My Childhood with Emma Doran: 'I thought I made a huge mess of everything when I got pregnant'

Emma Doran says friends would ask her to write stories about teachers in school so they could laugh.  “Looking back, those were the first sketches I ever wrote," she said. 

Emma Doran says she would spend hours thinking about star quality, and how she might get it. 

Emma Doran used to think everyone fantasised about being on TV. She was disabused of that notion during a conversation she had with a friend shortly after they sat their Leaving Certificate exams.

“I asked her what we could do to get on telly, and she told me she had no interest in that kind of thing,” says the now comedian.

“I was shocked. I thought that’s what we were all aiming for. Performing and being on telly was certainly all I wanted to do from a young age.”

Doran spent the first six years of her life living in Tallaght on a road where she remembers “being out with the other kids all day. I’d be playing with people’s dogs, selling my bits from a stall I’d set up or gathering everyone together to hold a funeral for the likes of a dead bird”.

She was confident, but there were times when she felt shy about speaking. She puts this down to the fact that her speech was delayed.

“There was a long time when people outside my family might not have understood what I was saying,” she says. “So I held back and rather than being at the centre of the conversation, I learned to observe people. I was a strange combination. I loved being the centre of attention in lots of ways, but I wasn’t a big mouth and wouldn’t volunteer for things. It was almost like I was waiting for someone to recognise that I had star quality.”

In fact, she admits she spent hours thinking about star quality, wondering if it was a real thing and trying to figure out how she could get it.

Emma Doran as a baby. Emma spent the first six years of her life in Tallaght. 

Moving to Rathfarnham at the age of six presented her with an opportunity to develop some of that star quality. Doran remembers that she and another girl started on the same day.

“The other girl puked, which is social suicide in primary school. I remember thinking that I wasn’t going down like her. So I started putting on shows in the schoolyard. I’d put on a show at the drop of a hat. One girl told me she had puppets at home and I made her bring them in so we could do puppet shows. I was a bit of a desperado really, but it’s stood to me now.”

Doran has two older brothers, Simon and Stephen. They are 18 months apart in age but five years older than her. She describes their relationship growing up as “very much big brother, little sister. Mam told me how they wanted to stay in the house and mind me when I was born, and they’ve always been protective. They also introduced me to comedy shows when I was a kid, things like Alan Partridge and Beavis and Butt-Head.”

As a teenager, Doran’s focus was on being one of the cool gang. She says she did all the typical teenage things — smoking, drinking, telling her parents she was staying with friends and going to discos instead, bunking off school — but stresses that she never did anything “too crazy. I always wanted to avoid being on bad terms with my parents”.

She was already showing an aptitude for writing sketches but didn’t realise it at the time. “Friends would ask me to write stories about the teachers so they could laugh at them,” she says. “Looking back, those were the first sketches I ever wrote.”

What Doran calls “the worst possible thing that could happen to a teenage girl in the early 2000s” happened to her when she was 18. She got pregnant in sixth year, gave birth to Ella 13 days before she sat her exams, and assumed she had “made a huge mess of everything”.

However, her parents Marjorie and James were determined that their daughter would still have opportunities. They encouraged her to go to college and looked after Ella while she attended lectures.

“I chose business and arts management because I didn’t have enough points for communications and someone had told me that it was as good as a communications course and that a communications course was a good way of getting into telly,” says Doran. “So I hadn’t given up on that dream.”

Emma Doran as a young child.

Doran’s college years were challenging. She made friends but remembers feeling like “an alien in some ways. When they’d be getting ready to go out, I’d be going home to look after my daughter.”

Becoming a mother at such a young age had two lasting effects on Doran. One was realising how lucky she was to have supportive parents, especially her mother. “Mam would hand me my baby when I came home from college, but she also handed me a home-cooked dinner and did all my washing,” she says. “She didn’t take over the mothering side of things with Ella, but she looked after so much of the rest of it. She was a huge help.”

The other thing was that it ignited what she calls her “inner hustler”. “Having someone who depended on me kickstarted my work ethic. I worked hard to get my degree. I tried my best to be a good mammy. I still do.”

Doran has since had two other children with her partner Shane. They are Joe, 13, and Tommy, 11.

It was while on maternity leave with Joe that she finally decided to test if she had the star quality she used to wonder about as a child. She signed up for an open mic night, was declared best act, and has been gigging ever since.

• Emma Doran is bringing her Emmaculate tour to venues throughout Ireland and the UK until April.