hello, i'm sean murray, and this is the conversation where we take an alternative look at political even current affairs through annary slens. in this show we hope to pick, probe, investigate and uncover the stories that you want to hear. we go where mainstream won't go. this week we talk to one of ireland's finest comedians, a man that has recently taken twitter by storm, now also author. his recent book details the horrific consequences of addiction and the redamptive process of. never shine away from politics,

he's been a strong advocate for irish unification and palestinian self-determination, welcome to the show, thanks man, sean, delated to be here, delated to have you, so tell me tag, i've recently read your book and uh, i was being mused by some of it, so the honesty in the red in the book, and actually it was, it was an amazing book, and and it's great to see, someone just..." put it out there like you did, particularly you're a comedian you know and you're not very very funny but also very very profound that was and and and i really enjoyed it jesus thanks million man thank you and and the stuff mean your childhood grown up do you want to tell us a bit about that yeah like i'd say it was a happy childhood you know so and this is the funny thing about drinking buse alcoholism is a mental illness and that's kind of the premise of the book suppose i feel like in ireland people think of drinking and drinkers and alcoholics as

kind of aberration, you know, that they've done something wrong morally, but the the fact is that they're sick and i was sick, but i wasn't always sick, and i suppose that's the point of the childhood, there was moments where i felt, you know, and when i say sick, i mean, you need something to treat the illness, and the illness really is kind of for me anyway anxiety, uncomfortableness, i think is i might have called it, um, but i wouldn't have put the term anxiety on it, but that anxiety would have come and it would have gone, you know, wasn't something that was there all the time, it would kind of spike and it would spike in bizarre settings, like i remember being a kid and playing soccer with my bodies, and just this kind of sense of gloom coming over myself and feeling uncomfortable in myself, um, and like it was kind of working class 80s cark, like i wasn't about to go home and you know call family meeting about it, we didn't talk about those kind of things and as i say when when i was struck with with a bit of anxiety i probably thought i was mad, there was a big fear.

whether it was just me or was my community, you didn't want to be mad, you know, mad people were taken away by men in white coats and they were brought to hospital, sometimes if your drinking got totally out of hand you'd kind of wander in over the line into madness like and so and so he's gone away to some place and he's kind of locked up, that's what you didn't want, and that would have been a fear of mine from very early age cuz this anxiety, i wouldn't have called it that at the time, the feeling comes up, you're kind of going i mad, but then it would go of away again and i'd enjoy doing the things i did like playing football. and hanging out with my mates and stuff, and as i say, i was a happy kid, i was obsessed with my dad, i used to kind of follow my dad around, he was good, but older, i was a real after thought and the family i was quite young, but as i detail in the book, he was an ordinary man, but he was extraordinary to me, like he just seemed like he had life all figured out, um, whereas i felt like i was kind of caught up in myself, i was worried how i was coming across, did people like me, uh, how do i get people to like me, he just seemed to be breezing through life, not worrying about any of these. he just seemed to have it figured

out and you also noted in the book that your savior was through acting and writing, well tell us a bit about that? yeah, so the the uncomfortableness that i had to go back to that again, that could, you could get rid of that loads of different ways, when i was younger playing sport, i played soccer reasonable level and cark, i wasn't a bad soccer player, and that would often take it away, but getting involved in performing or... acting a bit, normally the type of acting i tried to do involved comedy, and i suppose that was the origins of the comedy thing, putting on voices, making funny noises, taking the piss out of people in my family, and doing impressions of them, all that kind of stuff, uh, and when i was performing and mostly in school and with friends and stuff, people would laugh, and that was that was another addiction straight away, like, but it definitely got rid of that feeling of uncomfortableness and it gave me a sense of um, that this is kind of the thing that i'm supposed to. be at and when i was

doing the thing that i was supposed to be doing i felt and that i felt like was enjoying it again just that feeling of like the something up with me i feel uncomfortable and i can't put my finger on it just star to dissipate, so what was the spark then that led to career in comedy? i think one of the first moments that i thought to myself, i would like to do comedy was actually when i was kid and my sister and myself were very close and she was a real, she had a real influential role on my taste and everything, and she also had a really refined kind of sense of humor and kind of you know rick male and the young ones and all that type of kind of anarchic uh british comedy which loved, so i used to try and... make her laugh and i thought if she laughed at something that i had said that that was a good bar you know that made my sister laugh cuz she was funny um and then it it became kind of a thing of like oh how much can i get her to laugh and like oh she didn't like this thing and it's like my first audience suppose i was also trying to make my mother laugh um and what

