THE BEGINNING of one of the most talked about shows at this year s Edinburgh Fringe featured a man sitting in a hospital bed explaining to a psychiatrist exactly why it was he felt compelled to leap from a British Army helicopter hovering at 90ft. Later in the show, we see the same character suffering from paranoid delusions, unable to leave his own home because of a conviction that he is being victimised by some malevolent force that darkens his doorstep on a daily basis. Acting on a friend s advice, he opts to leave a note for his supposed nemesis. Short and to the point, it reads: FUCK OFF MILKMAN!!!
There are other bizarre anecdotes in the critically acclaimed Off My Face: tales of dead sheep in wheelbarrows, a container full of chic menswear that is continually being unearthed and reburied in a field, and an all too believable account of a drunken family Christmas in rural Ireland.
Make no mistake though, while this is funny, it isn t comedy. Although consistently humourous, the underlying mood of Off My Face is one of bleak and poignant despair that of a character whose fondness for gargle causes nothing but grief, ultimately resulting in him being denied access to his new-born child.
It s an exorcism of sorts, a chronicle of one man s successful battle against alcoholism. And Owen O Neill is well qualified to write and perform such a show: not content with being there and buying the t-shirt, he puked down the front of it as well.
Is it safe to assume, then, that most of it has been drawn from personal experience?
There s certainly elements of truth in it, he replies. There s some truths in it, there s some complete lies and there s some places in it where I ve only scratched the surface really. I could have gone into some awful scenarios, but that wouldn t be fair on my family and it wouldn t really be fair on the audience either, to lay that sort of angst on them. I think it s just enough to get the message across.
Of course I ve changed the names and exaggerated things. By doing that you let the people involved know that it s just a story. I mean, if I used peoples real names and said exactly what happened, then there d be trouble. I wouldn t be allowed back home(laughs). Maybe if I was writing a novel I could be much more open about what happened, but I think for a stage show you ve got to be very careful.
Owen O Neill stopped drinking six years ago. A close personal friend of Comrade Smirnoff, his options were limited: he had to kick something, so he chose the bottle over the bucket.
The last Edinburgh Festival I drank at was in 1991, explains the London-based native of Cookstown, Co. Tyrone. It was the year Sean Hughes and I did the play Patrick s Day, and I nearly killed myself drinking. I never got to bed, I just drank every night until 6am. Sean and I had this scene late in the play where our characters would drink beer for breakfast, and I was in such a state I remember moving the scene earlier so that I could get a drink down because I was so hungover from the night before (laughs).
In the end we were just drinking all the time in the show, it was awful! I was in the situation where I was trying to do that show, trying to do a stand-up show, and half the time I didn t even know my own fucking name. I don t know how I survived, I really don t know. After that, I became quite ill, so at the end of 1991 I decided to knock the drinking on the head. It was basically a choice of giving it up or dying.
Still, it must have been difficult.
Oh yes, it was desperately hard. I had gone to AA before, I d tried everything before, but then I d go back to Ireland and see people who drank much more than me and they d be saying Ah sure you re only having a drink, you ll be fine. You ve just been in England too long . I d relent and before I d know it I d have gone out and drank a bottle and a half of vodka. I d end up in some dangerous place, for example, shouting at British soldiers in the middle of the night in Royal Avenue, Belfast. Then it occurred to me: These people I m with don t do this. It s me that does this, and if I don t stop doing it I m going to end up dead . It s very easy to get drawn into these things and it took me about three years of trying to get out of it.
Throughout O Neill s time as a barfly, he didn t so much enjoy sniffing the cork as ramming it firmly up his nose. It was inevitable then, that his family life would suffer.
It was really bad, he confesses. I d be disappearing for two or three days, and you just can t be in a relationship with someone where they don t know where you are. You just can t do that. It was very very difficult. My son doesn t even remember me drinking now, but when he was three-years old he was frightened of me. He didn t like the smell of me in the mornings and he wouldn t come near me. It doesn t get much worse than that, when your own child is frightened of you. It s all okay now, thankfully. My life has changed beyond all recognition to be honest.
