The winner is ... an Irishman, again

YOU WERE reminded of that infamous, early ’80s Oscar ceremony where Chariots of Fire screenwriter Colin Welland warned Hollywood “the British are coming”.

At the recent television Baftas, in London, there was, similarly, a sense the Irish were taking over.

From Brendan O’Carroll to Graham Norton to Sherlock villain Andrew Scott, it seemed every Irish person in the building went home with an award. Even the host, the preternaturally affable Dara Ó Briain, is Irish.

In an evening that could have doubled as a celebration of Irish over-achievement in Britain, Dubliner O’Carroll received a gong for best male performance for his opinion-splitting sit-com Mrs Brown’s Boys; Bandon-native Norton won in the best-entertainment performance category; and actor Andrew Scott was named best supporting actor for his turn as dastardly Moriarty in the BBC’s present-day Holmes reboot. Ensuring he wouldn’t feel left out, Ó Briain, too, received a nomination, in the same section in which Norton won.

Far from a one-off, it’s hard not to see the green-tinged Baftas as part of a larger trend. As the break-out judge on the UK edition of The Voice, Script singer Danny O’Donoghue looks poised for Cheryl Cole levels of fame (he couldn’t get arrested in the UK doing his day job; now his face is everywhere). Roscommon’s Chris O’Dowd has one foot in Hollywood, even as his west of Ireland-set comedy Moone Boy prepares to debut on Sky. Kerryman Michael Fassbender has been honoured by the London Film Critics’ Circle, and Philip Treacy is Lady Gaga’s go-to-guy for sartorial inspiration. After stints as a summer stand-in for Jonathan Ross, Ryan Tubridy, the murmurs suggest, could have a job at the BBC tomorrow if he so wished. Step back and the big picture is that we’re staging a reverse invasion of Blighty.

There are two readings of the phenomenon. The first is that, really, it’s no big deal. From the days of Val Doonican and Terry Wogan, the British have had a weakness for a certain stripe of Irish charmer, unaffected, deprecating, with a ‘brogue’ veering towards, but never quite tipping into, the full begorrah. The other perspective is that what is happening is extraordinary in light of the longstanding prejudice against Irish people in parts of the UK.

“Things have become more meritocratic,” says Tony Brennan, of the Haringey Irish Centre, north London. “Are you good at what you do? Is it working? Those are the things that count.”

“There’s a wealth of creative talent here in Britain, at present, with the likes of Chris O’Dowd, Dara Ó Briain, Ryan Tubridy and Brendan O’Carroll proving hugely popular,” says Siobhan Breatnach, news editor at the Irish Post.

“While Irish charm and character will always shine through, talent is a huge factor when it comes to success here. Condescending attitudes are certainly not the norm any more. British-Irish relations — politically, culturally and socially — have never been better and this is being reflected on mainstream TV and radio.”

If anything unites the present generation of Irish high-achievers in the UK, it is their ability to stand tall in the face of adversity. Before moving to Britain, at age 30, Ó Briain, for instance, had starred in a string of terrible RTÉ comedies and was earning a crust on the country’s stand-up circuit. Getting by as a comedian in Ireland is a hand-to-mouth grind and there is a sense that, by the time he got to England, the funny-man was battle-hardened and ready for whatever London had to throw at him.

Though The Script, with record sales north of four million, meet all the requirements of an overnight success, O’Donoghue, too, has tasted the bitter fruits of failure. In the late ’90s, he and the group’s songwriter, Mark Sheehan, were members of super-hyped boy-band My Town, rumoured recipients of the biggest ever advance paid to an Irish group. Alas, the boy-band bubble popped before they had a chance of putting an album out, leaving them without a career or any prospect of one. They truly had to climb their way out of the primordial muck of the pop business.

Similarly, Brendan O’Carroll’s UK success comes after he was treated as a pariah in Ireland. When Mrs Brown’s Boys aired on RTÉ in 2010, the consensus was that here was another unwelcome contribution to that most blighted of genres: the terminally chuckle-free Irish situation comedy. Unbowed, he kept toiling away and, after the show was picked up by the BBC, found his natural constituency in the working-class viewers of provincial Britain.

“When I hear about the critics, first of all, the nasty feeling is, ‘If you don’t like what I’m doing, just try doing it yourself and see how easy it is’,” O’Carroll said recently. “Comedy is not universal. Laughing is universal, but comedy is not. Anyone who thinks they can write the perfect comedy that everyone will love is a fool. I can only write what I think is funny and hope that there is a like-minded audience out there.”

The old narrative — that the Irish in Britain used to be looked-down-upon — is simplistic and inaccurate, says Bernard Purcell, editor of the Irish World. The place of migrants to the UK has never been as straightforward as that.

“Higher-profile Irish people have never really had a problem being accepted in London or the wider UK,” he says. “During the bad old days … it was ordinary, working Irish people who might have encountered entrenched prejudices and these were made all the worse by sweeping, uncritical use of the Prevention of Terrorism Act. A lot of blameless people lost jobs because of detentions, while the Provos exploited it mercilessly.

“During the miscarriages-of-justice period, it should be remembered that the Irish establishment wanted nothing at all to do with cases like the Birmingham Six, Guildford Four, Maguire Seven and Judith Ward — it was British figures, among them Basil Hume and Merlyn Rees, who… pushed and pressed for justice.”

The key question is: does Irishness account for the success of our actors and presenters in Britain? Or is it merely a coincidence? Opinions differ. Chris O’Dowd recently said that Irish people are inclined not to let success go to their heads and that this might explain our ability to enjoy life in the spotlight without plunging off the rails.

“People in Ireland find all that a little bit silly,” he said. “So Irish actors who are doing well never take themselves too seriously, because they know it is just a little bit silly. I have a constant look like I’m about to be thrown from the donkey’s back.”

“They’re really nice to us now,” Ó Briain said of the British in a performance several years ago. “They feel really embarrassed about the whole shitty jokes thing.”

Ó Briain meant this as a comedic throwaway.

But, in a month in which the loftier tiers of the British entertainment industry have taken on a suspiciously green hue, it’s hard not to think there is some, or a lot, of truth in what he says.