really just nosy. You sit there and somebody will basically ask you everything about what’s going on in your life, and if you recoil from it in any way, they’ll go, “Jesus, there’s no need to take it like that, I’m just being friendly.” I think we’re quite good at congratulating ourselves about how much craic we are.
Younger people are much more prepared to celebrate their Irishness while wearing it lightly. They’re much more confident in it. I think that’s because Ireland as a country is more confident on the international stage. There was once this idea that you had to go somewhere else in order to make it. Acting is an interesting one to look at, because you suddenly have world-class people making world-class shows on this island, North and South. That’s not news to that young generation. They think, “Why shouldn’t world-class people be coming here?”
Recently, I ended up at the Vatican with a hundred comedians. It was seven in the morning, and all these comedians were just loitering about, waiting to get their name on the list to meet the pope like a sort of surreal nightclub. There’s Chris Rock, there’s Jimmy Fallon, Ardal and Tommy... It’s very, very odd. There isn’t anybody in that room that didn’t have at least 15 or 20 minutes of material about the Catholic Church and their ills over the years. Quiz question: Who’s the one comedian that all the priests and bishops wanted their picture taken with? Whoopi Goldberg, because of Sister Act. They couldn’t get enough of her.
Afterward they had a reception and there was an American woman standing beside me, and she said, “Oh, who are you?” And I said, ”My name is Patrick. I host a show called The Late Late Show” and she went. “Oh, you need to talk to my brother, Stephen.” And she calls over Stephen Colbert [host of CBS’s Late Show]. And I said, “Stephen my name is...” and he said “Patrick, I know exactly who you are. When I look for my clips on YouTube I’m finding yours.” So this show in Dublin is sitting in that search bar alongside this talk show in the US... The world is becoming a smaller place.
In conversation with Patrick Freyne. This conversation was edited for clarity and length. The Late Late Show returns to RTÉ television on Friday, September 13th
