The LIFE Family Album 2016
How the celebs are spending Christmas
AL PORTER
Comedian, pictured with his dad, Mick
It’s been an absolute whirlwind. It’s been busy; it’s been crazy; it’s been exciting; and, definitely, you could actually make a motion picture out of this one year. There have been so many ups and downs.
In 2015, I had this mad year of work. And then, in January this year, I couldn’t even get out of bed, I was so exhausted. I collapsed before I even got to the doctor, and he had to come to my house. I had a bad chest infection, almost pneumonia, and I was a week in bed without being able to get up.
I was after really destroying my body that year, and I was thinking, ‘Do I really want to do all that again?’ One of my friends had gone to Australia. So I was thinking, ‘Will I go to Australia?’ You know, thinking all the normal things a 23-year-old thinks about. When am I going to get a boyfriend? Should I grow a beard? Should I get a tan? Should I take some of the money I’ve made and just go and see the world? All these things came into my head. I was so bored by the seventh day of being in bed that I got up, against doctor’s orders, and I went into town and started doing new material in the International Comedy Club about being sick, and then, from that moment on, I have not stopped; what an incredible year.
We love Christmas. As I say, I am camp as Christmas, and if we didn’t have a fairy on top of the tree, I wouldn’t mind climbing up on top of it myself, like. Everyone is always so busy at home that it’s amazing to get that time where we can all be together. I love decorating the tree, and I want everyone to have a tree. My bedroom will have a small tree; the back sitting room will have a tree; the front sitting room will have a tree. I can’t get enough of the twinkles.
I love the dark evenings, because we all sit in. Now, if we had to spend longer than two days together, there’d probably be holy murder. But because I’m in panto every day, apart from Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, we know we have that limited time to have fun and play games. We play this game, 30 seconds, which is an Irish board game, but I make them play it because I’m actually one of the actors mentioned in it.
Then we’ll play charades and we’ll sing songs. I am spiritual, even though I’m not really religious, and, for me, gratitude is a big thing . . . it’s kind of like karma. When good things come to you, you gotta give it. When I got the Ifta, I made sure my next night in Vicar Street went to Pieta House.
Christmas will just be my mam, my dad, me, my brother and sister. It’ll be Dad cooking. Mam would be terrible — she uses the fire alarm as a timer, so there would be no point there. Unless the twinkling lights you see coming from my house are the blue lights of an ambulance as we’re all taken away with food poisoning, there will be no dinner from Mam.
I’m very lazy at Christmas. You wouldn’t get me to do anything, apart from have some wine and enjoy my dad’s gorgeous cooking. I’d barely get out of pyjamas. I wear the old-school silky pyjamas with a little nightcap with a bobble on the end. It’s nice, and we watch something like The Muppets and Mrs Brown’s Boys, and we’ll all love that.
But for me, Christmas is when my whole family come to the Olympia to see the panto. To see them all enjoying themselves up in the box and smiling and laughing . . . After the show we’ll have a dinner, and they’ll tell me what they did and didn’t like.
That is special.