Menace

The biggest regret in my life right now is not punching John Denver in the neck when I had the chance, laments Denis Leary. I actually saw him across a room about three years ago, at some MTV Awards. It was odd. Everybody in the room thought it was odd that he was there because it was a rock n roll thing. I couldn t think of any link between John Denver and rock n roll. Maybe he was somebody s pilot. You know how crazy those rock n rollers are.
He was standing there on his own. I thought, You know, I could get a coupla drinks on me and just walk over and hit him . But I didn t. And, of course, now that s killing me. I look back and I could kick myself. Who woulda known? It s taught me a valuable lesson: Seize the moment.
Denis Leary was never a man prone to excessive displays of emotion. Dissolving into public fonts of tears at the catastrophe du jour was scarcely his style. Yet there always lurks the danger that, along with age and respectability, even the most hard-bitten young Turk will develop a tendency for solubility.
It s refreshing to report, however, that the Leary persona remains, defiantly, that of a callous bastard. He knows that there is still no cure for cancer, but he hasn t forgotten that a scurrilous bellylaugh retains potent medicinal powers. He also takes his rock music seriously enough to be able to tell the difference between tragedy and farce.
All real humour is dark. Everything else is just whimsy. But is there anything that Denis Leary wouldn t make jokes about? I don t have any hard and fast rule on that, he states. But, for instance, I never had a joke about Eric Clapton s kid falling off the roof. I just never found the funny part of that. But I didn t think I d ever find the funny part of John Lennon being shot either. Then, about eight years later, I did. It was fucking Yoko not being shot. There are no sacred cows but these things tell you what they are when they re there.
Denis Leary has no choice but to trust his own judgement. There are, he submits, too many people out there too willing to misunderstand everything. Irony therefore is a notoriously risky endeavour. You try to satirise the culture of arch-conservative, right wing, Republican bigots and, before you know it, you re hailed as part of that culture, he asserts.
Some people just don t fucking get it and they never will. There s nothing you can do about that. You can point them to the trough but you can t make em drink. I get a lot of big macho idiots at my shows, football fans. All one of these guys sees is the black and white of it. When I m talking about tits, fake tits and small tits, all he s hearing is the word tits. He s just happy he s hearing it.
There s nothing you can do but sign the autographs for those guys and send em on their way. You could hit em on the head with a hammer but it s not going to change the way they think. They re the ones who are actually out there buying the albums and videos. Alright, they don t get it but I m buying a new house so who gives a shit, ya know whadda I mean?
Denis Leary is Irish broth in a Jack Daniel s bottle. He s the concussing blow of a shillelagh seconds before a lethal shot from a Smith and Wesson. He s cabbage and cheeseburgers. What I m trying to say is that Denis Leary is quintessentially Irish-American.
He had a rambunctious, chaotic Irish-American childhood amid a rambunctious, chaotic Irish-American family in a rambunctious, chaotic Irish-American district of the rambunctious, chaotic Irish-American city of Boston (or Buoy-ston, as the natives proudly all it).
Both his parents were first generation emigrants from the Killarney region of Kerry. Indeed, the family farms on which they grew up adjoin each other and Leary reckons that the Ring of Kerry is home to 95% of all his living relatives. As teenagers, Denis and his siblings visited Ireland regularly and he now holidays for a month in Kerry every summer with his own two children.
My father passed away there in 85, says Leary. Most of my cousins are my age or a little bit older and they ve all got kids, so you can t really avoid the connections. Some parts of that area are just gorgeous although the town itself has gotten pretty commercial.
It ll be obvious to anyone who has heard Leary s brilliant parody of the woefully melancholic traditional Irish folk song ( They come over here and they chop off our legs/They cut off our hands and put nails in our eyes ) that this is a guy steeped in the self-pitying treacle of Irish musical melodrama.
Oh yeah, I ve heard tons of that stuff, he attests. Every Saturday night, either down at The Ancient Order of Hibernians or in our house when all the relatives would come over. There d always be the guy who thought he was the Irish tenor in the family but really sang off key. He d start singing those a cappella, 17,000 verse songs about the old days. Jesus!
