Born: September 6th, 1990
Died: April 7th, 2026
Michael Campbell, who has died aged 35, was a successful and pioneering Belfast writer and actor who confronted his terminal motor neuron disease diagnosis with grace and stoicism, exploring his illness to create two profound and moving plays.
Campbell was a brilliant straight-As student who attended St Bride’s primary school and Rathmore grammar school in south Belfast, earning a place at the University of Cambridge where he studied physics. Already in thrall to the lure of the stage, he made sure to complete his degree in physics and material science while also taking every opportunity to pursue his dream.
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It was at Cambridge that he met his writing partner Oisin Kearney from Warrenpoint, Co Down, who was studying politics. They were involved in several productions including Frank McGuinness’s Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me. They ran the college’s Irish Society and were part of the famous Cambridge Footlights which before them produced the likes of John Cleese, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie.
He took on the stage name Michael Patrick as there already was an actor with the name Michael Campbell. He went to drama school as a postgraduate student. He appeared in several productions including at the Edinburgh Fringe and also performed the one-man Marie Jones play, A Night in November.
He gradually built a name for himself while not totally abandoning his interest in physics – as he said himself, while “resting”, actor-speak for when work was scarce, he could earn money tutoring in physics, maths, chemistry and biology.
His breakthrough as an actor and writer came in 2017 with the 50-minute one-man show, My Left Nut, co-written with Kearney, which he performed at the Dublin Fringe Festival. The play was based on his excruciating experience between the ages of 14 and 17 of seeing his left testicle grow in size.
“I went through three years of panic and worry and embarrassment,” he recalled. “I was trying to hide it in PE class, and all that sort of thing. I was having cold showers and hot baths and putting all sorts of cream on the testicle, even dipping it in Lourdes holy water, to try to deal with the swelling until eventually I realised I needed to tell someone.”
When he finally did see a doctor, he learned he was suffering from a not uncommon hydrocele, a sac filled with fluid that forms around a testicle. “I went to surgery, the doctor drained it and that was the end of it.”
In his mid-20s, he decided it could be the subject of comedy but as he delved into the experience he found deeper meaning. “As we got into the writing, we realised that it was actually more about my coming to terms with my father’s death.”
His father, also called Michael, died aged 47 of motor neuron disease in 1998 when Campbell was eight. He believed the three years of crippling embarrassment in not notifying anyone of his condition was linked to not properly facing up to the heartbreak of his father.
He said: “A lot of the play is me coming to terms with illness and my father’s death. I did not accept it when I was younger. I learned writing the play just how much I did not open up about my father, about how much I hid away in computer games, and things like that. It was only through the problem with my testicle that I started talking about him.”
Campbell and Kearney adapted the play into a positively-received three-part BBC series. He said the drama had a central message for adolescents: “You’ve got to talk.”
Campbell, as his career advanced, as well as stage, appeared in a number of TV productions such as Game of Thrones, Blue Lights, This Town and Krypton.
In February 2023, he learned that he had motor neuron disease (MND). He faced up to the terrible news with typical courage and creativity. With Kearney, he adapted Richard III for a production at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast.
He also wrote My Right Foot, that title a play on My Left Nut which in turn was a play on Christy Brown’s My Left Foot. The reference here was to how he first discovered he had MND symptoms, his difficulty in using his right foot the giveaway.
He performed Richard III in a wheelchair, tailoring the play so that the king is diagnosed with a terminal illness rather than, as in Shakespeare’s work, being deformed from birth. It played to packed houses and won the judges’ award at the Stage Awards at London’s Royal Opera House.
My Right Foot which he performed, again in a wheelchair, at the Dublin Theatre Festival last October received a five-star review in The Irish Times. Writer Arpita Chowdhury observed: “The humour is irresistible, but it often lands just before a heartbreak, making laughter and sorrow indistinguishable.”
The play also addressed how Campbell participated in a special MND drug trial but later learned that he was one of those given a placebo. Even here he dealt with that devastating news with resilience and some wit.
Chowdhury noted how “the play’s emotional core is its depiction of love and companionship, especially the profound tributes Patrick pays his wife, Naomi, his strongest pillar”.
After his death, Naomi said her husband “lived a life as full as any human can live” with “joy, abundance of spirit, infectious laughter”, describing him as a “titan of a ginger haired man”.
Campbell’s affirmative take on life, as reflected in My Right Foot, was to paraphrase Brendan Behan with the line: “Don’t overthink it. Eat, drink and love.” He is survived by his wife Naomi, his mother Pauline, sisters Kate and Hannah, brother Maurice, a wide family circle and a multitude of friends.
