Cover story: Deirdre O’Kane wants to make us giggle
Deirdre O’Kane has landed a prime time RTÉ Saturday night show entitled Talks Funny, which aims to tickle in these testing times. But, as she tells Niamh Walsh, she’s aware of the pressure to deliver the goods
DEIRDRE O’Kane is about to inject some muchneeded humour into our Saturday nights with a new chat show, and it’s a dream come true for her after years of watching women being under represented in comedy.
But the Drogheda-born woman is keenly aware of the pressure that comes with hosting a prime time chat show — especially as she takes over the Saturday night hot seat left warm by Ray D’Arcy with her personal interpretation of the genre, Talks Funny.
Deirdre, who has been on the comedy show circuit for decades, says landing her own prime time television show was an ambition born from decades of dedication to her craft.
‘That phrase “if you can’t see it, you can’t be it” really, really rings true for me, because if I did see comedy I certainly didn’t see a female. They were not on the telly and if they were on the live circuit I wasn’t aware of their existence,’ she says.
‘The first time I saw comedy was by accident, I went into The International Bar to put on a lunchtime play and that’s when I came across Mr Trellis — Barry Murphy, Ardal O’Hanlon and Kevin Gildea — and they were the godfathers of Irish comedy. That was it, they were the scene.
‘Then years later I rocked up at the Cat Laughs Festival in Kilkenny and I had a Road to Damascus moment and thought “look at this”. My mind was just blown when I saw these 40 or so comedians on stage and I think only three or four were female and I made a point of going to see those female comedians. And that’s when I first thought “ah, OK, this is a job, this is something that maybe I can do.”
‘So I started writing jokes in the car on the way home when Steve [her husband film maker Stephen Bradley] was driving and I went back to Kilkenny as a performer the following year,’ she recalls.
Becoming a well-known face on television and standing out in a packed personality-driven entertainment industry is no easy task, but Deirdre shone. Engaging and entertaining, she is more tittletattle than hoity-toity. She is out to poke fun, not pitch for plaudits.
Just a few months ago Deirdre orchestrated and executed RTÉ’S Comic Relief which was a resounding success and provided the nation with some much needed lockdown laughs.
‘ Comic Relief was the great unknown. We had worked our butts off, the whole team— Darren Smith and Jane Russell and Patrick Hickey. We had worked insanely hard and then the RTÉ team that came on board worked so hard, so we were over the moon that it worked and that money was raised.
‘My big fear was nobody would watch. I t hought no one was watching telly, that everyone’s watching Netflix. But people did, they did watch, it was so good. And to see all that talent that we have in the country...’
It was perhaps her stand-out performance in pulling together and performing in Comic Relief that finally got the Montrose men i n suits to sit up a nd see t hat Deirdre O’Kane was someone they should be noticing.
‘I have pitched other ideas, other comedy ideas, and I’ve made it pretty clear to people in the industry that I’d like to be on television — but exactly what I didn’t really know. I didn’t think there would be an opening, I was under the impression that they were talkshow heavy so I never thought anything like this would happen so I was genuinely surprised. They came to me and said “this is an idea we have, do you want to do it?” so I said “yes please, and I will shake on it with two hands.”’
Talks Funny aims to be a twist on what is now a somewhat jaded formula of traditional conversation- style entertainment talk shows.
‘It is two people chatting, it’s old school. I will show clips from their work. The show is called Talks Funny so it’s people who are either innately funny or in the business of funny. Talking about their work, about how they ended up there and where the funny comes from, and hopefully seeing another side to people that you know.
‘We had long chats about who we could have on and we have enough funny people to get us by. We won’t have an audience, which is hard because I thin k it can benefit from an audience. But at the same time a little bit of me wonders will we get a more intimate conversation going, will we be able to chat like nobody is watching? I have to think that will add something, that one-on-one. It
‘We were over the moon that Comic Relief worked’
remains to be seen. I am not entirely sure what no audience will do except intensify what we are doing. We will have to focus entirely on each other and be very present, listening to each other and picking up on every nuance. We will see. I am as curious as the next person.’
Deirdre feels a huge burden of expectation on her since the announcement that she’d got one
of t he biggest slots on pr i me t i me television, especia l ly as there’s a Penneys-long queue of talent lining up for the gig.