My father was kind of a musician himself on the side so he would break out the accordion or the guitar or the fiddle and start singing some incredibly depressing song about people starving to death during the potato famine.
There are those of us who believe that it s actually the accordion and not the potato famine that has been most damaging to the Irish psyche. It certainly was in our house, concurs Leary. Around midnight, when you were in bed and the parents were still up with the other relatives, you d start to hear that accordion and go, Oh Jesus, another three hours before I ll get some sleep .
Denis is utterly convinced that his icy black humour stems from his ethnic background. For him, each fits into the other like teeth into a cogwheel. Definitely. My old man was a really funny guy and a great storyteller. Both sides of the family are full of people with really big senses of humour, very black senses of humour which I think is a very Irish thing. On either side of Atlantic. With a streak of anger in it as well. It comes from eating a lot of heavily boiled food. And that fucking weather, ya know whadda I mean.
If somebody could trace it back, I think the Irish probably invented sarcasm. We never got credit for it but I m sure we did. In an Irish home or an Irish pub, I don t think anybody s ever heard the phrase Nice pants or Nice shoes without knowing that the person who said it thinks your shoes and your pants suck!
In the Leary household, there were two Gods. There was God the Father and there was His Son, JFK. Denis rejected one of them a long time ago but is a firm disciple of the other. I actually admired JFK more the more I found out about the people he d slept with. But, even to this day, in my mother s house, JFK s picture is right beside the picture of Jesus and the Virgin Mother. They re the Holy Trinity.
I voted for the Kennedys myself until I moved out of Boston in 1990. I never had a problem with them in terms of politics. I grew up working class up there. That s where their bread is buttered so they always took care of those issues. It s more like what they do at night that gets them into trouble, ya know whadda I mean.
Leary was greatly amused by a recent interview on US television in which younger members of the Kennedy dynasty apologised to the nation for their family s drinking and whoring, and effectively blamed it all on their flawed Irish genes.
Who woulda known that a family whose fortune was based on bootlegging liquor would become alcoholics? he muses. Unfortunately, Ted s kids weren t on the show. Those are the guys who d have the real nice home movies.
In Boston, we were always aware of how these people partied but they did take care of the neighbourhoods that they were elected from. You didn t really think twice about it as long as it didn t involve, like, killing somebody or having sex with somebody under age. But then they started to do that as well. They had to push the envelope on the freedom trail.

The journalist Pete Hamill has said that the most sickening aspect of Irish American culture is the assumption that if you (rise) above an acceptable level of mediocrity, you re guilty of the sin of pride. Denis Leary couldn t agree more.
Yeah, the tall poppy syndrome. Or the medium poppy syndrome. I was aware of it growing up but even moreso now. It invades the culture now, especially in the press, ya know whadda I mean. It s almost like week to week. One week, you re on top of the world. The next week, you re shit. I grew up with that. The guy who has the wherewithal to start his own business and then becomes good; if he s from an Irish neighbourhood, you know everybody back in the neighbourhood is just cutting him down behind his back.
Another sickening aspect of Irish-American culture is the beery, mindless republicanism of many ex-pats and their descendants, that rabid fever for a revolutionary war against the British, as long as it s safely contained thousands of miles away and poses no threat to their own lives or lifestyles.
When we were growing up, it was accepted that you d throw some money into the NORAID tin can when it was passed around, admits Leary. The neighbourhood I lived in in Boston, they had the Bunker Hill Day Parade every year as part of the celebration of the American Revolutionary War. They d have a truck at the front of it that d sell GET THE ENGLISH OUT OF IRELAND sweatshirts. They d stop the parade every block or so and it wouldn t go again until enough t-shirts and sweatshirts had been bought.
That s kind of a blind American patriotism, ya know whadda I mean. These people don t understand what s going on on a complicated level. They just buy it because they think it s gung ho. I ve done it myself. But, as the violence got crazier and crazier, I backed off a little bit. I ve always believed firmly that the British should just get the hell out. Tony Blair s sorta making some whispers along those lines now anyways. Let s hope it happens.