Having spent so long as a fume-breathing soup dragon, he must still yearn for the occasional tipple?
No, not now, he explains. I did for a while, but now I don t even think about it. I used to think to myself, God, I ve given up the drink , as in I d had to give up the drink, but now I just feel that I ve got rid of it.
Despite all the trials and tribulations, O Neill s longtime partner stuck with him throughout his ordeal. The mark of a woman with the patience of a saint, no?
She is a saint, he confirms. She s a complete saint, she should be canonised, definitely. I did so much grovelling to her when I decided to give up drinking. I was literally on my knees going Please, please, stick with me. I can do this . I think she gave me a chance because I d given up smoking at the time, and she thought Well, if he can give up smoking maybe he can give up drinking as well . And she was right, I did. She had faith in me when nobody else had, so what can I say . . . she s a diamond.
Were Owen s friends as understanding?
I didn t lose any friends but I lost a lot of drinking acquaintances. I didn t have any friends in the drinking world, I don t think many people do. My real friends are still there, even though I used to argue with them a lot when I was still drinking. I used to think they weren t my friends because they kept nagging at me, telling me what to do. I don t really have any contact with any of the drinking people who I used to know. In fact, they re very wary of me now when I come into their company they ll only have a half, or a mineral water or something (laughs).
As comedians spend most of their working lives surrounded by booze, it s hardly surprising that many of them, particularly those who are new to the game, drink far more than is good for them. In Edinburgh, where this interview took place, it was not uncommon to see souped-up gag merchants (the same ones every night) stumbling, bottle in hand, around The Gilded Balloon in a state which can only be described, even by my own less-than-lofty standards, as deplorable. Owen, however, has never been tempted to grab such halfwits by the collar and give them a good shaking.
I would never ever judge anybody else, I think that would be dangerous, he avers. If somebody came to me and said Look Owen, you ve stopped drinking. Could you help me and tell me what I should do because I ve got a problem , then I would. But I would never ever get involved with anybody else s drinking. I try not to be judgmental when I see some young guy on the piss for the 10th night in a row. It s very easy to stand on the moral high ground and wag the finger, but I try not to do that. But anyway, some guys can go out and get legless drunk and enjoy themselves. I couldn t do that. I would have loved to do that, but I couldn t.
In Off My Face, O Neill s alter-ego opens his heart to a psychiatrist, Dirk Junk (also played by O Neill). Unfortunately, however, what gushes forth is a torrent of lies and deceit. O Neill then turns to the audience and fills them in on the real outcome of the elaborate yarn he has spun his shrink. Owen explains that the introduction of the psychiatrist is essentially a theatrical device which he uses to stop his show from disappearing irretrievably up its own arse.
When I first wrote the thing I thought that there could be a problem in that regard, he muses. I thought that it might end up being My Booze Hell . As it happened, it is self-indulgent, to the point where anything would be when you ve got a one-man show. But I think the self-indulgence I was afraid of was being up on stage talking about drink and having people go God, I wish he d shut up, this is so boring! . I wasn t sure if people would be able to relate to it. Because of that, I found the premise of the psychiatrist, and telling him lies. I could be self-indulgent with him, but at the same time I was able to show the audience the real me. People like to be let in on things, so once that came together, the show kind of took off.
Having said that though, the first preview was a total fucking shambles, but that was partly down to technical details. Because of that, I wasn t really giving the performance 100%. Plus, I didn t really know the characters that well at that point, which is a bit distressing, particularly when you re playing them all (laughs). So I came off after that, and even though everyone was being very polite and saying they liked it, I was just thinking Oh no. I ve to do this for three weeks in Edinburgh and it s really awful . I was incredibly depressed.
