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Thursday 16 October 2008

A child of the Troubles

A child of the Troubles with a smile on his face

An interview with Patrick Kielty

Kielty is adamant that he harbours no sense of bitterness, and that anger has never informed his humour. ‘It’s a nice idea, isn’t it, that when your father is murdered you can just put on a comedy Batman cape and start fighting evil with humour? I don’t believe anger makes for great jokes. Cynicism might, to an extent, but not anger.

‘My father was killed in a blatant sectarian attack based on the fact he was a Catholic and that he ran a business which employed people from both sides of the community. I have –— with my mother and two brothers — dealt with what happened. It’d have been a lot harder if he had been implicated in terrorism in any way, but happily he wasn’t.’

He says that, in terms of making jokes about the Troubles, which he did in the early days of his career, his father had effectively given him ‘a Get Out of Jail Free card’. A number of recent headlines demonstrate, however, that that waiver does not extend to any of the other traditional no-go areas in comedy.

Of the furore that ensued when he employed the word ‘gayer’ as an adjective to describe a contestant on Fame Academy, he is unrepentant. He said he got a letter from an organisation called Gay People for Integration into Mainstream Society. ‘They told me it was actually helpful to their cause when the word gay was used in a harmless context like that. I think you don’t help to integrate any group of people when you ban even gentle references to them.’

As for the McCanns, he insists he never joked about them — as the newspapers claimed — but about the Pope. ‘It was about his double standards in deciding to meet a couple whose child had possibly been taken by a paedophile when he presides over a Church that is full of them. I am a Catholic myself and I think it is acceptable to make jokes about figureheads and big organisations, but not, of course, individuals such as Mr and Mrs McCann.’ The irony that a comedian can make jokes about the Pope but not about the McCanns is lost on Kielty.

Then there is that other word — Islam — which comedians are not supposed to utter. He says he never makes jokes about Muslims, only Muslim terrorists. Al-Qa’eda, he says, holds no terrors for him. ‘Since 9/11 there have been two bombs. One in London and one in Madrid. That’s two bombs in six years. Coming from where I have, I can tell you that’s not a campaign. It’s a hobby. When I grew up, terrorism was a career. It was like being a member of a 1970s rock band. You started when you were 17, went to England to make a name for yourself and then to America to make your money, and then, if the work dried up, there was always politics. These new terrorists are like X Factor winners. They have one big hit and then you never hear from them again.’

Tim Walker is the Sunday Telegraph’s Mandrake editor and theatre critic.

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