Would Denis Leary like to see the British Royal Family abolished?
Oh yeah! he rasps. The sad part about them is that I think they ve just learned that the only member of the family anybody cared about has passed on. I don t think anybody in America really gives a rat s ass about the Royal Family. They care even less than people who are anti-Royal Family. To us, it s kind of a joke.
The Princess Di thing bummed people out because she was the only one anyone was interested in. She was like the JFK of England. She was the only one with any personality.
Which brings us to that age-old question that even the women ask: How could Charles pick Camilla Parker Bowles over Princess Di? I wish he d come out and explain that. I need to understand it. At least if he came out and made a major announcement saying Okay look, I was drunk . . .
If there s one person who appears more preposterous than Prince Charles to Denis Leary right now, it s the Messiah Of The Dance, Michael Flatley. Leary is extremely suspicious of the current vogue for Irish culture in the States. However, he reserves a special place in his bile duct for the phenomena of Riverfuckingdance, the evils of which he examines at length in his new stand-up show Lock N Load (which should perhaps be sub-titled No Cure For Flatley).
Michael Flatley looks like a Nazi, Leary snarls. He s like Aryan Youth. He s part of the throwback to that Barry Fitzgerald Irish thing, where it s like a fake brogue and a tip o the hat and a top o the mornin to ya. He s getting away with it. He made like $16 million per month last year. I don t fault him for the money but, Jesus! Get off my fucking TV! .
Every time, you turn the television on, there s a commercial for him or for Riverdance. Then, you go home and your mother s talking about how He s so great . He s not Ma, he s crap! He s a guy from Chicago in a pirate-shirt flamenco dancing!
The Riverdance thing has been just invasive. Everybody was going to see it. My sister had three copies of the video tape at any given moment so she could pass out two. It doesn t relate to anything Irish whatsoever. I ve never seen anybody dance that way and I ve been going to Irish events my entire life. Nobody s ever moved their arms, number one. Unless they were drunk. Nobody s ever worn those kind of shirts or those pants. Ever!
I couldn t bring myself to go to that show. I watched the commercials and, one night, my sister put the video on and I watched about a minute of it. I would go to the show with a sniper s rifle. That would make it more interesting. Then, you could really see Flatley dance.
Denis Leary s stand-up routines cackle and groan with gags about drugs, about nicotine, booze, coke, smack, crack, ludes and pills, about the screeching highs and the screaming horrors. It is all written, he claims, from first hand, and first nostril, experience.
Leary spent his late teens and entire 20s bingeing on intoxicants of all kinds. I grew up as a teenager in the mid 70s and late 70s when we thought cocaine wasn t addictive, ya know whadda I mean, he declares. We knew it made your dick small, your nose bleed and your heart explode but we never suspected that it might be addictive as well. I remember when John Belushi died, everybody was looking at each other goin , Wow, maybe this stuff isn t good for you . It seems like 50 years ago but it was only, like, 20, not even.
I was never a big pot guy. As a teenager, one hit would turn me into a maniac so it was never a big thing with me. Even in the 70s, when it was cheap, I was never a downer kind of a guy. I was more into drinking and finding something that would keep me high all night.
Marijuana just made me hungry and hungry and hungry and then really sleepy. You wake up in the morning and find you ate 16 boxes of cookies. Plus, all that music that was connected to that, like The Grateful Dead and Yes and those live double solo albums by the Allman Brothers! Nah, I don t think so. I was much more of a class guy.
What was his favourite drug? Probably speed, back in those days. It was really cheap and real plentiful. There was always some guy who was manufacturing it out of his apartment. You d get what they used to call flying saucers for $5. Even when you were in school, you could afford it. And it would keep you up so you could study for your exams . . . not that I ever did but, I mean, you could.
