Rory O’Neill

It’s not a stretch to say that Phillip and Jenny changed my life. I owe them an enormous amount both personally and professionally – but I don’t think of them as professionals! Because working with them doesn’t feel like work. They’ve somehow managed to create an alternative hyper-colourised universe where you hang out with your weird best mates, conjuring up craic on the roll-over and waking up with glitter in your crevices – and then someone pays you for it and you feel guilty because this is your actual job.

But that’s only how it feels, because in truth they aren’t playing. They are smart, creative, thoughtful, hard-working, brilliant, do-ers, who are unbound by convention and make genre-hopping work that pulls off that magic thing of being both important and serious in intent, while also being entertaining and fun and seeming effortless. And they aren’t afraid to dream big, and never seem to run out of ideas or energy or projects. To be honest, they’re exhausting!

Phillip likes to tell the story that, one night in 2006, full of Dutch (Gold) courage, he went up to Panti in a club on Dame Street and said he wanted to make a show with her, and she turned around and said: “Who the fuck are you?” I can’t vouch for the veracity of that story because I don’t like to remember things, but if it is true, he must have had a good answer because we did make a show together (and many more after that one).

But of course Phillip always has a good answer, so I’m inclined to believe the story is true. And if it was Jenny telling the story, I wouldn’t dare doubt her.