'We don’t hear accents like ours on TV and radio': The many faces of The 2 Johnnies

The duo are back with a new TV show that shows a different side to Ireland, writes Rowena Walsh

Having enjoyed so much success both at home and abroad over the last few years, The 2 Johnnies are back with a new TV show next week that sees them travel around the country. Pictures: Andres Poveda

“We’ve just watched episode one and I can say that it’s the funniest thing we’ve ever done,” says Johnny O’Brien, who is better known as Johnny B, one half of the hit comedy duo The 2 Johnnies, whose latest series is about to hit our TV screens on Monday.

For the uninitiated, The 2 Johnnies are two seemingly ordinary blokes from Tipperary who have a firm grip on the nation’s funny bone.

Their podcast attracts over half a million listeners every week, and it’s the country’s fastest growing show, attracting fans from the US, Canada and Australia.

To date, the duo have had nine number one singles, sold over 40,000 concert tickets and have a social media reach of more than two million people a week.

In their debut RTÉ series, The 2 Johnnies Do America, they went on a tour of that country, goofing around while meeting a collection of locals and Irish abroad. This time round, thanks to Covid, their feet remain firmly planted on Irish soil, but they have immersed themselves in the worlds of TikTok, urban art, minority sports and eGaming.

“We got to try stuff that we’d never done before where we get to interview people,” says Johnny B, “people who are the straight character and we get to be totally ridiculous and see how far we can push it before people scream at us to get out of their office.”

They’ve yet to find out just how far they need to go to be forcibly removed from someone’s office, but Johnny B is confident that they’ll get there someday, maybe in the next series.

Five years ago, Johnny ‘Smacks’ McMahon was working behind the butcher’s counter in SuperValu while Johnny B made hurleys for his family business in Cahir. Then one night, the two performed as MCs during a fundraiser for their local GAA club and a phenomenon was born.

Within six months of that first gig, the two were working together full time. And why not, says Johnny B, “to do anything else would have been a waste of our time. We love it, we spend every waking moment on it. Bar playing a bit of hurling or going socialising the odd time, our whole lives are dedicated to it.

“Getting to do what you love for a living is like winning the lotto. And that’s how I feel sometimes, I feel like I’ve been called up to play for Ireland.

“When I get to tog out for The 2 Johnnies, we feel like we’re kind of representing country people who might not be represented as much as they’d like.

“They don’t hear accents like ours on the television or radio enough, and we feel like those people are with us, so it was not a hard decision.”

When they took the risk of quitting their jobs and chasing their dream, neither Johnny had mortgages to pay or children to feed. They didn’t make any money during their first 12 months together. Johnny B says that they actually lost money.

“Most people you see online are not making money when they start for the first couple of years, you’re making very little off YouTube views. Just ‘cos you have 50,000 Instagram followers or you got 100,000 Tik Tok followers, that doesn’t guarantee you a penny.”

But their audience loved them. “I think people see a lot of themselves in us,” says Johnny Smacks. “I mean we’re two ordinary lads who had ordinary jobs who have somehow managed to make a career out of this and I guess we work hard and we enjoy ourselves along the way and we have a knack of just making people smile.

“I think people just latch on to us, it’s like we feel that we’re the soccer team and everyone else are the fans, we’re all kind of in it together. And I think we’re bringing people along on the journey with us. I think that’s kind of what gets people hooked.”

Their audience is pretty much 50/50, says Johnny Smacks, people from Australia, America and the UK and a lot of the Irish expats. “We can thank them because they’ve introduced people from other countries so even when we did our shows in America, there were a lot of American people there who were probably just dragged along by their Irish friends, but now thankfully they’re fans too.”

He says that they’re buzzing about the new series, The 2 Johnnies Take On... They loved getting to travel around the country. “We’re showing sides of Ireland people haven’t seen before and I think we can always take pride in that. We just want to show how good Ireland is. And I think that comes across in the TV show.”

“We love Ireland,” says Johnny B, “we want to make love to Ireland in this TV show, that’s what we’ve been doing in the podcast the whole time anyway. Yeah, it’s wrapped up in a bit of comedy but there’s still such interesting stuff in it, we’re talking to people that you won’t hear anywhere else.”

He says that there are so many characters around the place. “There’s fellas dedicating their lives to playing American football in Navan and people who are in their bedroom in Waterford making a fortune playing computer games.”

Both Johnnies were amazed by streamers, people who are on Twitch, the live streaming platform for gamers. “Hundreds of thousands of people tune in to watch them [playing video games],” says Johnny B. “We sat in the room with some of these streamers and we didn’t get it and we were there. It’s huge business.”

If Louis Theroux does a documentary, says Johnny Smacks, at the end of it, you know that he really understands it: “We did a documentary on streamers and at the end of it, we hadn’t a clue what was going on, we were more confused. Streaming and the streamers out there, that was an eye-opener for us.” He says that they still find it baffling.

Johnny B says that while doing everything from American football to bog snorkling, they did learn that there’s a sport for everyone. And Johnny Smacks really liked cricket. “Any sport where you can eat a dinner halfway through it is my type of game. If I can have a prawn cocktail and a steak sandwich during a game, I’ve found my sport.”

Initially, they were glad of the break when Covid first hit. In the first three months of 2020, they’d only been in Ireland for five days. It was like a snow day off school, says Johnny B.

But then reality dawned and they had to cancel gigs. Johnny Smacks says that they kept really busy during this time, working on their podcast, writing a book and making loads of music.

“There’s a fear of having to go back to a normal job that drives us every day and during lockdown, we weren’t just going to go, ‘ah look, sure we’ll just do nothing for six months and then hopefully people might still like us by the time the six months are over’.”

Calling off their gigs because of Covid was a low point, says Johnny Smacks, but he adds that every day is a high point for them because they get to do what they want. “We’re the captains of our own ship, we’re our own bosses and we’re in a good position where we don’t just have to take work that’s coming, we can be choosy and pick what we like.”

And there’s lots more to come from them. Not only do they say that they have millions of ideas for other projects, they have a strong belief in themselves. “We’re only halfway there, not even that,” says Johnny B. “Johnny Smacks said to me when he was on the dole, that we were going to be the biggest act in Ireland. Don’t doubt this man’s ambition.”

“I don’t know if that’s delusion or what, but I always believed that we would be successful,” says Johnny Smacks, “but I don’t know what success is. Success to me is buying a new pair of runners and not having to worry about not being able to eat for the rest of that week.”

For Johnny B, if you’re making the money that you’d make in a regular job, but you’re making it in a job that you love, that’s success. Although he is planning to build the biggest house in Cahir, up the mountain, and “it’s going to look down on the town, and you know the Hollywood sign that’s in LA? I’m going to get one of them that says Tipperary.”

The show premieres on RTÉ 2 on Monday at 9:30pm with The 2 Johnnies Take On ...TikTok