Did Leary ever go in search of chemical diversion during his holidays in Kerry? No, but, you know what, as a teenager, I was one of the first guys to point out to older people that there were drugs in Kerry. I d say to my relatives in Killarney, Hey those guys over in that corner are selling drugs . My aunts would go, Noo, they re not . Okay, sure! They really believed that at that time; it wasn t part of their culture, ya know whadda I mean.
There was also that tendency to blame outsiders; It s the German tourists bringing the drugs into Kerry . Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was my cousin, OKAY, not the German tourists.
Leary was lucky, he never wound up in the slammer because of his pharmaceutical pursuits, like several of his friends did. Though he was not entirely unfamiliar with the inside of a holding cell. I ve been busted plenty of times, he says. Mostly for drunk and disorderly, and fist fights in bars. I was busted a coupla times for stealing things, the usual rap sheet.
If you want to avoid being busted these days, just join a big rock band. You can get caught with guns in your bag, it doesn t matter. They always seem to get off. Didn t Liam Gallagher get caught in London with coke? He got off with a #600 fine. That s nice. That s how they do it in court: they go, Where s your album at, is it number one or number two? Number one? You can go! You re at number 37? Alright, you re going to jail! .
Is Leary an Oasis fan? I like Oasis, man. But I actually think I like the idea of meeting those guys more than I like their music. Every time I read about them or see them on TV, they re brawling and beating each other up, which is kinda like what it was like in my house growing up. I d like to spend about four or five hours drinking in a pub with those guys. And then start a little pushing match with them.
Don t those photographs of Bob Dylan playing for The Pope prove conclusively that drug-taking causes long-term brain damage? I was probably laughing for about 15 minutes when they were showing that on the news, chuckles Leary. A Born Again Christian Jew and a Polish Pope! And when the Pope started reciting Dylan s lyrics in the speech, that s when I just hit the deck. You could not think of somebody who would look more ridiculous singing for The Pope. The Gallagher brothers, maybe. But at least the Gallagher brothers are Catholic. What does Dylan think he is? A saint.
Denis Leary pulled the emergency chord on his own wild years in the mid 80s. I was pretty much saved from being headed for real trouble when I met my wife. Also, my brother was a complete wild man. By the time he d straightened out, I could see the choice that was opening up so I decided to slow down a little bit.
I really cleaned up once I had kids. Responsibility sorta takes over. You just get to a point where you gotta wake up in the morning and give em breakfast and take em to school. It changes your life pretty drastically.
These days, I m just too busy for drugs. It s even hard to have a pint. Once you start working at this level, it s around the clock. That s the problem with being successful, you actually have to go to work, ya know whadda I mean.
In high school, Denis Leary s dream was to become a pro hockey player. He was disconsolate when he discovered that he wasn t good enough (though he still enjoys a puck with friends at weekends). Denis drifted into acting, and made his stage debut when he was 13. He didn t even start doing stand-up comedy until the late 80s, when he was in his early 30s.
During a weekend visit to London in 1990, Leary s wife went into labour three and a half months earlier than expected. Their son was born extremely ill and was to spend six months in intensive care in a London hospital before he was strong enough to be taken home. Stranded in a foreign city, and worried sick about his child, Denis decided to distract himself by writing a new stand-up show. He entitled it No Cure For Cancer.
The irony of creating comedy about the irresistible joys of suicide by cigarettes and drugs while his son fought for life in an incubator was not lost on Leary. What I went through with him, I put into the show, he explains. It wasn t long after my Dad s death either. The show was really about all those things.
Hanging around the edges of the British comedy circuit, Leary also became friends with a number of budding London-based comics who showed him which way was up. I started running around with Sean Hughes, Dave Baddiel and Frank Skinner. They kinda hooked me up and I went to the Edinburgh Festival. That s where everything started.
The ascent of No Cure For Cancer was of the sort that tends to be described as meteoric by those disinclined to hunt over-long for their images of success, but it was undeniably swift and giddy. After Edinburgh, Leary performed the show off-Broadway where it quickly hit big. Back in London, he became a regular on The Jonathan Ross Show and won invaluable international exposure via a series of short rant slots on MTV. Within a year, Denis Leary was appearing in blockbuster Hollywood movies, such as Sylvester Stallone s Demolition Man. A sneer was born.