not and then i remember going to so by secondary school i think you know the feeling of starting secondary school is was a fat kid as well right hope i can say fat i know it's probably not the the nice thing to say these days but i am saying it about my myself um and i got to school, you're fat, my hair was kind of weird and you're just self-conscious like you're kind of going how i going to fit in here, my brothers as i say were tougher men and they probably would have went straight into the kind of like i'll kick your head in type of thing and i knew i didn't really hit have that in me but i knew i had a sharp tongue and i knew it could make people laugh and i also knew i could make people a bit scared cuz if they mocked you and you mocked them back and you made other people laugh more i was aware that that was a real strong currency so um i just fell into kind of making people laugh and no one really bullied me and i kind of went to the top of the kind of social structure in school because uh i was able to look after myself with my tongue as opposed my fists you know so um that was the first inkling that i was kind of that i was good at it but then you go

on this whole journey of you know i going to be so cocky as to demand the people sit in room and listen to me because i'm so funny like that for me that's an incredibly, it's an audacious uh expression of self-confidence and self-belief. what i initially did, did music and i love music as well, mean that was huge huge passion of mine. i was in a band and i would try and make some of the lyrics funny and i was kind of playing the role of a comedian within a band, so i was hiding in a band as a comedian, i think, we were called exit pursued by bear, exit pursued by bear, so it's it's a pretentious quote from uh, from winters taale and the whole band was very pretentious and i was the the... i suppose the the main reason for that, but uh, but that was my way of kind of doing rock comedy or rock kind of theatrics, i suppose, um, and then later on when that folded, i was kind of doing doing bits and pieces of acting, and then an opportunity erose to start a comedy troop, so again it was not me

on my own, it's me with two other, two other people, so that was the kind of journey, i suppose into comedy, there's a there's a a film, isn't there, it's a bit like the office cuz i know you were fan of the office, yeah. it's about rock group with that can and i know rocky jerves was actually influenced what was the mad film oh my god what's it called lads spinal spinal tap yeah yeah this is spinal tap yeah i actually feel this is a weird thing to say but i feel like i've got a bit in common ricky draves like he was like a big influence of mine he was in a band uh he studied philosophy in college and he was like kind of you know doing his own thing and then kind of fell into this big massive comedy opportunity, so i always felt i'd get to a certain age, probably 40, and then these massive comedy opportunities would happen for me, hasn't happened, jetch on, not down south anyway, i probably get more work like in the middle east, but anyway that's another story, well night, speaking about the middle east and more closer to home, politics closer to home, lot of your comedy revolves around

politics and i read somewhere that you were influenced maybe slightly in your politics by the late late show one night, you want to... talk about that? yeah, i think it was possibly 1984, i think it was, so i was kid, um, at that stage would have been probably 10, 10 or 11, and uh, just i was watching it live, suppose like most of iroland watch later at the time, and uh, forgive me, i don't have all the all the members of the panel, but it was jory adams was was giving an interview and i it was a thing, we were watching it cuz jory adams was going to be on, and i it was fairly a political house that i grew up in, you know, people probably were sympathetic to the... the republican uh struggle, but not in any demonstrative way really, and certainly from the media that we consumed, we kind of were to believe that uh jury adams almost personified all the problems with the north, that almost like you know every aspect of the conflict was on his

shoulders and that he bore personal responsibility for everything that had happened. i think it was the same night that gayborne refused to shake his hand and he basically sat down, i didn't know that much about him before then, and uh, i didn't know that much about the north either, and i think that's the key point, that you know, when i watched that interview, i think austin curry was part of the panel, there was basically a lineup of people trying to take... pops at him and traduce him in a variety of ways and to pin as i say the whole conflict on his shoulders and i just witnessed somebody really calmly uh without any emotion whatsoever um refue every accusation that was coming to him but more importantly contextualized the conflict um for the first time i'd never heard that before i did i hadn't heard anything about loyaless paramilitaries before i i just thought there was one and i was... quite sure who they were fighting as kid, but i just knew the ira were fighting britain um and that the the

