The show-off prepares to show-off again

THERE’S a familiar face coming to The Hexagon next year – Father Dougal’s alter ego Ardal O’Hanlon. He is preparing to tour the UK with his brand-new show, The Showing Off Must Go On.

Ardal will be in Reading twice – he’s preparing for his 47-date tour with a warm-up at South Street Arts Centre on March 1, before returning to The Hexagon on Saturday, November 2.

The inspiration for his show comes from his small-town home in Ireland, where he says there is nothing worse than a show-off.

Despite this, the comic and actor

(he is currently starring in Death In Paradise) he is a professional ‘show-off’ who continues to do stand-up comedy for money, a very shy show-off (and as a result conflicted) but a big show-off nonetheless (a disgrace to his family).

Ardal said that the inspiration for his new show came just after he thought he’d made sense of the world, when he thought he knew everything he needed to know. When he finally found a hat that he liked and learned how to make cocktails and how to relax sagaciously in a big chair.

Just when he was about to quit airing his dirty linen in public and stop showing off, the world shifted. Dramatically. The world fell off its axis. And is adrift in the universe. And, he says, it needs saving.

In an age of raging populism, #MeToo, identity politics, the end of truth, the collapsing middle ground, peak avocado and £15 Gin and Tonics, and terrified of being on the wrong side of history, Ardal is forced to saddle his high horse again and ride fearlessly into the culture wars (with a white hankie in his pocket just in case), comedy as ever being the best emergency response mechanism to extreme events there is.

Ardal said: “I’m absolutely thrilled to be bringing my stand-up show on the road in 2019, having been testing stuff in clubs and at festivals for the past few years. It’s great that the noise in my head is finally cohering into delightful comedy chunks.”

Tickets for the show have gone on sale and can be booked from readingarts.com or at 0118 960 6060.