London was the making of Leary but he has mixed feelings about the state of the city s comedy scene then and now. At that stage, it looked like what was going to happen was what had already happened in America. I thought the American comedy scene had become like disco. There was just so many bad comedians and so many clubs. It had to blow up and it did.
In London, it was already headed that way but there were some really brilliant comedians, like Sean and Skinner and Baddiel. Now, I believe, that scene s come full circle and it s back to that situation again. I was up in Montreal with Dave and Sean and they were saying the scene has sorta imploded on itself.
Hughes and Baddiel seem more interested in writing novels than stand-up these days. Does Leary share the belief that comics careers have limited lifespans and that they should quit while they re ahead?
I don t, no. One of the lessons I learned writing the new show was that, when you go back and do it again, it s just like riding a bike. After two months, you ve got more than enough material. It made me realise that you should just keep on doin it. Whatever the hell is going on in your life, just put it into the show. There s always new stuff to get angry about and write about. There ll always be another Riverdance.
The lone fly in the luxuriant ointment of Denis Leary s triumph has been the late, great Bill Hicks. Or, rather the persistent charge that Leary cynically ripped off not only the spirit but much of the letter of Hicks material in No Cure For Cancer, and that the acclaim and financial rewards he has garnered are, in effect, ill-gotten gains. The fact that Hicks died, ironically of pancreatic cancer, in 1994 has only served to intensify the virulence of the accusations of plagiarism levelled Leary. So, did he do it?
That s one of those things that the critics and some of my fans and his fans engage in all the time, insists Leary. But the funny thing, to me, is that Bill and I were, for a long time, black-balled in the States. We couldn t work in many clubs so we d actually work together a lot, in New York. We d co-headline and flip a coin in the backroom to see who d go on first. We did this for several years in New York.
Then, I hit. And, all of a sudden, all the Bill Hicks fans were giving me shit and vice versa from my fans. Bill was accused of copying stuff from me. But the truth is that when I went to England, I was the first guy to tell people over there about Bill. I was telling everybody, You gotta bring this guy over here, he s really fucking funny . That s hardly the action of somebody who had just stolen his act.
But isn t it the case that Hicks himself was convinced that Leary had plundered his material up to and including his on-stage demeanour?
I didn t hear from Bill for a long time and then I d hear little things here and there. We might bump into each other or whatever. Yes, he was telling people that but I think he was a little envious of my success. Then, he started to get some of his own, before he got sick. And I think he started to see that he had been a little bit bitter about things. Unfortunately . . . he died.
Leary says he was speechless with rage when he heard about the death of Bill Hicks. It s not even like what happened to Sam Kinison who was another great comic. Sam had really had a great run, ya know whadda mean. He got killed in a tragic way but it s even worse, I think, what happened to Bill because at least Sam went in a second.
Bill had to live through months and months of real, hard tortuous pain . . . I was just like . . . What the fuck? Why the fuck? He d just quit smoking, he d quit drinking, he d quit drugs, you know. And now they take him. Jesus!
For all its foul-mouthed, degenerate honking about sex, drugs and Yoko Ono, it was the aggressive celebration of smoking that made No Cure For Cancer really controversial. Especially in the US, where tobacco companies represent the new Evil Empire and anti-smoking agitation is a veritable religion, Leary s gags about Tracheotomy Man and filter-tip nipples were seen as shocking and unforgivable blasphemies. For smokers, however, Leary became a sort of cultural icon, the leader of the puffers resistance, the guru of the ashtray, the ultimate drag artist.
In the intervening years, however, Denis must surely have gotten pretty fed up with journalists asking him how many cigarettes he smokes per day? Oh yeah.
