Baz Ashmawy: 'I don’t know why men don't get asked the work-kids balance question'
Baz Ashwamy. Photograph Moya Nolan
Never let anyone claim that heading up a television show is a soft job. The presenter constantly puts their life on the line –Jonny Knoxville has suffered brain damage, Gemma Collins fell through a trapdoor at the Radio 1 Teen Awards, and Baz Ashmawy – south Dublin’s prominent matriarch-based thrill-seeker – has been tasered by a 71-year-old woman at pace, in stunts that both former parties would almost certainly too deem demented.
It is, indeed, a painful life in the Montrose trenches, a life surely to grow lonelier still when talk of expiration is a-foot. And no better duo to discuss demise than Baz and Nancy (a rather more pedestrian, fresh laundry-wearing, Dunnes Stores-shopping Sid and Nancy) Ashmawy, whose previous television stints include attempting to kill his mother, ad nauseam, across three helpful seasons of 50 Ways To Kill Your Mammy. Much has been documented about the pair.
He, a lovable, curly-haired giant, she, a reminder-made-flesh, consistently, yet lovingly, scrutinising her boy to clean his car and tie his shoelaces. It is here, in a new format, they discuss death – a topic loathed by Baz since birth.
“It all came about when my mum broached me about her plans for when she’s gone,” he says. “And I’ve always kind of fobbed it off and ripped the piss, purely because I found it too difficult to even contemplate, and it was only when she went to Tanya [his partner] with her plans, that I realised I had to confront it. Saying that, I still find it so tough. Parts of the show I hated filming. The producer in me thought it was a great idea, but it’s too personal for me. Nancy is great in it, and everyone who has seen it loves it, but it’s a little raw for me. And a lot tougher than I thought it would be.”
It’s a foreign, yet entirely simple take – our obsession with death, dead bodies and, ultimately, celebrating them – that most Irish people only come to grasp when in the presence of foreign nationals. A deeply-guarded and wholly ritualistic obsession, and one we may only deem absurd when a cadaver is propped up on the good table in the living room. Baz and Nancy aim to explore this, asking the question; is there a strangely uplifting narrative in the business of editing your life’s final chapter?
The series sees mother and son, discuss life’s sole inevitability (perhaps too, as the adage goes, taxes) as they explore the industry, tribalism and normality of shuffling off one’s mortal coil. As much as ever, both Baz and Nancy echo the sentiments of a divided nation.
Pragmatic, maternal and filterless, Nancy, a former nurse, is familiar with the process of death, and hails from an era where a traditional grip and strict protocol must ensue. Baz, the comedic empath, focuses on the more emotive elements, often refusing to broach the topic at all. It’s a generational thing, Baz says. “Nancy’s relationship with death is very different to mine. She’s held the hand of hundreds of people in the last stage of their life. But to me, the idea of losing her is actually inconceivable. In a way, it sort of feels like a breakup. You’re kind of left with the ghost of the person. You still go to the coffee shop or on a walk or whatever, and you remember them being with you – death can feel a little like that. The world keeps moving but it’s not the same anymore. Because of that, I had to go through a bit of grieving even thinking about it. Nancy calls me soft throughout!”
Baz and Nancy’s Last Orders was made in the unfamiliar pre-pandemic era, a time when the rhetoric around one’s departure from life might not have felt so fresh. You can see it in their manner; candid, heartwarming, yet compelling, boasting equal parts joy and despair. There is a touch of foreboding sense, akin to Wilbur in Charlotte’s Web discovering that his sole purpose in life was to be made bacon, not in the least as both Baz and Nancy discuss the reason for living and, indeed, the reason(s) for dying. But if the theme of the piece is a self-actualising Wilbur, then the genuine devotion felt between mother and son is a self-sacrificing Charlotte, a complete giving of one to another, and vice versa.
Does he feel burnt out, I wonder - and with Father's Day in mind, I ask him the question women are constantly posed in interviews, but rarely if ever men. How does he juggle his career with six kids at home? (He's even a grandfather now.)
