Emma Doran on stand-up, teen motherhood and consent: ‘There wasn’t a culture of saying anything’

Emma Doran’s memoir is not the comedy ‘coffee table’ book you might expect. From teenage pregnancy to consent, she talks to Nicole Glennon about growing up in 1980s Ireland and how she rewrote the narrative through her comedy

Sat, 31 Aug, 2024 - 09:00

Nicole Glennon

When Emma Doran got pregnant at 17, there was one thing she was determined to convince her mother of — her innocence.

“I told her I was a virgin,” she writes in her forthcoming memoir, Mad Isn’t It?, “because I thought it would sound better.”

Sitting outside The Conrad on an unfortunately rare summer’s day, she seems to simultaneously wince and laugh at the memory.

“That was nearly as important as telling her I was pregnant,” she admits. “To say, ‘This only happened one time, I was a virgin.’ I didn’t want her to think badly of me.”

Doran, who in the past year or two has seen a decade of graft translate into a flurry of demand from live gigs, to TV appearances (she was part of the all-star cast of Graham Norton fronted LOL: Laugh Out Loud Ireland) and a podcast with Irish comedy royalty Deirdre O’Kane, realised she was pregnant just weeks before returning to secondary school for her final year.

As it turned out, she ended up giving birth to her daughter Ella, now 21, within a fortnight of the Leaving Cert. She still sat the exams.

Today, of course, she says Ella is the best surprise that ever happened to her, but the 17-year-old girl who wrote her mother a letter because she couldn’t get the words ‘I’m pregnant’ out was “full of worry and fear so strong she was physically in pain”.

She might have got the whole nation talking when she demonstrated ‘the silent ride’ on The Late Late Show last year, but like many Irish women who came of age in the early 2000s, there was still a lot of shame and secrecy attached to women’s sexuality at the time. When she initially started on the comedy circuit, in her early 30s, she avoided the topic of teen pregnancy altogether.

“I felt like it was maybe too much to get into,” she says, in between puffs on her vape. “I hadn’t figured out a way of condensing it into a sound-bitey, funny thing.”

When book publishers Gill approached her about writing a book, Doran was concerned they were looking for a coffee-table style comedy read, but after sending a sample of her writing, she says they encouraged her to see “there’s more there than the comedy”.

And there is. The book, at its core, feels like a love letter to Doran’s mother, Bridey, who rose to the occasion from the very start, fulfilling the role of mother, grandmother, and friend, in those difficult early years as the young comic juggled school, work and motherhood while her peers were getting up to no good.

Emma Doran with baby Ella and mother Bridie

Beyond that, Doran also wades into difficult topics, often times displaying a straightforward type of honesty that reads as though it’s come effortlessly, though there are times — like when she writes of contemplating an abortion — she admits her instinct was to leave it out.

This honesty applies to her descriptions of her first forays into sexual experiences, some of which we agree would be categorised as assaults today.

The section of the book which deals with these experiences is introduced with the line, “many of my sexual experiences up until this point [the occasion she fell pregnant with Ella], had happened without me knowing too much about them”.

Reflecting on the incidents she experienced from the ages of 14 to 17, she writes: “The perceived normality of it between myself and my peers evokes feeling of numbness if anything. Feelings that were pushed down over the years, hidden tidily away in little emotional crevices.”

When I ask her today why she chose to write about it, she takes a moment to think.

“I had a joke that was a bit hit and miss,” she says, taking another puff of the vape. “It was about young people.

“I was like ‘they did invent consent, isn’t that great? We didn’t have consent, that’s been handy.’ Sometimes it got a big laugh, but sometimes, people got a bit... ooh.”

It hit a nerve, I suggest?

“Yeah. But it’s the truth," she says.

We never used the word consent. When you have your own child, especially a daughter, it does start to bring stuff up in your own head.

I am conscious that I am just five years older than Doran’s daughter Ella — there’s a gap between what women felt was par-for-the-course when Doran was at parties or dating to what I felt I had to accept, something Doran and I agree has moved on again with Ella’s Generation Z.

“I would say now at least — not in all cases — but when people speak up, I feel to a certain degree, people are heard,” Doran says.

“[For us], there just wasn’t a culture of saying anything. Nobody thought it was a good idea to tell anyone.