How many cigarettes does he smoke per day? Thanks. I think I ve probably cut back a little bit. I don t smoke when I m around the kids. If I m off and not working, I m around the kids a lot. It s just harder to smoke. Plus, kids nowadays, they chastise you for smoking cause they re taught that in school and they see it on TV. Of course, when you have kids you want to smoke more because they drive you so crazy.
Does he smoke after sex? I smoke all the time.
During sex? Uh, I haven t managed that yet. I just leave one lit by the pillow.
Leary s wife used to smoke but quit when she first became pregnant, and never returned to the fray. The couple have a son aged seven and a daughter who s five would Papa Denis punish his kids if he caught them lighting up behind the bicycle shed? No, but I d hope they wouldn t smoke. They hate smoking now but maybe when they re teenagers they ll think it s cool and pick it up.
Is he in favour of people with smoking-related diseases suing tobacco companies?
I think it s pretty ridiculous but what it s done in the US is brought about the inevitable, which is that cigarettes are going to go up to about $8 a pack. Which, to me, is like thinning the herd. If you re a real smoker, you don t care how much they cost. If they cost $25 a pack, I m gonna smoke. I d like to get rid of those people who are just smoking because they can afford it, ya know whadda I mean.
It s also created these clubs and restaurants that are designed specifically for cigar and cigarette smokers. Everybody smokes and none of the non-smokers are there so it s great. Pretty soon, it ll happen with drinking in America too. People won t be drinking in bars anymore so there ll be bars that are just for drinkers, which is fine with me.
The other great thing about these lawsuits it that the tobacco companies have been forced to say how much money they make off this nasty habit. They give like $350 billion in a settlement and don t bat an eye. So, obviously they re loaded. That actually makes me feel good because it means that smoking will carry on into the next century. They just have so much in the coffers. They don t give a shit.
It was from patients suffering with the disease that Denis Leary received the most enthusiastic reaction to No Cure For Cancer. In a world where some people whisper the very word or couch it in fluffy euphemism, Leary s determination to bellow it aloud and deride its consequences struck a resonant chord.
It s never the people who actually have the disease, or the handicap, that you were making fun of that were offended, he argues. It s always the people who thought those people would be offended. I would get cancer patients at the show and I d get notes backstage from people who had cancer.
And the handicapped people would be in their wheelchairs upfront, ya know whadda I mean. To them, it was like Yeah, we think it s very funny and we re the people who have to live with this. Whereas the people who were behind them, not in wheelchairs, were thinking, Ohmigod! How can he say that! .
I used to do a bit about testicular cancer which was mostly about the fear of getting of it. I used to get chastised by people, especially in New York, for the bit. Then, I started getting letters from guys who had testicular cancer. Of course they re gonna laugh about it. That s what people do. And no-one else will talk about these things, except in a very po-faced way.
This is not glib self-justification. Leary has family experience of the pain of disability. One of his Kerry cousins, for instance, a guy called Tim O Sullivan, was grievously injured in a construction accident in Killarney some years ago and has been confined to a wheelchair since.
Tim went through the whole process, the denial phase, the anger, Denis avers. But he s a really terrific guy with a big Irish sense of humour. After a while, he just accepted his circumstances and started becoming politically active, demanding access to certain places and looking for a place where people like himself could live independently with some self-esteem.
The result of that struggle was The Kerry Cheshire House, on Saint Margaret s Road, Killarney, which is run by The Kerry Cheshire Foundation. The first of Denis Leary s forthcoming three Dublin shows is a benefit for the funding of this House. They ve built the place and people are living in it now, which is terrific, enthuses Leary. Now we re trying to pay for it. I m gonna guilt people into it, the old Irish guilt thing. I like doing that.
Denis Leary knew he had finally made the big time the night Dean Martin invited him round for a few drinks. Dean was a big comedy fan and, obviously, he was a big smoker, Leary recounts, his voice purring at the memory. He was a big fan of No Cure For Cancer and, at his instigation, I got to spend a few nights sitting around drinking with him. He was great; everything you thought he was and more. This was back in 94 before he got really sick. He was completely lucid and very funny.
