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‘Success is never having to share a bed again’
Ireland’s newest comedy favourites Foil, Arms and Hog set their sights on Scotland
HOW do you define showbiz success? In the case of Irish comedy troupe Foil, Arms and Hog it could be measured by the 40m YouTube hits of their sketch videos. Or perhaps their one million Facebook followers. It may even be down to having hit the theatre big time, appearing on Sunday at the King’s Theatre in Glasgow. Or success could be claimed when you have the personal endorsement of the likes of Billy Connolly and Rowan Atkinson.
But Sean Finegan (Foil) says success is the fact the comedy trio no longer have to sleep together. “We’re now big time,” he says, grinning. “We’re in the Hilton these days while touring. And we’re in three separate rooms.”
This achievement, he adds, is relative. “We can look back and remember when we were on tour and staying in 20-bed dorms
“Then we reached the point, and we were so excited, where we could afford a four-bed dorm. We’d have a spare bed and we’d think, ‘This is the business.’
“The next step up was moving into hotels, where we would get a three-bed room, which really means having one big bed and a small bed.”
Finegan’s excited voice exhales a sigh of sheer relief. “Now, we’re in three different bedrooms. And it’s amazing.”
Foil, Arms and Hog are nicknames each of the members contrived for each other when they met at
University College, Dublin. Foil (Sean Finegan) being the comedy foil, Arms (Conor McKenna) was ‘all arms and legs’ and Hog (Sean Flanagan) emerged because the other two believed he hogged the limelight.
The trio didn’t know each other while growing up in the same middle class Dublin suburb. But when they joined the drama club what they realised they also had in common was a love for comedy. And each found their chosen subjects: architecture, engineering and genetics less than exciting.
“It was Sean Flanagan, who wrote a play based on Father Ted that led to us forming the group,” says Finegan. “He was Dougal, I was Bishop Brennan and Conor was Father Ted. We had permission to tour round Ireland from [Father Ted’s creators] Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews, and when the play finished we decided we should do a sketch show.”
This was in 2008 and Finnegan says their sketches were heavier, more biting at first. But their observational comedy evolved into a clever wackiness, with a real Irish flavour. Example? How to Speak Dublin involved a language teacher coaching immigrants in the delivery of lines such as, “I will in me bleedin’ hole.”
Their sketch An Irish Intervention, in which a mother and father give their son a stern lecture because he appears to be a teetotaller, is redolent of Chewin’ The Fat’s classic Gaun, Take A Drink.
Yet, Foil, Arms and Hog had a major obstacle. Sketch comedy in Ireland was less popular than a flat pint of Guinness. “We’d go and ask the club bosses to hire us and they said, ‘No. Three people up there on stage doing sketch comedy? It just won’t work, lads.’ We’d beg ‘Give us a chance, please!’ But they’d say ‘No, comedy only works with one person on stage. Thanks, anyway.’
“And then when we got the chance we’d get up there and get blasted off. They thought we were trying to be BoyZone, three young guys showing off on stage by trying to get laughs. All we’d hear is, ‘Get off!’”
Sketch comedy, says Finegan, generally comes out of English universities (although the variety circuit in Scotland was another major source of input). “Every college has its own sketch group, which they take to Edinburgh.” And then to the BBC, and are given their own TV series.
But why sketch comedy? It seems it’s a format that lent itself to their anarchic, slightly surreal style of comedy. (And it’s a platform for three comedy aspirants).
Foil, Arms and Hog hadn’t grown up hooked on sketch comedy by the likes of Python or Paul Whitehouse and Harry Enfield. “But Conor had been a big Marx Bros fan [which spawned the anarchic Monkees TV show.] So perhaps that had an influence. But we loved what we were doing, which is essentially messin’.”
The timing of the creation of the troupe was blessed by major misfortune. The world was heading for major recession. “There were was no jobs for us then,” says Finegan, with a wry smile. “If the Celtic Tiger had still been going and all our mates were making shedloads of cash, we would have been under pressure to get proper jobs. But instead, we had the perfect excuse to play around for a while.”
Undaunted, they persevered, touring. Finegan wrote more sketches. “People began to pay us money. We
The Scots and
Irish love to see things go wrong on stage. They love to see car crashes and disasters
never had a grand plan. And we’ve had a lot of fun doing it.”
They toured constantly. They pressured UK comedy clubs into giving them a chance. Meantime, the weekly video audience soared. Now, does he feel they have arrived? “Well, if you look at our tickets sales in Southend you would believe we haven’t arrived,” he says, laughing. “We’re very much still on the journey.
“But Scotland is another story. We’ve been coming to the Edinburgh Festival for the past 10 years and now we’re branching out. Our gig in Glasgow last year was fantastic and now we’re also doing well in Aberdeen.”
Does he believe there is a Celtic connection in humour? “Yeah, I think there is a bit. I think the Scots and the Irish love to see things go wrong on stage. They love to see car crashes and disasters. They love to see you try to dig yourself out of a hole. And they love to see the messin’, to see how we can get it back. In England there is more of a demand for the crafted joke.”
He has a point; we love the near psychopathy of comedy, the harshness of Frankie Boyle, the danger of a Kevin Bridges’ joke about being mugged, the abuse that emerges with a classic Connolly line.
“That’s a very intelligent way of summing up the Scots-Irish connection,” he says, grinning.
What of television? Have producers been banging on their doors? “That’s a funny one. RTE [the state broadcaster] haven’t contacted us. But we’ve had more interest from the BBC. And America.”
He says: “We once had a meeting when we were starting out and one guy said, ‘We’re not interested in you because we’ve haven’t found you – and yet you’re not big enough to bring your own audience.’”
That’s changed. “But we’ve turned our back on all telly at the moment. The online presence allows us to have an international audience, so we don’t want to close ourselves off. Having said that, if we got a really big TV show we’d take it.”
WOULD they create a sitcom that featured their three characters? “We’ve tried to write sitcoms, but they fall down when it comes to a half-hour narrative. We’re good when it comes to three minutes. It’s a very different discipline.”
What Foil, Arms and Hog have learned to do is create a clever hybrid between messin’ and observational material. The idea is to make their shows look like they are goofing around, but the reality us sometimes weeks go into creating the crafted silliness.
What of their relationship? Does it become rather claustrophobic? “We haven’t had a falling out,” he maintains. “And after 12 years together we know each other so well and what will push buttons.
“And we’re thick-skinned enough to deal with it when someone says, ‘That’s not funny.’” But that must be hard to deal with when it’s two against one? “Well, it’s better to be unanimous,” he says, laughing.
What of Ireland’s relationship with them now? Does it want to marry them? “I hope so. We just seem to get bigger and when we walk around the streets people say nice things about us.”
What of the clubs who once took nothing to do with them? Do they get their own back now? “Oh, yes. There are clubs desperate for us to appear but we take nothing to do with them.”
Quite right. These very clever three stooges have worked hard to get to this point, “handing out flyers in the rain for hours on end, squeezing out a video en route to the airport, doing everything we can to make people come and see our show.”
Now, they deserve to be pleased for themselves. And never having to share a hot water bottle again. “That’s what it all comes down to,” says Finegan, laughing.
Foil, Arms and Hog, the King’s Theatre, Glasgow, Sunday.