Can Tallafornia II get any worse?
It’s the TV3 show that became a
Philip Nolan meets the cast of the notorious reality show as it returns
MARC O’NEILL looks like he was marinated for a week in Ronseal, slowroasted on a spit, then finished with Mr Sheen and a chamois. Honestly, we had a sideboard when I was a kid and his skin is the closest thing I’ve seen to it since. Even he admits he looks mahogany, which is no mean feat for a man brought up in Ballymun and now living in Santry.
Marc is the new boy on the second series of Tallafornia, the TV3 show that shocked and delighted in almost equal measure when it debuted last year. Now, the action moves to a €3m villa in the party town of Santa Ponsa in Majorca. It was a glorious, 30°C day in August when they wrapped the second series. Marc and the regular cast gathered around the swimming pool to talk to the media about what to expect. More of the same, it seems: drink, sex, flashing and all the other antics that make us so proud to be Irish.
A preview of the series airs tonight on TV3 before the show returns for a full run in January – and it looks as though by this time tomorrow, Marc will be the talk of that section of the public which enjoys shows like this. In particular, Marc seems unhealthily anxious to show me a piercing he had done before the series. I politely decline. He seems disappointed because, by his own admission, nothing
‘Are you saying I’m fat?’
Oh dear God, I think, here comes another rant
makes Marc happier than people looking at Marc. All of him, or just his genitalia – it doesn’t really seem to matter.
‘I love attention – who doesn’t?’ he asks. ‘It’s like a drug really. I just want it more and more and more. I work as a California Tan model, doing promotional stuff, so I’m used to showing off.’
But what about your mum and dad, I ask? Won’t you be embarrassed when they see you nude on television?
‘It’s nothing they haven’t seen before,’ he says. Well, of course not, I agree, but not recently. He laughs. ‘You’d be surprised in my house.’
And at least he’ll look his best. ‘It was cold that day and it still looked okay,’ he assures me. I couldn’t be happier for him.
Besides the tan though, why is Marc on the show? Does he have a talent? ‘ A talent?’ he repeats with a slightly blank look. ‘Well, I can dance. I do gymnastics and fire breathing. I was a good boxer. And I take my clothes off.’
For all these reasons, Marc is likely to replace 19-year-old Nikita Murray as the show’s main talking point. Last year, the Clondalkin teenager was out of control. She had a tongue like a stevedore and a seemingly endless capacity for alcohol. She performed a lap-dance – filmed with a lascivious attention to detail – that left viewers gobsmacked. She was filleted on social media for her apparent total absence of inhibition. In consequence, Nikita decided to quit alcohol for t drin
‘I’v whe prov you have out poin or tw
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this show. She hasn’t had a single nk since she arrived in Majorca. ve realised I can have the craic en I’m sober and I just wanted to ve a point to younger people that don’t actually need to be p***ed to e a good time,’ she tells me, withirony. ‘You can’t really prove a nt if you’re still going to have one wo, so it’s all or nothing. lot of young people look up to you I just want to be some sort of role model, whereas beforehand I wouldn’t have been the sort of person that should be a role model whatsoever.’
She watched the first series with a certain degree of resignation. ‘I wasn’t surprised when I saw it back – that’s who I was at that time and I’d rather be hated for who I am than to be loved for who I’m not,’ she says.
‘My family was real supportive. All the family watched it with me. Mainly, they’d be laughing and ripping the p*** out of me.’ Maybe the fact that Nikita’s mother is still in her 30s helped.
For someone with such a strong personality, Nikita is positively elfin in the flesh and I make the mistake of telling her: ‘I would have assumed you were much bigger.’
‘What do you mean – bigger?’ she says. ‘Are you saying I’m fat?’ Oh, dear God, I think, here it comes, a classic foul-mouthed rant. Thankfully, the moment passes and I move on to talk to Natalie Geraghty, 21.
She is delighted to be back for a second series and, surprise surprise, promises controversy. ‘The last time, we said it was like a rollercoaster – this time, it’s like a rocket. You might see a different Natalie this time around.’
I wander around the villa. It looks like a hideous relic of the Eighties. The window frames are gold. An inner courtyard is covered in pebbles and droopy rubber plants. In the living room, there’s a tiny stereo system. The couches are those Klippan lowback, two-seater ones you get in IKEA for €195 and the main artwork on the wall is a painting of a finger held up to lips saying ‘Ssshhh’.
But there’s no hiding here. A camera hangs from the ceiling in the main corridor to capture any nocturnal prowling and the bedroom dedicated to moments of passion, the so-called Love Shack, has a ceiling camera too. It also has a big red loveheart wall light that makes it seem more than a little seedy.
In the kitchen, three fridges heave with food, including a huge bag of meat. That’s the boys’ fridge. The girls’ fridge has pizza, oven chips, chicken nuggets and enough HäagenDazs to restore the Arctic ice shelf. On the counter, I count eight dozen eggs. The five lads are into the gym. They train most days and eat lots of protein; Cormac reveals he polishes
‘The ending of The Crying Game isn’t as shocking as this series’
off between six and eight egg whites every night before going to bed.
In the bedrooms and bathrooms, there’s enough product to stock a large branch of Boots. Body buffer, exfoliating creams, tan extender, bronzers, hairspray and lots and lots of Axe, as Lynx body spray for men is known in continental Europe.
I wander back and talk to Dave Behan, 27, and his girlfriend, Kelly Donegan, 23 – last season’s item. They’re nice people but still at that touchy, giggly stage of a new relationship where couples complete each other’s sentences. Dave is from Blessington, Co. Wicklow. Kelly, now a model, is the only cast member actually from Tallaght.
Cormac Brannagan, 30; and Phil Penny, 27, complete the cast. There are times when Cormac parts with words as if each was his last Rolo but he warms up to admit he thought long and hard before returning. ‘I had doubts. I came out of the first one pretty well and you wonder if you’re going to make yourself look better or worse by doing a second series,’ he says.
There also was tension with Marc. ‘He seems to like to challenge me a lot,’ Cormac says. ‘I don’t look for competition with other people but inevitably I get involved. We had a few arguments that got physical.’
He was subject to a significant amount of abuse on Twitter last time but appears to accept that this is the price you have to pay for making it onto television.
‘You’ll always have some little 14year-old calling you queer or something. You’re not going to get away from that,’ he shrugs.
Philly is the most honest, admitting to haggling over payments for the second series.
And he’s also perhaps the only one who seems to appreciate what many normal people, including his own father, actually think Tallafornia is degrading for all concerned. ‘He hates it. He just thinks it’s embarrassing,’ Philly admits.
But Jay has the last word. ‘The end of The Crying Game isn’t as shocking as this season,’ he promises. Sadly, he’s probably right. The Season Two preview of Tallafornia is on TV3 tonight at 11pm.
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