He called me a pussy which I wear as a badge of honour. He called me that because I wasn t drinking or smoking as much as he was. He was 78 at the time. The first night, it was just me, him, his wife and his grandkid. Another time, it was just me and him. I d ask him to tell a story and he d tell me the story. Or we d just talk about sports or just watch television and make fun of people on TV. It was great. Even my mother was impressed by that.
After that experience, Denis Leary doesn t have too many unrealised ambitions left, though there is one. I really love Father Ted, he confesses. I came in contact with the show while I was in Ireland a couple of summers ago. I wish those guys would have me on as a special guest star or something. I d love that. It s a funny show.
During the past 18 months, Denis Leary has appeared in four movies, either dramas or comedy dramas, all of which have yet to open in the States. The most intriguing is Wag The Dog, a Barry Levinson film with a David Mamet script, which stars Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman.
Leary is rare among screen actors in that he has managed to carve out a niche for himself as a credible dramatic presence while retaining his comedy fanbase. I had my theatrical training and that added some range, he maintains. It s also the nature of the beast. The sort of stuff I do on stage has that sort of edge to it anyways. Quite frankly, the New York showbusiness community is fairly small, certainly the film side of it. Everybody knows each other and everybody is clamouring to go to work together so it s not as far-fetched as it might sound.
He favours working on dramatic movies primarily because he doesn t reckon Hollywood is very good at making comedies. Comedy gets diluted by the time it gets to the cinema screen, he contends. There aren t that many great comedy directors, quite frankly. I d be really hard pressed to think of a great American comedy director, besides Woody Allen and maybe Albert Brooks. Apart from those guys, I don t like very many comedy movies, except one or two of the Peter Sellers Pink Panther movies.
When it comes to laughs, Denis Leary is adamant that nothing beats a good stand-up act. He is really looking forward to bringing Lock N Load, his new one-man show, to Dublin and confidently expects it to be well received. There s a lot of Ireland in it, he proclaims. A lot about being Irish, But there s also stuff about how difficult it is to raise kids as lapsed-Catholics and how you can never get coffee-flavoured coffee anywhere. Then, of course, there s Riverdance.
As my own modest exercise in locking and loading, I ll close the interview with a quickfire round:
Who would you like to see as the next Irish President?
I d love to see Bill Clinton as the Irish President. Just to get him off our backs.
What book are you reading at the moment?
I m re-reading The Butcher Boy cause the movie s coming out soon.
What s the best Roddy Doyle book?
The last one I read was Paddy Clarke which I liked. I saw The Van and I was very disappointed with that movie. I didn t like The Commitments movie either. It was a little Hollywoodesque for my money.
What s the most enjoyable journey you ve ever taken?
Bringing my baby son back from London when he was big and healthy.
Are you in favour of monogamy?
Yes.
What do you most dislike about your appearance?
My nose.
Van Morrison or U2?
Van Morrison, hands down. I like pretty much everything of his from the early days. Now, and since he found Jesus, I pick and choose. I make sure there s not too many religious anthems on an album of his before I buy it.
What do you never leave home without?
My lighter and cigarettes.
What is the trait you most deplore about yourself?
Sometimes I wish I was a little more calm.
Which historical figure do you most admire?
JFK.
What s your greatest fear?
Being a member of the Kennedy family. Waking up one day and, all of a sudden, you re in Hyannis Port. And they re going, Look, you gotta help hide Uncle Teddy, he keeps chasing my girlfriend around .
What s your idea of happiness?
Sitting out on the beach with my kids and having tons of money.
Do you drink Holsten Pils?
I do actually. Sometimes. When I m in England.
What keeps you awake at night?
Everything.
How would you like to die?
Quick and easy like my dad did, laughing at a joke with a drink in my hand. Ideally, in a pub in Killarney.
What s the most important lesson you ve learned from life?
Don t call the cop an asshole when he s giving you one more chance.
Denis Leary appears at the Olympia Theatre, Dublin in November, on Friday 7th, Saturday 8th and Sunday 9th. The first two shows are already sold out.