impression i got from the the mainstream media down south was that you know ireland had won its independence um few countries didn't make the the great unfortunately and they were kicking up all this storm and violence and murder because they were prone to to murderousness and we wish they would just stop it bause they're really embarrassing us now a of an international level, now i'm being a little bit playful when i say that, but that is roughly um, the sense of the north i had as kid, so i wouldn't even say that i became like an irish republican watching that interview from jerry adams, i just became somebody that was really interested in the north, and that was that was the the main uh thing for me, and because nobody had ever contextualized the conflict before, and more importantly nobody had ever stated the important role that the south. had played or not played as as whichever way you'd look it in creating the causes and

conditions and nobody had ever kind of detailed that before for me up until that moment it was kind of separate thing, it was uh happening in a different place, it was unconnected to us, and as i say, we wish that they would just stop it, um, so definitely my head blew off my shoulders, i was like, okay, there's more to this than the mainstream media in the south is portraying, there's much more to this... story then rte uh and the independent and the irish times are telling us cuz even i mean as a young kid i was just interested in the news and read bits and pits bits and pieces of the newspaper and stuff but uh so yeah that there was another that there was another alternative version of this history out there was new to me and did that galvin is you to explore things further just politically i mean did you read up more on on what was happening in the north or yeah i mean within a few years i suppose i would have been a shin fein uh supporter i suppose in school. and that would have been unusual, i think in the south in that period as well, i remember there was there was two lads in my

in my class in secondary school and we were both kind of interested in shin fain and we we went to a shin fain youth uh meeting and one of the lads uh ken is his name he had um he had a co a copy of on foblocked and i was reading on foblocked on my lunch break and one of my teachers took me outside the door to ask me was everything all right at home um and i think... "you no, nothing that i've come across since encapsulates the complete misunderstanding of everything in the north that was going on down south at the time, and some people were doing it maliciously, you know, some people had agendas, but most people were just eating up the propaganda, and you see it today in the conflict that's going on right now in gaza, most people are just ordinary people going about their business, it's the people who are actually perpetrating and putting the propaganda out there." they have a responsibility, but your average person will become influenced by the propaganda that they that they consume, so i

think most people down south just had this idea that there was just one perpetrator of violence in the north and and uh that jerry adams is a representative for them and so he needed to be neutralized and censored, and that's i suppose what was happening literally. you've met some gaza there uh and we'll get to that in a second, i just want to probe you more about your your involvement with ras reunification uh and when i say involvement. been a strong advocate for reunification? why, why is it important to you? i think it's important to me because it connects directly to what i was saying earlier of growing up in a state that felt like it was completely disconnected from this other state. and as soon as i started reading, i realized that that's not the case at all and that there's a community of people in the north that don't feel disconnected, they feel the opposite, they feel like you know not that they... they they feel irish, they are irish, and they think of themselves as part of the island of ireland, and it

would be their wish that that will be a 32 county republic. um, i think if as as you move towards breaking that sense of separation between the two, and you can do it physically, so you know, i'm one of the few people i know in the south that goes to the north regularly, you, i'm not saying that in any kind of a flex, it's it's an embarrassing thing to say, and... the comedians on the scene like mario rosenstock will be a good friend of mine uh i think he's amazing and he was telling me that i think he went to belfast for the first time a couple of years ago and that would be... typical, the man's been touring for 20 years and he was wondering what people kind of know his stuff whatever and like the gig was sold out, i think he did he either did ulster hall or somewhere massive anyway and everyone knew his stuff, everyone had been following his stuff and it's just typical of that sense of that kind of like spiritual, emotional, practical disconnect i have uh be it in my

