COMIC ENDS UP BEANZ TESTED
Martin gets in touch with his wild side as he hangs out with survivalists for show..
COMEDIAN turned telly presenter Martin ‘Beanz’ Ward admits he was stunned to find out there are thousands of Irish survivalists training for an apocalypse.
The Galwegian hung out with survivalists at a makeshift camp in Co Wexford, where they cooked a slaughtered deer in an underground fire pit.
“There’s just over 3,000 members of the Irish Survivalist Group on Facebook and I met about 10 of them at a camp outside New Ross,” says Martin.
“For these lads, it’s not like they’re batsh*t crazy. There’s an awful lot of camaraderie with the Irish lads, they will all meet up. Some would be in tents, some in campervans.
They do survivalist stuff and they’re building fires and cooking. They all have day jobs. They come from all over Ireland.”
One of the men he meets on his TV series ‘The End Of The World With Beanz’ wants to build his own underground bunker.
Martin points out that the series was filmed two years ago.
“A lot has happened since then, with the stuff going on in the Ukraine and Israel,” he says.
“I imagine if I was to revisit those lads now I reckon that kind of stuff, for anyone who wants to prepare for the worst, that would be the worst. I imagine that would be something they’d be thinking about, that there could be some sort of apocalypse coming down the tracks.”
CULLING
Martin did not eat the deer though at the camp.“I didn’t chance it,” he smiles.
“I don’t think it was killed near the camp or wherever; I think was brought on side. I think somebody had land and were culling deer. They wouldn’t be out trapping rabbits, or shooting pheasant willy nilly. They would have sourced it ethically.”
“I’m an animal lover myself, so I wouldn’t be able (to kill). I eat meat, like the average person. But in so far removed from the slaughter of the animal. I don’t know if I’d be able to survive too long if I had to kill my own meat.
The Tuam-born comic also opens up on how he got his nickname.
“You don’t leave Tuam without a nickname,” he giggles.
“I was fat, red faced and slightly ginger. They used to call me the human bean.” He started doing comedy
in 2006 and when he lost all his shows in 2020 due to Covid he started writing, both a play and some newspaper columns.
He also managed to get funding to the TV series, which is primarily based around climate change and sustainability.
ISLAND
Among stars he roped in to take part in the series was comedian Bernard O’Shea, who teamed up with him to visit the Amish community, and model and influencer Roz Purcell, who went to a remote Scottish island with him.
But he drew the line at going swimming with her in the sea.
“It would look like a dolphin swimming beside a blue whale, so I saved myself the embarrassment.
“She had no problem getting into a cold ocean, she took to it like a duck to water. She is an amazing person.”
‘There could be some sort of apocalyse coming down the tracks’