David McSavage: As soon as I gave up alcohol, my career started to get better

If my dad was falling down drunk the way I was in front of my kids, I know how insecure it would have made me.

Sat, 30 Sep, 2023 - 02:00

Mary Cate Smith

MY memory of childhood is long summers jumping off the platform at Blackrock Baths, being in little bicycle gangs, having adventures. It was brilliant.

I have three sisters and one brother. I was a bully. My father had his favourites but he obviously wouldn’t admit it. That was okay; I felt my mother really loved me.

I’m doing a podcast/YouTube show with my sons and my ex-wife. It’s such a good thing for me as a father because I’m properly listening. It’s like; ‘well done, David. Do you want a medal?’

My earliest memory was pulling down my eyebrows and getting a laugh. I remember how glorious that was.

As comedians, we’re seeking validation from strangers that we didn’t get from the people we needed it from when we were kids. I need adversity to find the measure of myself.

Some people have more malleable personalities and it seems that I’m a force of nature. It’s just the way that way I am.

Being a narcissist and wrapped up in my own head, when I start thinking about how I am, it’s never a good answer.

The harder you work, connections start to happen. Nobody is thinking about ways to elevate you or provide a platform for you to shine.

We don’t have to pay for the sun and yet it provides us with everything. To me, that’s a higher power. It’s so much more incredible than the idea of this cruel Supreme Being just waiting for us to step out of line. Fuck that.

Comic David McSavage. Picture: Mark Condren

Stopping drinking in 2003 was a big challenge. As soon as I gave up alcohol, my career slowly started to get better.

I stopped drinking because my kids were young and I remember being that age. If my dad was falling down drunk the way I was in front of my kids, I know how insecure it would have made me.

I did go to AA ten years after that, but I went not to stop drinking but to follow somebody I looked up to.

I tried to 12-step my way out of heartbreak. I replaced the word ‘alcohol’ with this person’s name. I did learn some valuable things from Alcoholics Anonymous.

So many nights, I’d get drunk out of it, burning bridges, fucking up opportunities, not being there for my kids because I was so hungover. Thank god, I’m out of that one.

My proudest achievement is that I have a better relationship with my ex-wife now than when we were together. Hannah and Jack and Daniel and I are really close and that feels good.

The phrase ‘persistence without expectation’ [was a good life lesson]. Johnny Vegas said it to me in Melbourne and the penny dropped. Whatever the thing is that you’re working towards, you’re never going to achieve it unless you persist and stick with it.

There is a heroism in failure. At least you know you’ve worked your bollocks off and gave it your absolute best.

Irish people love the dead because dead people have no chance of succeeding.

I was a street performer for about 20 years. I was able to sustain a living but I did it for way too long. I wasted a lot of years when I could have been doing something more challenging and more creatively fulfilling.

There’s lots of stuff that I regret. I had a very nice neighbour and she loved to chat to people. Once I said to her; ‘I think you find it very difficult to extricate yourself from a conversation.’ She was clearly upset and I instantly regretted it. I felt like such a fucking c***. I don’t know why I said it. Over the years I’ve said things and it’s almost like; ‘who said that?’

Things are working out better for me now because I’ve started doing the social media thing and I sell more tickets now than I did even at the height of The Savage Eye.

I did The Late Late a few times with Pat Kenny. It made a difference in terms of ticket sales but now it doesn’t matter a fuck. Ryan Tubridy is my first cousin and he never had me on in 14 years.

Ryan has this little psychosis going on that he believes he’s in a direct line [of descent] from Jack Paar and Johnny Carson. He’s an old fogey and people bought into that.

The Late Late Show had its place in the 70s or 80s. Now, it’s an anachronism. The people who are watching it are dying anyway.

It would be good to get acting work. It’s one thing having talent but there’s also interpersonal social skills and diplomacy.

I can’t be all things to all people. I am divisive. Some people like me and other people don’t. I will lose a section of the audience instantly but maybe they need to be lost.

In terms of the Earth and its survival, we might pollute the shit out of ourselves and die out but the Earth will eventually heal and recover.

I adore young people and as a 57-year-old, it makes me sick to my stomach to see them taken advantage of and there are a lot of landlords in Dublin doing that. You’re not going to begrudge someone who has multiple properties but at least provide a good standard of living for the people in it.