Jay Richardson
Abright, sunny afternoon in Dublin and Al Porter is in his element, gassing away about a monster squid caught off Kerry and counselling a man whose girlfriend’s cheated on him. I’m unprepared for us starting our interview in the studio of his Today FM show, making hesitant small talk off-air while Phil Collins finishes Easy Lover. But the warm, engaging comic is welcoming, unflappable and almost unrecognisable, his usual, sharpsuited attire forsaken as he apologises for the lilywhite legs beneath his shorts.
Twenty minutes later, we’re driving to a hotel in the tranquil Wicklow Mountains where Porter is based as he writes his new Edinburgh show. His driver, also Al, is having his car fixed, so amusingly, we’re pootling to the stately, five-star retreat in his mammy’s little motor. Porter, a proud, working-class son of the Dublin suburb Tallaght, tends to arrive at awards ceremonies in a limousine, announcing to everyone how reasonably priced it was.
“I mean, I still live with my mother,” he says. “I still drink at the Dragon Inn, a little pub where I sing with my band on Mondays. The only thing that’s changed is that I indulge myself with my little celebrity glamours every now and then.”
“Chronically honest”, the downside to his burgeoning fame is “that my boyfriend doesn’t care who I am”, he laments. “I’ll arrive at a restaurant and they’ll offer to put me at the back where no-one bothers me. And I’m like, ‘Put me by the f***ing window, I’m after getting a blow dry and I’m not wearing a three-piece suit for no reason!’ I just love old-style showbusiness as you know …”
Driver Al interjects: “He’s the Queen of Tallaght alright, very good for it, always bigging it up.”
Porter smiles. “Shaking babies and kissing hands. I’m worried about being seen as representative because at any moment I could say something f***ing horrendous on TV and we’ll all go down with the sinking ship. It’s important for me to give it a leg up while I can.”
Recently installed as the host of Blind Date in his homeland, at just 24, Porter is busy establishing himself as the face of light entertainment in Ireland, tipped to be the coming man in the UK too if Graham Norton ever vanishes in mysterious circumstances.
He hasn’t “taken a breath” since dropping out of Trinity College to perform stand-up. A child actor in musicals who flirted with the priesthood, he writes, produces and stars in Ireland’s largest annual pantomime. Indeed, Alan Kavanagh has been a performer since he was “five years old, wearing my nana’s fur coat, telling my family to watch me”.
He took the stage name Porter to stop his parents finding out he’d quit university, inspired by the American songbook’s Cole, whose euphemism-laden humour he reveres. “Witty songs that innocent-minded people would think are lovely, while people who really knew what was going on could go, ‘Ah, f***ing hell,’” he enthuses.
Constantly emulating that innuendo, even accidentally, he remembers an event attended by former Irish president Mary Robinson, who, when he inquired how she was, responded, “Great, except my legs are a bit achey”.
“Yeah, but legs apart how are you?” he replied. He is not, he ventures, “the best comedian, singer or presenter.
“But I’m a great entertainer for your money’s worth, whatever entertaining you want, I’ll give it