Saturday With Colm O'Regan: I love running by the Liffey or in Phoenix Park.

Broadcaster, author, comedian, and Irish Examiner columnist Colm O’Regan talks about his end of week routine

Colm O'Regan

7.00

I’m up early. The youngest bounds out of bed already speaking — like a radio alarm clock tuned to a breakfast show. I check the phone to see who Trump has invaded and, once I’m satisfied there isn’t ‘a new situation for dudes to monitor’, I get on with my day. I find geopolitics can’t proceed without me monitoring it.

9.00

Breakfast at the weekend is a huge pile of pancakes for the children to feast on as if they are about to go out working on the bog. It ‘does them for a while’ as lunch can be a bit scatty.

I make breakfast while listening to a podcast about history. It makes me feel better about the present to listen to tales of the plague. The children are alternating between watching Horrible Histories and Pop Star Academy. Pop Star Academy is a manufactured pop group reality show which makes The X Factor look like the Community Games. We’re licking our wounds after not getting tickets for Katseye. I was 17,000th in the queue when I logged in but it’s a great bonding exercise with other parents who are also secretly hoping it’ll be sold out. Between the Middle Ages and Korean-inspired reality TV, the girls are well-versed in the cruelty of the world by lunchtime.

We have no activities for the kids on weekends for purely selfish reasons. I don’t want to spend time traipsing around the place. Sometimes I feel guilty about that, like we’re not preparing them adequately for a future cut-throat world where your interview for AI-Corp hinges on a strong record at Cúl Camp, but I savour not lugging them anywhere and arguing with local residents about parking at away matches. It should be OK for children to be glued to the telly on Saturday mornings. That’s what made us great.

12.00

Lunch is often phase two of the previous night’s Indian takeaway. Take-away night one is a poppadum and naan deep dive but it’s on day two that we really explore the main course.

13.00

I try to get out for a run up the canal or the Liffey or into the Phoenix Park. I love running because it allows me to clear the mind and focus on petty grievances and imaginary enemies.

Relaxing for me is getting to various dumps, bottle banks, compost heaps, and returns scheme machines. I like to watch my waste.

15.00

I love getting out the door for a cycle with the children, down the road to the Memorial Gardens, up to Chapelizod along the Liffey, into the Phoenix Park, across the open prairie at the Papal Cross. I love watching the girls cycle across a huge open space without any cares or cars or even landmarks. For a brief minute, it’s featureless, a baby steppe — a little Famous Five moment of freedom in a regulated world. Then home via food at the Patriot’s Inn — a proper pub where I also run my comedy gigs.

Colm O'Regan: Breakfast at the weekend is a huge pile of pancakes for the children to feast on as if they are about to go out working on the bog.

We try to visit somewhere we haven’t been before once or twice a month. Last week, we went to Altamont Gardens in Carlow, a really lovely place with walled gardens and a wild glen walk down to the Slaney. The opposite bank is forested so it feels like the Amazon for a while. I half expect wild, uncontacted, West Wicklovian tribes to emerge from the opposite bank, threatening us with shillelaghs.

20.00

We like to have one ‘anchor tenant’ to plan the weekend with and then build around that. If we’re doing something on a Saturday, it’s OK to spend Sunday figuring out if anything in the attic can go on Vinted. I don’t go out much at the weekend. My job involves meeting lots of people. So I like to not see people.

00.00

I go to bed too late. I’m running a US government budget-level sleep deficit. We’re bet into the hospital drama The Pitt so we’re stressed going to bed.

That’s what’s supposed to happen on an average Saturday. However, a recent Saturday was different as I was doing a fundraiser for Dripsey National School in Coachford GAA Hall. I was out the door at 6am on the road from Dublin to Cork. With a plague-themed podcast as companion, I whiled away the three-hour drive. I have no memory of anything between Exit 3 Abbeyleix and Exit 8 Cashel.

I say I don’t like meeting people but a fundraiser is like a really enjoyable school reunion where you don’t have to explain your job because you’ve just done it in front of them. I say I don’t go out much on Saturdays but I walked home balubas through the fields after a mighty night in the Weigh Inn at Dripsey Cross afterwards. There was a bottle bank near the hall, though, so I got the recycling done at least.

• The Dalkey Book Festival returns from next Thursday to Sunday, hosting leading literary figures from across the globe. Broadcaster, author, comedian, and Irish Examiner columnist Colm O’Regan returns to the festival on Friday and Saturday.
• Tickets from dalkeybookfestival.org.