‘I do feel the pressure, of course I do. I am trying to not go there because it is out of your control, because you can go down that road and really get yourself worked up.
‘So all I can do is be very well prepared and be very present in that moment. What I want to achieve in that moment is to get the best out of the guest and I want them to have the best experience and to enjoy it.
‘I do k now innately how to entertain an audience so I think I will feel if something is on the dull side how to move it on. They are skills that I have that are at this stage well-honed so I will know if I need to steer this in another direction.’
Deirdre says what she lacks in live TV experience will be more than compensated for with comedy and enthusiasm.
‘That said, I did do my three month stint on the Six O’Clock Show doing a bit of chat and I enjoyed that and I think that’s where I got the taste and I like talking to people generally — and I’m good at talking!’
As a child growing up, the
Loreto convent girl says while she wasn’t a wallflower in those days she let her feet do her talking.
‘Comedy wasn’t a thing when I was a child and that’s not what I started out doing. I was a straight actress for ten years.
‘As a child I wasn’t particularly precocious. I was one of five, I don’t thin k I stood out in a ny particular way. Maybe except at Irish dancing, I was a good Irish dancer and I brought the medals home for that and I got used to the pats on the back and got used to audiences, the audience clapping for me.
‘I always think that’s interesting as I know other performers who were good Irish dancers or who were good at sport or good at something that they got the medals and the clap on the back for.
‘So I think it’ s maybe possible to get hooked on that so you can search out that “look at me”.’
The timing of this show couldn’t be better, as for t he past four years, Deirdre’s husband, film director Stephen Bradley, fought a
‘I was a good Irish dancer, I got used to pats on the back’
very private battle against stage four bowel cancer.
After he regained his health, he wrote about the experience of enduring such a serious illness in his book Shooting and Cutting. Deirdre never spoke about his illness publicly until the book was published.
‘I was only protecting myself,’ she admitted in an interview with VIP magazine when Stephen published his book.
‘I did not have the energy to explain, to talk to people — it was to work, raise two kids and have somebody sick in bed at home.
‘Obviously my family and Stephen’s family and my close circle of people knew, but I mean, I was on tour, I was on stage, telling jokes at night so it wouldn’t have been useful to go out and talk about that publicly.’
Like most entertainers, Deirdre has seen all her live work dry up so she is in no doubt as to how lucky she is that the chat show landed in her lap.
‘Obviously a ll of my l ive work is gone and so many of my colleagues have no work, so I feel grateful that I have enough to keep me busy.’
While the government has made multi-million euro provision in the Budget to support the arts, she echoes her peers when she says the funds must trickle down to those who are in dire need of support.
‘So €50 million sounds OK, it’s very hard to quantify, I’m not an expert. What worries me is how they are going to get that to actors and singers and comedians and what red tape and bureaucracy are t h ey goi ng t o throw at people that they have to qualify to receive that money.
‘[Actor and writer] Sharon Mannion said in a tweet “how many ways will they want us to find new ways to use the word innovative?”
‘What is it going to be? I almost wish they would just give artists a payment to keep goi ng. I suppose it was a n a c k n o wl e d g m e n t o f the industry, finally.’
With her first Saturday night on the small screen looming, Deirdre is hoping that the nation tunes in. But, she laughs, she won’t be depending on her kids Holly and Daniel and her husband to boost her ratings.
‘My children, who are 15 and 12, have zero interest, to them I just work. It’s more like “there she is again” …. it’s more “oh Christ is she going to make a show of us?” Kids aren’t aware are they?
‘They don’t care what their parents do, they just care that their parents get their stuff. That said, they are both showing signs of going down this road which terrifies me. But look, you can’t discourage kids; all you can do is make them aware of the pitfalls.’
One person who has been by her side since that fateful trip to Kilkenny years ago when her funny bones were first tickled is Steve. He has been her constant confidante, her biggest supporter and most likely her comedy critic, despite, like many comedy spouses, often being the butt of her good-natured jibes. ‘Does he think I’m funny? Funny — stop, are you joking, he’s ready to leave me. Our 20th wedding anniversary is coming up so I gave him a choice; we can go for dinner or we can break up. So we’re just going for dinner, we decided it’s just easier.’
Talks Funny is on Saturdays at 9.10pm on RTÉ One.
‘My children have zero interest, to them I just work’