I was a class clown as a kid. Even in playschool, my mam would hear from the teacher: “He can’t focus, but he’s always trying to make people laugh. He loves that kind of attention.” And I did: I remember going around topless on a scooter with a pink cowboy hat. Me and my brother were so into comedy – we watched a lot of comedy we probably shouldn’t have, Rik Mayall, Rowan Atkinson, quite grown-up comedy – we would laugh so much together. I was a desperate attention seeker. In secondary school, a teacher said, “Tony if you say one more thing, I’m going to send you out of the room with 100 lines to do.” And I was like, “One hundred lions? What is this? The Coliseum?” Huge laugh. It was like, I can’t not say the thing.
We grew up in Marino. When I was 16 my parents separated and then I would go between Marino and Dún Laoghaire. Divorce hadn’t yet been legalised. It might have been four years after they were separated, the divorce was finalised.
I often think of mothers who maybe didn’t want to be getting separated, who were voting no in the referendum. I have this weird, sad thought of the people who were voting no to keep their marriage. I didn’t know anyone else who was separated, but I knew a lot of people with unhappy parents. It was a weird time. Thank goodness there were Happy Meal toys.
I credit my parents with two things: they always told me how much they loved me and were proud of me. And they always gave me space to be bored. I’m so grateful I was allowed to be bored and mess about on the computer, and make early videos. That, and they made me feel safe. They had pride in me for literally anything. My mam has a report card that says, “Tony would be a genius if he could focus.” My mam, when she talks about this card, says, “Do you remember they said you’re a genius?” and I’m like, “You’re missing a key factor here.”
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Tony Cantwell: 'Since my ADHD diagnosis I’m a more patient dad’
When I got my ADHD diagnosis [as an adult], I started picturing what things would have looked like if they’d caught it sooner. Would I have got the course I wanted to get in the CAO? Could I have been able to focus on the hobbies that made me happy?
My new show, You Cry Weird, is about starting therapy again this year and realising that the times I’ve cried the hardest weren’t when life was at its worst, but when I discovered I wasn’t the person I thought I was. It’s about the times I had a vision of myself as this unable-to-focus, chubby kid. Going to therapy, you realise you have these ingrained grooves like a vinyl of who you think you are. Then when you’re confronted by the reality that you’re not that, it has for me felt overwhelming sometimes.
My brother and I were the last childhood without the internet. In the teenage years, it was Napster, MTV and rock music and American Pie movies. It just seemed cool to be American. I couldn’t see what it was to be a teenager in Ireland. I didn’t really have any strong connection to Ireland. I was feeling like a chubby kid and an outsider, and maybe digging deep into whatever that is to be an outsider and resenting it or anything that was the status quo, including the country I lived in.
Pre-recession, I kind of turned my back on Ireland. I lived in London for 10 years, from the ages of 20 to 30. I remember even trying to make jokes about what it was to be Irish in my stand-up. I felt like I didn’t have an authentic grasp of it. I kept trying to figure that out.
In the UK I met someone and they were 38th in line for the throne. We don’t have any of that. Everyone’s grandad’s grandad was broke
Coming up to my 30th birthday I felt like I’d wasted a lot of time. I was trying to make the whole stand-up thing work. It was 10 foggy years of getting fired from temp jobs and not really being able to hold down anything, and being broke. Then I gave up on stand-up and started posting videos online, and that took off. Then people were actually asking me to do stand-up, and I was like, “Class! All right!” I moved back and it’s been steady since then.
Looking back, even the 10 years in London, just getting pissed, getting sacked from jobs, I had so much craic with my friends that it was a kind of a learning experience. There are things that I’ve said offhand that I haven’t forgotten, that I’ve reused as jokes. It’s all a kind of learning.
Was moving back a culture shock? We were there in our flat, my wife and I had the TV on and we saw the Angelus. I’m like, ‘Oh God, they’re still doing that.’ What’s frustrating is the pace at which everything moves. I think we’ve seen what can happen when Ireland is given a simple yes or no vote, and they vote progressively and with empathy. I wish there were more decisions like that to vote on. But in terms of hanging out with everyone and the stand-up scene, there are so many interesting people and interesting jobs. When I realised that, it maybe chipped at the end goal of getting on telly or whatever. Maybe there is more of a humble artistic existence in Ireland, and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way.
What makes Irish comedians different? Irish comedians have that confident underdog spirit: we can just be ourselves. In the UK I met someone and they were 38th in line for the throne. We don’t have any of that. Everyone’s grandad’s grandad was broke. Any time someone presents that kind of pomp, it is immediately cut down. You can’t take anything that seriously, which is perfect for comedy. There’s also an element of pure excitement about how new Ireland is.
In conversation with Nadine O’Regan. This interview is part of a series about well-known people’s lives and relationship with Ireland. You Cry Weird runs at the Fringe Fest in Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin, from September 12th-15th. fringefest.com