work in my social life and you know making friends up here and stuff that disconnect has never really been there. for me and if the disconnect isn't there, it makes no sense that the're two different states. um, also the history of of irish republicanism, mean if you're irish republican and you're an anti-imperialist, it would feel that it's the fitting thing for the destiny of the country would be to to be reunited, and i would definitely make no apologies for that. it can sometimes be slightly controversial thing to say or slightly uncomfortable thing to say down south, and what i'm trying to do a little bit with my work is to get to the root of... why anyone should be made to feel that that's uncomfortable and i think you know something that we've spoken about a bit of bit off camera, young people are amazing cuz young people are challenging that southern perspective all the time that it's two separate states and two separate mentalities, so yeah so the the're just some of the reasons why suppose as irish republican shocker i would want to see united ireland,

you're still trying into the conversation. alternative probe of political events and current affairs around ireland, i'm joined by our special guest, comedian and author, tog hicky. moving to events in gaza, that we've been all horrified by this last few months, you've been a very strong advocate for uh palestinian self-determination, has that been, and we spoke earlier, you said you'd met many new friends, many new friends and middle east and stuff like that, tell us a bit about that, i think i think with palestine. and it's a little bit like with united ireland as well, it comes back to something we touched on at the start of like, in my drinking i was inouthentic, and you have to be an authentic to to kind of survive, you have to lie, you have to cheat, you have to let people down in order to keep doing it, and when i got sober, one thing i was very clear about for myself was to to

actually protect myself to stop myself from falling into possibility of drinking again and taking drugs again. and which i know will ultimately lead if i relapse i've no doubt that i'll die and i don't want to die, so it's it's just it's very basic with me, i have to be authentic, so so if i have personal views about the conflict and if i have personal views about my perspective on wanting a united ireland, needless to say united ireland that would be inclusive of everyone, not a narrow nationalism, i've no interest in that, if i have those views i need to reflect those views in my work in order to be authentic. that's the way i would look at it, and hope that doesn't sound too kind of, i don't, lavish or or pretentious or whatnot, but that's the way do think, so so for instance, if i would lose some work opportunities down south for being authentic in my views, that would be a, that's absolutely fine collateral damage, i need to be authentic, so in the case of palestine, um, i have always felt that it's it's

actually one of the most bizarrely, it's one the most easy conflicts to understand, which is in direct opposition to the key israeli claim that it's too complex for you and to ever understand, um, it's just case, it's a land grab, it's settler colonialism, and i think if if i'm going to be authentic about ireland, i need to also be authentic about palestine and not worry too much about the backlash that you will get. also, i have friends that are doing comedy in the states and canada and places like that, they have. backlash like they have ser, mean you know they have serious repercussions to worry about, in ireland it's less so, so i feel like you know many arab friends have sent me messages, mean if you saw my messages on instagram like you be, it's it's hard not to be crying at times because there's people saying you know it's refreshing to hear someone from the west just highlight what's

going on here like so it's basically like ireland a kind of a global level for me it's like you know people hating you because they don't want to have the conversation and then people loving you because they see it's unusual for a white face to be fronting something that's talking about the decades of oppression, murder, mayhem, second-class citizenship, you name at aparatite that they're living under, so again if you're going to be authentic you accept that you're going to get some some people, you know, had a zinus witch saying that she was putting a curse on me and all that kind of stuff. um, but then i had loads of muslim friends saying that they'd und done the und done the cur, so that was a bit of crack like you, but uh, as regards work and stuff, i made kind of pact with myself a long time ago that i was going. to be real to me anyway, i'm not saying it's the reality, it's my reality, it's my belief system, and if that means that i don't get work with the bbc or rrt then so be it, i

think you're being too candy yourself when you say, you don't get it hard here as an artist when you stray off the conventions, i mean like we as as a country stated in censorship, i think still if you stray off those conventions that you do get it hard and you see that particularly from establishment journalist um establishment politicians, and i think you've been... you've been receiv receiving and of that also? yeah, suppose with journalists they'll have jobs, like i don't like cuz i'm working for myself, i'm lucky, you know what i mean, like they'll they'll attempt to you, so there's there's people online who tried to get my gigs cancelled and and whatnot, um, welcome to the club, huh? welcome to the club, yeah, i suppose that's you know to be honest with you, that can be tough attains because you know when that campaign was going online by this, i say campaign as been kind to the guy like it seemed to just one guy, but um, like i also have new baby, you know, and i've a partner and i have kids, like, i've got two kids, so like it's easy for me to be like, you know, it's like the song, my love and got

