Culture That Made Me: Jarlath Regan on The Simpsons and his favourite podcast
Jarlath Regan presents the Irishman Abroad podcast, and Honey, You’re Ruining Our Kid.
Born in 1980, Jarlath Regan grew up on the Curragh, Co Kildare. In 2006, he began performing stand-up comedy professionally. In 2009, Transworld published How To Break Bad News: Greetings From The Dark Side, the first of his two greeting card books. He founded the Irishman Abroad podcast in 2013, a cult classic of the genre which is listened to by over a million listeners worldwide. On Monday, Sept 5, he launches a new parenting podcast with his wife and child development expert, Tina, entitled Honey, You’re Ruining Our Kid. Available on the GoLoud App and Apple Podcasts. See: https://link.goloudplayer.com/s/sGNqEzI6CMie
When I was 10 years old and waking up to the idea of what funny is to me, this bright shiny thing arrived into our living rooms called The Simpsons. It was unlike anything ever seen before. A cartoon that our parents watched with us and it was on at 6.30 in the evening. It blew everything else outta the water in terms of gags per minute, the satire, the quality of jokes, and it connected and responded to what was happening in the world. There was a Simpsons quote that would apply to whatever situation you found yourself in. I taped every episode I could lay my hands on and rewatched them until the tapes broke.
I grew up understanding the calendar by sporting events on TV. I knew when Roland Garros was, when Cheltenham was. If it was coming up to Easter, the Grand National was on. With the FA Cup final, it was starting to get warmer. When the music for Grandstand came on, I can't have been the only kid that ran around the sitting room scoring goals, diving headers onto the couch. There was also something comforting about Grandstand – the way the BBC presented things. Des Lynam appeared and it was like putting on a pair of slippers. You'd done your week. You were settling in. Chances are it was raining outside. Now it was time to settle down.
I was big into Garfield strips as a young lad. I used to try and seek them out. There was no getting these things in Ireland in the 1980s. You had to hope that somebody came back from America and was kind to you and produced some stuff that was relevant to you in your life. I got a couple of Garfield books back then, and that was largely how I learned to draw – through trying to reproduce stuff from Garfield and later Gary Larson.
Later, Modern Toss cartoons set my mind ablaze. I knew I had a lot of silly jokes that wouldn't work on stage as a comedian, stupidity and stuff that didn't fit with my voice. Material that was darker than the way I spoke conversationally on stage, but when I put them down in cards, people adored them. Like with Modern Toss – cartoons so crudely drawn they appear to be drawn by an idiot, which people allow because they’re a throwaway piece of junk, but they’re also housed within a greeting card, like a cheesy thing you get from your Nan, and yet it has this awful darkness within it.
The streaming show I probably watch once a week, without fatigue, is The Last Dance. It's embarrassing when my wife walks in and I'm watching it again. It's nearly worse than being caught watching porn. She's like, “Not this again.” I’ve read so many basketball books about that era. My only regret with The Last Dance is that it was so censored by Michael Jordan. He was a bully. He doesn’t mind admitting that, the way Roy Keane doesn’t. I'd love to know what was left on the cutting room floor – to see a director's cut.
I tend towards TV shows I can zone out to. With The Office, the American version, the jokes come thick and fast. They flow over you in such a pleasant way. Every episode is 20 minutes. It ties up beautifully each time. The show has so many different movements and character arcs within it. It’s an example of an actor at his apex. Steve Carell’s character is so complex and funny. It's got a tenderness to it on top of being laugh-out-loud funny. There is no dud episodes. It’s the Michael Jordan of Sitcoms because it never took a night off. Ever.
The podcast I listen to most is Fresh Air from NPR with Terry Gross. I've never heard anybody interview the way she does – the level of research, the care and her ability to get out of the way. “The quieter you become, the more you hear.” She is the embodiment of that truism. She manages to draw people out. Most of my technique for interviewing people is modelled on her. She regards each interview as a tribute. Sitting down with an interviewee, we're trying to talk about the best of them because they're paying you the compliment of sitting down with you.
Pete Holmes is a larger-than-life character. He’s about 6ft 5in. He’s a comedian, a very funny man. I stumbled across his podcast You Made It Weird because it had comedians on it that I looked up to. He has an unconventional way of interviewing. It's the opposite of how I do things. He rolls in without many, if any questions preordained. He manages to generate a vibe in the room more than anything else. He’s interviewed everyone who has made an impact in American comedy in the last 20 years, from Gary Shandling to Aisling Bea.
Pete Holmes reads compulsively around spirituality, meditation and religion. He was raised in a very orthodox Protestant part of Massachusetts. He married the first woman he kissed. He subsequently divorced her when he found her cheating on him. He has all these forks in the road of his life that he brings to every podcast interview. I always think that the reason why people talk to me is because I don't pepper them with questions. While I have my research done, I offer some of me. I probably got that from Pete.
I got to perform with John Mulaney at Kilkenny Cat Laughs many moons ago. He went to UCD at the same time as me. Our paths and worlds have crossed in that way a bunch of times. He’s one of the biggest stars of American comedy. He's got a few specials on Netflix. He's an example of somebody who found his voice. Once he found it, it was just a matter of throwing coal in the engine and letting the train go down the tracks. The stuff that he's produced is kind of perfection.
