Dermot Whelan: 'Humour is a powerful tool for opening up people's minds'
Dermot Whelan's upcoming live shows include Cork and Limerick. Photograph: Moya Nolan
In 2017, Dermot Whelan was riding high. He had just started a new mid-morning show with his sidekick, Dave Moore, on the Today FM radio station. All eyes were on them to perform. They were also about to set off on their first live tour.
The pressure was intense. Not feeling well, he visited his GP in search of some help. When she sat him down, and asked him how he was, he burst into tears and couldn’t stop crying for a few minutes.
Gathering himself, he said: “I'm sorry, I'm just overwhelmed. I have nothing left in the tank. I'm not sure what to do."
The doctor replied: "Me too. I'm completely burnt out. I'm really stressed and there's a lot of patients out there in the waiting room and I'm not sure how I'm going to get through the whole day."
“The two of us were looking at each other," recalls Whelan. "I was thinking this is not what I expected. I said, ‘Do you want me to write you a prescription? I'm not a medical expert, but I'll write you one. Have you ever had a naggin? I’ll write you a prescription for a naggin and 20 Marlboro Lights. Come back to me in a couple of weeks.’
“It was a wow moment. It’s one of the catalysts for my stand-up show, Busy & Wrecked – everybody even if they're caregivers can feel overwhelmed and burnt out at times. If you listen to conversations they’ve changed. It used to be, ‘How are you?’ ‘I'm fine.’ Now it’s, ‘How are you?’ ‘I’m mad busy. I'm up the walls.’
“Even the way we ask, ‘How you getting on? Are you busy?’ It’s one of the first questions we ask other people. If you say, ‘No, I’m not busy at all.’ It kind of stops the conversation because busyness has become, particularly in the last 20 years, a signal that we are successful. If we are super busy and short on time, then we're nailing it. It wasn't always like that.”
Whelan, 51, jumped off the treadmill in 2023, stepping away from a 21-year, award-winning radio partnership with Moore to focus on building his career as a media and meditation expert.
It was a bold move, switching to work as a freelancer, as the pair’s ratings were never higher. Whelan is also a parent of three children with bills to be paid. The payoff, however, has come in different guises.
“I noticed as soon as I stopped working on the radio, my energy levels came back to normal,” he says.
“There were days when I used to fall asleep almost at traffic lights coming home. There could be many reasons for that, but I guess if you're not energised by something, it can have the opposite effect. It can drain your energy.
“Interestingly, I've gone back on the show a couple of times as a guest since I left. I've noticed I might only be in there for about 20 minutes, but when I came out I was absolutely knackered. How did I do that for three hours every day – that high-energy [show].
“It may sound like you're just chatting, but it’s a heightened version of yourself when you’re on air. My mood is more elevated now. My wife says I’m much happier. Whether it's a job, a relationship, or if there's anything you're in that’s no longer serving you, it can be a big drain on your energy.”
Whelan juggles several freelance ventures, including mindfulness talks with companies and hosting a popular podcast, with a bent on teasing out transformative experiences from guests such as Ryan Tubridy and Cillian Murphy. (See panel.)
He’s currently writing a follow-up book to his 2021 bestselling guide to meditation, Mind Full, and is on a two-month nationwide stand-up tour, blending comedy with mindfulness tips, which begs the question as to where are the laughs when it comes to meditation.
“A reason why many people don't reach for [meditation] tools when they're stressed or overwhelmed is because they’re never presented to them in a way they can relate to. It’s marketed usually to beautiful people in yoga trousers, the kind of people you see walking around with yoga mats under their arms.
“If you Google ‘meditation’, you’ll see gorgeous-looking people in gorgeous locations – on top of a mountain or beside a lake. It’s not real. We don't live there. I'm amazed at that image of the mountaintop guru, pictures of people meditating and you're like: how did you manage to video yourself in a deep trance-like state? It’s ridiculous. You know, ‘I'm at one with everything, but I need to check my iPhone every 30 seconds to see it's still recording'."
Whelan believes that many people, particularly men, don't relate to that model.
“I find if you can make people laugh, whether that's laughing at my own journey through all of this, or the crazy things we do, or the crazy thoughts we have, there’s something in that. Humour is a powerful tool for opening up people's minds to places that maybe they were closed off to."
He says he sees audience members who might be resistant to that aspect of his show, particularly if they were brought along by a pal.
“The more fun we have, the more relaxed they become. One minute they're laughing, the next minute they're sitting with their eyes closed and tapping into some part of themselves they didn't realise they had access to.”
- Dermot Whelan is touring his Busy & Wrecked! show in theatres around Ireland, including Cork Opera House (Thursday, January 30) and Limerick University Concert Hall (Feb 21). See: www.dermotwhelan.com.
Dermot Whelan and Cillian Murphy go back a long way. The pair first met in 1998 on the set of an Ed Guiney-produced movie, Sweety Barrett, starring Brendan Gleeson, featuring Murphy in a minor role and Whelan as an assistant director. Shortly afterwards, the Cork actor introduced Whelan to his future wife.
In the same week last March that Murphy won his Oscar for Oppenheimer, Whelan sent him a photo of himself receiving a “Person of the Month” award from the Limerick Leader newspaper with the message: “Well done. Great accomplishment, but obviously you’re not the only one who’s picking up major awards.”
It’s no surprise that when Whelan launched his podcast, also in March 2024, he invited Murphy on as his first guest. It remains Whelan’s favourite podcast interview to date.
“I was very lucky to interview Cillian Murphy on flow state,” says Whelan. “That's always something that has fascinated me – where does creativity come from? What are the barriers that we put up in our own way that stop that creativity flowing through?
“To get a glimpse into the mind of an Oscar-winning performer, and have a conversation that he has never had publicly and probably will never have again, was unique. In his own words, he’s not too keen to look behind the curtain.
"It's a bit like looking at a beautiful view. Sometimes you accept the beauty and magic of it. You don't need to necessarily start deconstructing it. That was one of the most fulfilling conversations I've ever had.”