It s hard to imagine the beaming, infectiously good humoured man sitting across the table from me ever being depressed. Nevertheless, in the days before he became a stalwart of the London comedy circuit he had every reason to be. As well as a voracious appetite for hard liquor, he also had to contend with horrifically early starts in the morning. Indeed, it is an experience on which his last one-man show, Shouting From The Scaffold, was based.
Yeah, I began my comedy career with a microphone in one hand and a trowel in the other, he quips. I was about 28 and I was getting to the end of my tether at the building game, which is what I was doing at the time. I d always hated it but it was just a case of my dad saying You re going to become a brickie and that s it. There s a trowel for you now off you go! . Being on a scaffold at 7am on a frosty morning isn t a very nice thing to have to do, and as well as that I worked with some fucking animals in my time, some really horrible people.
Can we take it then, that life of a bricklayer isn t totally removed from that of a comedian?
(laughs) Yeah, I ve worked with some right fuckers in the comedy business as well. Back then I was doing some comic poems, which I kept quiet, for obvious reasons. You don t want to have to go up to the site foreman and ask for permission to leave early because you ve got a poetry reading in North London (laughs). It was quite tiring, working all day on a building site, and then going to do gigs. Gradually, though, the gigs took over and I just eased into doing them full time. Before long I was earning more than I had on the building site, but I never really took myself seriously. When people used to ask me what I did for a living, I d say Ah well, I m sort of into comedy a bit . I would never say I am a stand-up comedian . It took me about four or five years to be able to say that with a straight face.
Despite the fact that he now concentrates on one-man shows, as well as writing and acting in movies, Owen began as a stand-up comic with a reputation as a good story teller. It is a genre which still has a special place in his heart.
Yeah, I do still quite like stand-up, he attests. But I would have to say that I m really sick of the 20-25 minute restrictions that are placed on comics in the clubs. I can t be bothered with that anymore. If I m going to do stand-up I want it to be an hour in a theatre. I ve done my time in the clubs. I ve done the drunken rabble at midnight for ten years and I don t want that anymore. I think I ve got more to offer an audience.
As a Catholic from Northern Ireland, he can never have been short of material.
Well, I do quite a lot about the troubles in my stand-up, I always have done. The situation in the North interests me whether I like it or not, because it s there. If I m listening to the radio and I hear about Belfast or the ceasefire or Gerry Adams, I turn it up. I m back and forward to the North all the time, because I ve got family there, it s part of me still and I m very concerned about it, but no, I m definitely not a political comedian.
Would Owen be of the same opinion as his close friend Sean Hughes, that while he wishes the current crop of Irish stand-up comics well, he has no interest in going to see them because they all come out with the same old shit .
No, he laughs, amused by his pal s bluntness. I know this ll make me sound like some auld patronising bastard, but I am actually very proud of them. I wish them every success, because the ones I ve seen are all very good. They re all very different, which is great, and long may it continue.
Owen O Neill was once reluctant to describe himself as a stand-up comedian, and now he is similarly reticent when it comes to describing his foray into the movie business. Ever bashful, he now sees himself as an actor . . . sort of. He played a role in Michael Collins , and has now successfully auditioned for a part in The General, the biopic of the late Dublin gangster, Martin Cahill. He s also currently writing a screenplay, a romantic comedy about Ronald Reagan s trip to Ireland. According to Owen, It s quite good. It s got a budget of #5 million, but I won t be celebrating until I m sitting in the cinema watching the credits roll.
Ultimately, I think what I d really like is to get some sort of production company together. I d love to be in the position Woody Allen is in where I d have a nineteen-year-old schoolgirl . . . (laughs). Naw, but seriously, I d love to be in his position where he s got his own production company, his own camera-man, lighting director; his own team. And, of course, the money to do things.
Owen O Neill: brickie, stand-up comedian, recovered alcoholic, and scriptwriter . . . sort of. Overbearing neurotic Jewish movie mogul?
Don t rule it out . . . n