All that really matters is that we’re better than England...
We’re only great for knocking ourselves and making sure we don’t get above ourselves or get notions. But shouldn’t we be celebrating the unique things that make us quintessentially Irish, asks Pat Fitzpatrick
WE love nothing better than a putdown here in Ireland — particularly when we’re aiming that put-down at ourselves. So for the weekend that’s in it, let’s put away the put-downs and celebrate some of the people, food and traditions that make us proud to live here. And don’t forget the golden rule of Irish pride: we don’t have to be the best in the world, all that matters is that we’re better than England.
FUNNY WOMEN
Sharon Horgan’s characters in Pulling and Catastrophe broke new ground. Who knew that Irish women could be free-cursing piss-heads with a relaxed attitude towards sex? Everyone, really.
Just in case we missed the point, she wrote in an Irish friend called Kate (played by the incomparable Eileen Walsh), who took ecstasy while on a short visit to London and decided to leave her husband to go live with some randomer on a houseboat. Now that’s a weekend break.
And then came Aisling Bea in This Way Up. Her character Aine is pass-remarkable and fond of treating her darker moments with a trip to the off-licence. Sound like anyone you know? Or maybe everyone you know. She’s as Irish as saying ‘I’ ll do that for you now tomorrow’.
FUNNY MEN
Dara O’Briain made it big in London without everyone back home thinking he’s a bit up himself. This is a phenomenal achievement, our own version of putting a man on the moon.
Brendan O’Carroll has done likewise. He was always going to get snooty reviews from comedians who think it’s funny to shout ‘Boris Johnson’ at a pub full of students. But Mrs Brown’s Boys has managed to attract more viewers than the Queen’s Speech on Christmas Day. It’s hard to contrast Mrs Brown with the Queen of course. One is a woman with deadbeat kids. And so is the other, says you.
PRINCE ANDREW
If the president of Ireland’s kids did something to bring the country into disrepute, we’d vote that president out. When the same thing happens in the UK, the child is photographed going to church with his mother. ‘Oi, look at him there with the Queen, he’s alright is Andrew.’ Bear that in mind the next time you complain about our political system.
Yes, the 1937 Constitution was a nightmare. If the document had an executive summary, it would read, ‘Get back in the kitchen woman’. That’s changed in the past 30 years, and now we’re seen as grown-up and progressive, while most of Britain’s politicians look like they’ve graduated from clown college. (Or Eton, as it’s known locally.)
DEATH
Not only do we do a great funeral — we do it quickly. In certain countries they have to wait weeks before burying somebody; that wouldn’t work here because you’d run out of ham and egg sandwiches after day three.
The real reason we don’t hang around? We’re terrified the property market will turn and the proceeds from Mammy’s house will no longer be enough to fund our dream villa in Sardinia. (That’s when the real grieving starts.)
Going to a funeral here is a stressfree experience. Just grab the hand of everyone in black and say sorry for your troubles. Unless you’re in
the north of
Ireland, because it might seem an odd time to bring up politics.
THE PUB
You won’t find too many tourists asking you for directions to the nearest English pub. (Unless it’s actual English tourists on the Costa del Sol, livid that the place has been taken over by foreigners.)
People all over the world will choose an Irish pub over the English variety. This is because they want to have a pint of Guinness in a pub called O’Sullivan’s, rather than a pint in a pub called The Bishop’s G-String.
They also want a place that is free from the din of fruit machines. It’s funny, but Irish people don’t seem to like gambling in the pub. Unless it’s with their liver, says you.
TAYTO
I was going to mention the spice bag in this section, but it lacks the versatility of our national crisp. (I’m talking about cheese and onion here; I’m aware some people prefer salt and vinegar, but sure look, you get perverts in all walks of life.)
The spice bag is a hangover cure for people under 30, which means it is almost redundant because hardly any of them drink any more.
A bag of Tayto is lunch, a sandwich, breakfast on Stephen’s Day, still the only food available in a lot of pubs and something you bring with you when you visit your sister in Chicago.
It’s also the first thing that comes to mind when you open what they call a crisp in other countries, because nothing can compare. (Particularly when they’re prawn cocktail flavour, because potatoes aren’t supposed to taste like fish.)
