Rory's Stories: ‘Emma went off in the ambulance, I was left with three kids and one had Covid’

Online comedian Rory O'Connor has published a book, Rory’s Stories Lockdown Lookback, in which he casts an amused eye over the quirky and surreal moments that were bound up the Irish Covid experience.

Rory's Stories: "Everyone was sitting at home on their phones. My following went up about 30 per cent in a couple of years. I’d say I gained about 300,000 followers."

Nobody had an easy lockdown but Rory O’Connor’s was especially tough. The comedian, who has amassed a huge internet following with his Rory’s Stories sketches, watched his live performance income dry up as the world shut down. And then his wife, Emma, caught Covid and had to be rushed to hospital. Over Zoom from his home in Ashbourne, County Meath he pauses for a moment. It was a challenging time.

“My wife ended up in hospital with Covid in March 2021 for eight days. So that was obviously scary,” he says. “She’s in her mid-30s, full of her health. Covid was such a funny thing. Some people wouldn’t even have a head cold. Others were brown bread. Even in the same household, two or three people could get it – another two mightn’t . That was tough. Our youngest child, she was only three or four months – she got it at as well. When Emma went off in the ambulance, I was left with the three kids and one of them had Covid. I couldn’t get any help because of the risk of spreading it. I’m sure people can relate to that, because they had tough times as well.”