Bernard O'Shea on his return to TV, modern dad life, and why he's still drinking tumeric tea
Bernard O'shea
I’d say Bernard O’Shea didn’t learn much about parenting from playing the father in . His main contribution there was shouting at the kids in the back when they were out for a spin.
When the real-life Bernard O’Shea answers the phone for a chat about his new TV show, he apologises in advance for any poor sound quality as he’s doing the interview via his ear buds, because he ‘has the kids.’ The kids are 7, 5 and 2.
"Olivia is home from school now, along with Tadhg, and Sean is gone in the car with Mammy around the block to get him asleep. They're all at home,” he tells me, before telling one of them that yes, they’re allowed to watch TV.
"If the house could talk, it would say can you give me a break, I've had enough," he says of lockdown. "The house has taken a pummelling.”
The 42-year-old from Durrow in Co. Laois is one of the most recognisable entertainers in the country, with numerous TV shows on RTÉ, a spell on 2FM, his live comedy work down the years and now a hilarious column in this newspaper, as he tries out popular health hacks.
Did he worry that the pandemic could bring all that crashing down?
"Oh ya, Jesus of course. Absolutely. It's on the line now. It really is.
“We made the new comedy show through the pandemic. It was stressful, the kids were at home, Lorna works full time. That was stressful to balance children and the pandemic. Her work can be done at home, but I have to get out there. To be honest, it was either do it or don't. It was tough - everything had to be socially distanced [in the new show], we had to be in a bubble. There were plans to bring in other comedians and get their opinion. That had to go, because we all had to be in one bubble.
"It wasn't ideal, but we got three episodes done. What was down to take eight weeks, took a year."
The show, visited a number of workplaces where Bernard had to find people to do a stand-up slot in front of their colleagues, and then coach them how to do it.
He works alongside Gardaí, zookeepers in Fota, and railway workers to, as the press release puts it, ‘find the funny in their job.’ But can you really teach people how to be a comedian?
"That was my idea, at first. But then when we got into it, when we find the personality, my theory changed to, let's get this person on stage to the nearest of what they are. The more I said, ‘let's do this, let's do that’, I realised I was interfering. I wasn't bringing the best out of them. We did workshops and things like that, but the best thing to do was get to know them and they'd drop in a little sentence, and I'd go, ‘oh, that's funny’ and they'd go 'what!?’
At this point one of his kids approaches and asks him something about chicken, so he puts me on mute to sort it out. When he gets back, we chat about his new column in the , where he looks at the science behind recent health hacks.
I tell him that I remember meeting him briefly in RTÉ Cork and what struck me was that he seemed far more interested in talking about science than acting the comedy clown. Would he like to be a bit more like Dara Ó Briain, and do some serious stuff as well?
“No, it’s just that the technology has changed things. I was too lazy to go to a library to find out, but once Google came along, I could just type it in ‘What is gravity?’ and get all the answers. At the moment I’m spending way too much time looking at watches.” I noticed he had deleted his Twitter account. What was the story there?
“If you want to be on Facebook or Twitter constantly, it’s a full-time job. And for me it just a matter of the kids at home, the dinners, the cleaning and all those things to do. I set the priorities on my phone to go, I’m going to have X amount of time on this platform. I was shocked - I didn't think I was a heavy Twitter user, but I was spending colossal time on it. Twitter and Facebook are gone, as part of the digital detox, I wanted to get off them for a sustained longer period.
"The funny thing is, I thought that would be my digital detox. But I still haven't deleted YouTube. And now I'm just passing the ball onto that now."
He likes Foil Arms and Hog. "I remember one day on Facebook alone I spend nearly an hour watching their videos! Now I've passed that over to YouTube. I would say I got genuinely addicted to YouTube. So I said, I need to cut off the supply first because I wanted to read a bit more.”
We turn to the health hacks he’s investigated for his column. He tells me he’s still drinking turmeric tea around 6pm, even though it’s disgusting, because it stops him from eating again during the evening.
"I thought rocks and crystals were complete hocus-pocus. So I wore a shungite rock around my neck for a while. The kids kept pulling it off, so I put it in my pocket, it's a kind of a worry stone for me now. It gave me an insight into why people do that - for me, it's always the same thing. Make me skinny, make me more attractive, make me cleverer.”
And what about his cold shower trials?
“I'm not doing it any more, I can't stomach it. It was killing the one pleasurable thing that I could do in the house. I'm like your man in Seinfeld that won't get out of the shower.”
We’ve all hidden from our kids in the shower.
He met his wife Lorna 12 years ago, in the International Bar Comedy Club in Dublin. I presume he can’t wait to get back out on the circuit.
"I'll definitely go back to doing gigs when I can. It's funny - there is stand-up in the new TV show, but it's done socially distant. We couldn't do a packed comedy club, which was a bit odd.
"Stand-up is a in a room with people. There are other ways to do it, but that's it for me. You'd see it in some place like the Laughter Lounge or City Limits. You'd be building up the energy and then out to a room packed full of people. We didn't have that in the TV show which was very sad. We were outside, with only 16 people in the audience, three metres apart from each other, wearing masks. That's not conducive to comedy. But they'd never done stand-up before, so they got the same kick out of it. They loved it, the energy was there and their nerves as well.
"I love DeBarras in Clonakilty, I'm not just saying that because I know you're a Cork person.
"It's electric, a tight intimate space. Personally, I like small stuffed venues. Because, you don't have this living in fear, oh Jesus will I sell it enough to fill the place and you also get a weird electricity in a club that you can't replicate anywhere else. But a gig is a gig, I'll gig anywhere.”
We chat a bit about exercise during lockdown, which is a bit of an issue for him because of his knee. “I dislocated it when I was 20 playing football and I was told, you're going to do this for the rest of your life. It's incredibly sore until it pops back in and then it just balloons up into a big football. So after dislocating it for the third time, I thought, do you know what, from now on I’ll just walk. I sometimes think I'll do running, but I'd probably end up ringing my wife to come and get me.”
He must have headed out in the car without me noticing, because after 30 minutes of cracking chat, he says, “Anyway, Pat, I’m just pulling up here, I’ll have to let you go.” And with that Bernard O’Shea headed back to the busy life of a modern Dad.
- Bernard’s Working Comics, 9pm Monday on RTÉ2 and available to stream on the RTÉ Player.
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