no money, but he's got a strong beliefs, it's grand for me to say that, but i need to be able to provide for my family as well, so it can be scary at times to think that, oh, okay, what happens here if i actually get completely cancelled, but um, i don't know, i'm maybe i'm just a bit of a dreamer that way, but i just kind of think if you just plow on, and also i feel like with the stuff and... doing, i'm not being nasty either really, you know what i mean? i'm not kind of like, i'm not doing a dave chapell on it. don't get me wrong, dave is is, dave, dave chapell is a comedy god to people like me, you know, his early stuff is the the chapell show is some of the best satire i've ever seen in my life, and that's what makes it so sad that he went from punching up so elegantly to now just lazily punching down, um, but i feel myself and i'm always checking in with people that i respect to see i doing the right job with it, you know, before i quite a sketch about palestine, for instance, i've got about two or three palestinian friends that i run it by just to make sure that the detail is there and stuff, because i don't want to become lazy or or assume that

that they want this this white lad from cark to speak for them, like even at the start of oc when october 7th happened and then the the absolutely insane response that we've seen since some people said, oh you should do sketch on this or you should do sketch on that, i asked palestinians cuz i was like this might be the moment. for comedy, you don't want to come in on something like it's hard to even think of what and you'll be able to tell me better what the irish parallel for this is, what palestinians are going through right now, i mean it feels like it's it's nachba. one or whatever like you know, so was comedy even an appropriate thing to do, and time and time again they come back and that's i think why irish and palestinians get on so well, they've got this jet black sense of humor, my palestinian friends in cork were like, man, we need you like, get in there, get in there. like and and also good buddy of mine and car was kind of say, you'll never have an opportunity like this again, because the other side is making such a show of itself with so-called propaganda that you've

got to get in there like or it's a missed opportunity if you don't you also yeah so tell us what's happening this year what are we going to see next from talk hockey well i've been lucky enough to build up um nice little following from the arab world like on instagram i have just if you're interested i have much more followers in turkey uh and jordan than i would in ireland way more like yeah and doesn't surprise surprised me at all by the way but uh so i'd like i mean in an ideal world if i was going to do tour again i'd love to tour over there i'd love to tour in in places where uh it's it's news to me that the that someone from the west having a kind of an anti-imperialist perspective and somebody shining light on the hypocrisy hypocrisy and atrocities of the american. empire that that would be an a refreshing thing to see from their perspective, but it is, so i'd like eventually go over there and and tour there, and also for a while now,

i've been trying to turn a sketch i did a couple of years ago that caused lot of controversy, you may have seen it about loyalists and the house share in cork with the, england, scotland, ireland and all that, i've been trying to turn that with another writer in ireland, michael west is his name, brilliant writer, playwrite into a full kind of tv show stroke film kind of effort, so but it would go above, mean they're just standing for the actual you know that there's no depth to any of those characters like it's just you know scotland is just a crazy wig and kind of a scotland jersey um but i've built them up we've built them up into full dimensional characters, hope it could be tv show uh and i'm talking to to people of significance who are interested in it shall we say so i would love to see um some sort of brexit but it's a sharing cark uh developed into a tv show or a film tog looking forward to that and it's always good to see in belfast say be safe to consider your second home neighbor oh man but

definitely west belfast anyway well listen, thank you for coming, always good to see you, pleasure brother, and that does it for another week. we'd love for you to join the conversation by sharing the link to today's program to help us grow our audience across all our social media platforms. i like to thank our special guest tog hicky. in the meantime, the conversation will be back next week with more investigations and analysis. i'm sean murray, bye for now. the israeli economy already shrink almost 20%. "the israeli economy is very dependent

on the exploration of palestinian workforce, what was done in agriculture with high-tech irrigation does not have the labor from foreign sources, which was bad in any case. one you're watching basketball here from your host.

the headlines, the israeli regime strikes various locations in gaza, including arafa and gaza city. russia and china have vetoed a us draft resolution at the un security council for failing to genuinely call for immediate ceasefire. several israelis have been injured in a palestinian retaliatory operation in the occupied west bank.