The Ireland I grew up in felt very grey; it didn’t feel like there was a lot of colour. Flamboyance was frowned upon. I remember playing Gaelic football, and anybody that did anything creative was called a Fancy Dan. They were ostracised for attempting to be entertaining.
I grew up in the Curragh, Co Kildare. I always call the Curragh Ireland’s desert, because it’s so flat, green, vast, and isolated. A lot of my memories are of being on my bike and cycling into a gale force wind attempting to get to Newbridge to see my friends.
I was into art, drawing, painting, sculpture. And sport – basketball specifically. Basketball is a sport that is built on player and entertainment value. I was always keen to go where the colour and the action was.
One of my favourite things in that old Ireland was the airport. I would engineer reasons to go there. Anybody who needed to be picked up or sent off, I was in the car, bright and early. I loved the buzz of it, and the possibility. I remember looking at the arrivals and departures board and it blew my mind that you could go to Cairo or New Zealand from this spot.
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I went to University College Dublin. I was on track to be an office guy. I don’t know why. I was deeply happy. I was pursuing bits and pieces of stand up as they presented themselves.
When I got let go of my job at the first wobble of the Celtic Tiger, it was my girlfriend – now wife – who went: you should really pursue comedy. Stand up felt like the beginning of my life.
On March 17th, 2013, I moved to London. I remember it well because it was St Patrick’s Day and I was doing a show in Trafalgar Square along with a bunch of other Irish comedians.
I finished the show, got on the tube, and went back to the house I had rented. My wife and son were being brought over that day by her parents. That was the beginning of our time there. We stayed until July 22nd, 2022.
Pointing out the quirks of language and Irish culture is something I have always enjoyed
— Jarlath Regan
It was hard to leave Ireland without resentment – without a sense of: why do I have to go? In 2013, it felt like a house party where the person whose house it is shows up in the livingroom wearing their pyjamas, wanting to know “why are you still here?” I don’t blame Enda Kenny, but he was that man in the pyjamas.
We were going: we’re expected to leave now, if we want to be in the creative arts? I just found that bewildering. I went away with that sense of, I wish I didn’t have to go.
Feeling lost prompted me to start my podcast An Irishman Abroad. I recognised in other Irish people that we were all flying blind, and yet there was always great success among Irish emigrants – in artists, writers, sportspeople. Because we’re such a small and tight-knit community, I crossed paths with a lot of people like Sharon Horgan, Boy George, Bob Geldof.
It was easy to make contact with these people, and because podcasting was in its infancy, they’d say things like “oh, I’ve never done a podcast before”.
We did nearly 10 years of that podcast, and I never missed a Sunday. We put one out every single week. It’s on hiatus right now, but it’s definitely not gone.
It was always the plan to move home. It was definitely an achievement that I don’t think those that don’t leave fully understand. Most people leave in order to return, in my opinion. Some get sidetracked, and some are like no, never ever would I go back, but for a lot of people – certainly a lot of Irish people in London – [the purpose of leaving] was to be able to come home.
There’s a certain amount of pretence around those that emigrate. They kind of have a stiff upper lip and say “it’s actually going really well”, “I’ve got a better life”. But there’s this longing, this heaviness of your heart.
![Jarlath Regan: 'Every July and August, I write a new [stand up] show.' Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill/The Irish Times](https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/PIFFGN3UM5EHFD37CYPTS4EGAM.jpg?auth=6a13d16024eae487f04b351fdfc431666aba37e1294d012d9e7dec84da87a6ef&width=800&height=533)
I worked my tail off so I could bring my son home and allow him to experience Irish secondary school. The education we give our kids here is world class. To arrive home and feel that, in the eyes of some, this was some kind of climb down, was tough. But I knew in my heart that this is what I always wanted.
Pointing out the quirks of language and Irish culture is something I have always enjoyed. I wrote a piece of [stand up] material about the spectrum of idiocy in Ireland, and how it begins with eejit, and ends with gobshite. Every time I talked about it onstage, it would get more legs.
I wrote The Gobshite Guidebook: A Survival Manual in a mad strain. It just poured out of me last January, and here it is today on shelves. I’m pinching myself that I got to write a book about gobshites.
Every July and August, I write a new [stand up] show. I go to different clubs in different spots over that couple of months and generate as much material as I can. In September, October, November, I take it on a work-in-progress tour around the country.
Driving along these incredible roads from shows in Galway or Donegal and knowing that you’re home at last is a joy I’ll never be able to describe. It’s hard not to get emotional, because that 10 years in London was long and tough.
In conversation with Niamh Donnelly. This interview, part of a series about well-known people’s lives and relationship with Ireland, was edited for clarity and length. The Gobshite Guidebook: A Survival Manual by Jarlath Regan is published by Gill. His new show, Gas Man, is on tour from January, see jigser.com for details