GRAHAM NORTON
Graham gets a bit of flak for changing out of his Irish accent when he’s on the BBC – mainly from people who have never visited his home town of Bandon. A West Cork accent is a thing of beauty until you use it to interview a Lady Gaga in front of millions of viewers on the BBC and she says, ‘Sorry, was that you talking, or were you just clearing your throat?’
Graham isn’t content with being the global king of celebrity interviews. Up until recently he was an agony aunt for the Daily Telegraph, presumably quitting because he was sick of retired colonels writing in to complain about bloody Micks taking the best jobs in British media.
THE FINGER LIFT
Getting the finger while driving in Ireland has nothing to do with road rage. You’re motoring along a country road when an on-coming driver slowly lifts his or her index finger off the steering wheel. Did that just happen, you wonder, and then the next driver does it as well.
You’ve been given the Finger Lift. It’s metaphorical as well as physical, giving you a little boost because a passing stranger took time out to say hello.
Note that it’s actually compulsory in Kerry, where they’ll do anything to make themselves more attractive to tourists. (As if they need to, given their surroundings.)
JESSIE BUCKLEY
Things that don’t go through your mind watching the TV mini-series Chernobyl: 1: Why don’t we have more nuclear power plants? 2: The Soviet Union gets an undeserved bad rap. 3: I bet you your one playing Lyudmilla Ignatenko is from Killarney. But she is.
Jessie Buckley is starting to look like our next
Saoirse
Ronan, with the added advantage that if she does win an Oscar, there’s a good chance they’ll be able to pronounce her name. (Particularly on the BBC News when they describe her as British.)
Ireland already has superstars like Saoirse, Cillian Murphy and a load of Gleesons. Add in Jessie, Barry Keoghan, Eanna Hardwicke and of course Lenny Abrahamson, and we could be looking at sweeping the boards at the Oscars in years to come.
ROY KEANE
The robots are going to take all our jobs. The next one that’s bound to fall is that of football pundit. Given the advances in Artificial Intelligence, it shouldn’t be all that hard to build the Punditoid-500, which relays the expected goals number for Mo Salah and says ‘For me, Gary, that’s a penalty all day long.’
The only pundit they won’t replace is Roy Keane. Because no algorithm could recreate his 2015 observation on Ashley Young — “If he’s a Man United player, I’m a China man.” That’s pure entertainment. (Unless you’re Ashley Young. Or hyper-woke.)
BLINDBOY
The musician, comedian, writer and podcaster gets a snotty reception from people who over-use the word ‘wonder
ful’. (The one thing you can say for certain about people who use the ‘wonderful’ is that they think they are better than you.) His books get a bit of a frosty reception, which is missing the point, because he’s not really about the books.
He’s about the voice. Blindboy has shown that a raw Limerick accent can be an asset. (Who knew? It turns out Terry Wogan changed his to get ahead in RTE.) Blindboy’s earlier work with the Rubberbandits has opened the door for a generation of young Irish hip-hop acts like Versatile to sing in their own accent.
Blindboy has exploded what you can do with a podcast, in the same way that James Joyce exploded what you could do with a novel. With listeners all over the globe, it’s almost like he’s more appreciated overseas than he is here. But then, hasn’t that always been the way with Irish artists who try something different?
MODESTY
It was easy to be modest when we didn’t have any money. Recent prosperity has seen us go from the poor man of Europe to ‘what do you think of my €600 sunglasses, bitch?’ That said, we’ve managed to hold on to our core modesty compared to our old friends, the Brits. A key indicator is personalised number plates. You can’t get them in Ireland, because people will think that you are a T0ta1 T0553r. Apparently when Roy Keane arrived at Man United he drove a Mercedes with Roy 1 on the number plate; that lasted as long as it took for someone to fly over from Cork and reacquaint him with the term ‘you’re some langer boy’.
WINNING STREAK
Wanted: A game show for viewers who’d like to veg on the couch for half an hour.
The Chase? Too stressful. Catchphrase is good if you want to have a fight with your partner, because he keeps shouting ridiculous answers to stop you getting a word in.
Winning Streak? Now you’re talking. There is no audience participation here, it’s just you watching a bunch of people playing a fancy slot machine. There is no sham tension building from the hosts either, just Marty and Sinead encouraging people to be luckier.
Other countries might be ahead of us in drama and reality TV, but we can take all comers when it comes to a game show that lowers your heart-rate to ‘bear in winter’ levels.