“The whole thing has me feeling a little bit exposed,” Baz laughs. “I often like to disappear after a show comes out, because I think people get sick of the sight of you, but this is coming right after DIY SOS [a home transformation show also playing on RTÉ].
"It’s been a really busy few months, and I don’t know why women get asked the work-kids balance question all the time and men don’t – it’s really hard work. I’ve a girl in Leaving Cert, a boy just finished college, one finishing up primary school, it’s all go.
"I’m constantly trying to find the balance between work and family, but I also have a huge amount of help in Tanya. I couldn’t do anything without her. We’re a team, that’s how it should be, isn’t it?
"I also just love what I do, so you prioritise that. I get very restless if I’m doing the same thing all the time – which is handy when you’re doing a quiz show one week and a death documentary the next!”
The Ashmawys and their humorous skewering of death and all of its trappings surely deem Last Orders among the most important pieces of television anyone of us will watch following two years of fraught morbidity. Such conversations were never had – out of fear, kindness, hope – deeming this national broadcaster iteration entirely necessary.
“I’m a big advocate for openness and sharing,” Baz says. “But I fell apart going to my granny’s grave, something I refused to do when she died years ago. All of a sudden I’ve a crew in front of me and I’m bawling over my granny!”
While Ashmawy has found great success as a radio and television personality – Emmys, successive stints on RTÉ 2, Bank of Ireland advertisements – perhaps his most instinctive role is that of cremation sympathiser. Wide-eyed, he leads his mother into a Kildare funeral directors, towering two feet above her, beanie et al. “Do you want oak?” he says, staring down the barrel of endless coffins. “I think I want a newer one, like a basket,” Nancy replies to a hapless son.
“My mother’s thinking about cremation,” he finally utters to the abiding mortician, “but she hasn’t gotten money to burn.”
As I write this piece, Ashmawy writes on his Instagram about Last Orders, and how its broadcast date – one which inevitably triggers conversations about death with elderly parents around the country – is finally approaching. He writes on Instagram: "I'll be supporting my SUPERSTAR mother Nancy in our upcoming documentary "LAST ORDERS" ON RTÉ 1 ON JUNE 20TH. We shot it way back in Jan 2020 (HENCE THE AWFUL HAIR) but it's only being released now. It's all about having that conversation with our parents about the day they're no longer here (SHE'S IN TOP HEALTH DON'T WORRY!).
Looks at what are the funeral options out there and is it even important to have that conversation early or just deal with it later. It's a really funny, sweet and for me a little upsetting documentary. Nancy is faboolish as always! If you're a fan of her you must tune in. Me? I just get upset a lot and sniffle from one scene to the next. I can promise you it's a conversation I'll never be having again lol."
As Father’s Day beckons, will Ashmawy be watching his discovery into death with his six-strong brood? “We’ll all watch it, yeah, but some of my kids are quite young and still lean on me for that solidarity and safeness, so that topic hasn't come up,” he says. “I want them to be better situated than I am for talk of death, so the show has sort of opened my eyes to the importance of talking about heavier subjects.”
Last Orders closes on an unsurprising, softer note. As we trace the country looking to speak to specialists in death, the pair grow together in places where they might have been generationally torn apart.
Interestingly enough, their route from Kildare to Kilkenny (the irony that both places contain ‘kill’ is not lost on this writer) showcases more than just the myriad of ways one can part this world for another in this country, but a deeply moving, oftentimes teary, respect of the fear, fright and the unknown when it comes to death. Especially with your mother in-tow.
Indeed, how does one know, when cremating a body, which elements are human and which elements are coffin? Can one procure a golden casket? Which chipper is nearest your chosen funeral home? All, and more, will be revealed by way of the Ashmawys, a biddable crew, and death-funding obtained from the state broadcaster. Could you ask for a better Monday evening ditty?
Baz and Nancy's Last Orders will air over two programmes from Monday 20 June on RTÉ One.
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