“You might tell a friend stuff, but nobody would ever suggest, ‘Should we tell somebody? Should we tell a parent? Should we tell a teacher? Should we report this to somebody?’ Nobody ever said that.

“I think we knew instinctively there was no benefit.

Comedian Emma Doran for Weekend. Pictures: Nina Val. Location: The Terrace at the Conrad, Dublin.

“For me and my friends, honest to god, we just thought it was a part of growing up. It’s so dark, but

we’d laugh about these things on nights out. If you didn’t laugh, you’d cry.”

Attempting to reclaim the narrative through comedy, or choosing not to talk about the experiences at all, was an attempt to try “minimise” their impact, she recalls now.

But, looking back, she believes those experiences had more of an impact than her or her friends may have acknowledged at the time: “Those experiences really formulate your ideas and opinions about your own sexuality, your own worth, your own value.”

Becoming a single parent in her teens also had an impact on how she viewed herself: “Having a kid when you’re 18, it was always like, I knew people would like me but you could see they were like, ‘Oh, she has a kid’ you know?

“That definitely affects you. I don’t think I ever relied on my looks.”

It’s a cliché, I acknowledge, but does that mean she relied on comedy?

“Yeah. Always. When I was a young teenager, I always got a lot of ‘Emma Doran is sound,’” she says while laughing. “If you’re a redhead with freckles... yeah I was ‘sound’.

“I don’t think I minded. I got enough action. It was grand,” she says. “And you know what it is? The sound of laughter just gets me off. It always has. I just love that sound.”

When it comes to how Doran — who was once an aspiring actress — found herself relying on laughter to make a living, well, it was a bit of an accident that ended up being a wonderful surprise (yes, I too am sensing a theme here).

“I knew that I wanted to perform. I felt like I did have a talent. And I was thinking, maybe someone will see me at a gig, and give me a part in something,” she says. “A recurring character in the deli or something?

“Comedian Martin Angolo and I used to have this joke about, the scouts down the back of the room. There were no scouts, because it was Tuesday night at half 11 in Temple Bar.”

But at her first open-mic night, which happened while she was on maternity leave with her second child Joe, she got the laughs and was hooked.

“I got, totally, straight away addicted. I didn’t expect that. I was just like, I’m gonna go and do this once. And then I was booking in loads of gigs. Shane [her partner] was like what the hell is going on? He thought I was having an affair or something.

“I don’t think a week has gone by in the last 11 years that I haven’t done a gig.

“When people say ‘where is your next gig’ or ‘I must go see you sometime’, I am thinking ‘I am literally gigging every week,’” she says with only a slight twinge of frustration, “You need to gig all the time to sharpen up, get new material, try out new things. It very quickly became a thing. But it took a long time to make fifty quid.”

Comedians Emma Doran and Deirdre O'Kane head to Singapore in High Road Low Road

She has previously credited Deirdre O’Kane — now a friend and co-host of the Keeping It Tight podcast — as helping her breakthrough to the sort of mainstream success that allowed her to quit her regular 9-5 and pursue comedy full-time. With Ella, and later Joe, 11, and Tommy, 9, in tow, it wasn’t an option for her to leave her job as a copywriter, which supplied a steady income stream. Comedy gigs were done after the workday was finished, dinner had been eaten, and the kids were already in bed.

Doran, who at this point in our conversation is nursing a hot chocolate and lamenting the lack of marshmallows, frequently likes to slag O’Kane — fond of a pair of shades it has to be said — for being “very showbiz”.
Something Doran, evidently feels she is not.

As soon as I mention O’Kane, Doran’s eyes light up.

“There’s just something about her that cracks me up,” she says, launching into a story about an experience she had with her while filing RTÉ’s High Road, Low Road. The show brought the pair to Singapore where O’Kane got her first tattoo — the entire process of which left Doran in stitches.

“Even the next day, my abs were sore. I was literally in pain, I’d engaged my core so much. I must have laughed non-stop for two hours. Just at her.”

It’s evident the pair get on like a house on fire, and listening to the podcast evokes a feeling not dissimilar to eavesdropping on two women in the thick of it in a coffee shop.

“I enjoy eccentric people,” Doran says, by way of explaining her fondness for O’Kane. “I think it makes me feel at home, comfortable, when people are mad.

“Because everyone is mad. Some people are just hiding it. If you haven’t seen the mad, you just haven’t been let see it yet.”