‘I’ve been paid silly money the odd time... but I’ve also done stuff for SFA!’

COMEDIAN, author and broadcaster COLM O’REGAN hails from the small Co. Cork village of Dripsey, and has stood up and made people laugh all over the world. Colm’s debut book Isn’t It Well For Ye, The

Book Of Irish Mammies is a bestseller. Its warm and funny observations sprang from the equally successful

@irishmammies Twitter account which Colm authors. Set up in early 2012, the account has more than 215,000 followers. Colm’s fifth book, Ann Devine, Ready For Her Close Up, came out earlier this year.

What was the first paid work you ever did?

I cut thistles for my father when I was 8 or 9. As I was the smallest I wasn’t allowed use the slasher or a scythe so I had to make do with a hedge clippers. Health and safety gone mad.

What’s the most and the least you earned in your career to date?

The least – 30 pence an hour in a garden centre but it’s not like that’s stuck with me every day or anything. The most – too infuriating to share. There are occasional hourly rates I get that I don’t deserve.

Have you ever struggled to make ends meet?

Compared to what some people go through I don’t think so. As a selfemployed person, I fear it all the time, but fear is not the same as panic.

Have you ever been paid silly money?

The odd time. I reconcile it with the amount of times I’ve felt silly for agreeing to do something that paid SFA.

What was the best year of your financial life?

The last few have been in the ‘tipping away, can’t complain’ category.

What is your biggest money mistake?

Buying a house in 2008

The best money decision you have made?

Buying a house in 2008. I love our house and where we live.

Do you save into a pension or invest in the stock market?

Yes a pension. I don’t know how it’s doing but it feels grown up.

Do you/did you own any property? How did it do?

Our house. It does us.

Ever been treated badly as a consumer? What did you do?

We once stayed in a hotel room that had a smell of vomit off it and the hotel person said they couldn’t smell the vomit so I wrote a stinker of an email. I didn’t go on Trip Advisor though because I think you should try and resolve your issues like an adult first.

What is the one little luxury you treat yourself to?

Books and podcasts. And Double Deckers. The bar, not the bus type. We don’t have the parking.

If you were Finance Minister what is the first thing you would do?

I would tell everyone to eff off for a month and go on retreat with some smart people and start doing calculations of the long term economic benefits of a just society, i.e. ensuring people had adequate health care, secure living, adequate mental health services, hot school meals, reducing recidivism, then hopefully realise it pays to have a just society, tell everyone how much that will cost over say 10 years and then say what we are doing to bring it about bit by bit. I think people might get on board with that.

What about Brexit?

I want Britain to leave, Northern Ireland to get special status and hopefully eventually vote for reunification. Colm O’Regan’s first novel, ‘Ann Devine, Ready for Her Close-Up’, is on sale now.