HURLING
Hurling isn’t just the fastest field sport in the world, it’s also the fastest spectator sport in the world, measured by the speed we drive foreign visitors to Croke Park, so they can watch a game of hurling and tell us we’re grand people altogether for inventing it.
It’s old, dating back to the Iron Age. The game was codified over time, where it changed from a bunch of guys hitting each other with sticks, into a bunch of guys hitting each other with sticks for 70 minutes plus injury-time
Messing aside, hurling reaches parts that other sports can’t reach. Take a quick look at Joe Canning winning the 2017 All-Ireland semi-final against Tipperary in front of 68,000, with a last-puck-of-the-game point from the right-hand touchline. That kind of talent runs deep.
WE’RE SORRY
It must be strange for a foreigner, sitting in an Irish restaurant, watching the locals shouting ‘Sorry’ at the waitress.
‘What have they done to this waitress?’ the foreigner asks, and you tell him they are just trying to get her attention.
‘Why do they say sorry?’ he asks, so you tell him about the mortification. This is the Irish condition, where you operate off the assumption that you must have done something wrong. It peaked in 2007, when the English rugby team played in Croke Park and we were so worried that people would boo God Save The Queen, the entire country went into a state of pre-emptive mortification. This is where you feel embarrassed about something that didn’t happen.
The mortification can be a bit much at times, but it tends to stop us from invading other countries and stealing their marbles. So apologise away lads, at least it means we’re sound.
THE IRISH SUMMER
We don’t have summers in Ireland. It’s more like a couple of weeks that we set aside for disappointment in mid-July. This is even worse when they’re getting temperatures in the high-30s over in England — it’s devastating to watch our old enemy getting their fair share of global warming.
This despair has shaped us. In a good way. Let’s face it, certainty is boring. People in Mediterranean countries will never understand the giddy terror of opening the Met Eireann app on the week of your wedding in August, to see if there is any improvement on “14 degrees, real feel 12”.
They will never enjoy the thrill of a two-day Irish heatwave in early June, and neither do we really, because we’d be a bit depressed after drinking eight bottles of Pinot Grigio in 48 hours. But we wouldn’t have it any other way.
SALLY ROONEY
She’s a global sensation at this stage. Two blockbuster novels, a hotly anticipated adaptation of her novel Normal People to come on the BBC, Lena Dunham loves her to bits and Time named her as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. It’s bizarre that no one has claimed her as British. Seriously, someone should get fired for this.
She has done something remarkable with Normal People: not everyone can tell a story that makes people all over Ireland feel sympathy for students in Trinity College. If you think other Irish writers are delighted with her success, then you know next to nothing about writers, or Irish people for that matter. The bad news for us is
Sally won’t be 30 until next year. She looks set to dominate for decades.
THE PLOUGHING
For overseas readers, the Ploughing Championships is where people gather in their 50-grand Land Rovers to complain about the decline of rural Ireland. (Only messing — some of them drive 50-grand Mitsubishis.)
Seriously, there’s something joyfully Irish about 300,000 gathering in a field every year to celebrate country life. And spare a thought for the Dublin media people, who huddle around the Newstalk tent in case some bogman tries to teach them the words to Wagon Wheel.
The Ploughing is a reminder of where we came from. Ava or Josh might be listening to a podcast about avocados or Bernie Sanders while navigating their way around Grand Canal Dock on an electric skateboard, but deep down, Irish people are still all culchies at heart. It’s why we have a reputation for friendliness — not to mention nosiness.
YERRA
This is the phrase associated with Kerry footballers, the one they use to explain why they haven’t a hope of winning the All-Ireland this year, as they lift the Sam Maguire above their heads in Croke Park.
But it also captures the way we do things here. We’re all a bit Yerra when it comes to it. You can see it in the way we designed a two-line tram system in Dublin that didn’t intersect. Or the way we put ‘divert traffic’ with an orange sign on a country road, but don’t bother to put a sign on every cross-road along the diversion because, yerra, we ran out of signs.
Some people hate Yerra Ireland. They wish we could be more like Switzerland or Denmark, which will come as a surprise to anyone who died of boredom in Zurich or Copenhagen. Yes, the death of Yerra might mean you never end up lost on a country road because they ran out of signs. But we’d be zero crack.
You don’t find many tourists asking directions to the nearest English pub