PJ Gallagher, the stand-up comedian familiar to many from TV shows like Naked Camera or The Young Offenders, was born to be a storyteller. The co-host of Radio Nova’s Morning Glory can fill almost an entire page with something as unremarkable as his switch from Penney’s baggy jocks to “grown-up pants that good-looking people wear” and get away with it. Not only does he get away with it, but he does so with a gloriously unabashed, almost childlike disregard for so-called “adult boundaries”.
Reading Gallagher’s life story, divided into bite-size chapters with memorable titles like “Matchstick mickey shit sticks” and “Booze”, feels real and intimate, as though you are being invited into the bedroom of an old mate. Incidentally, this bedroom is plastered with posters of AC/DC, Alice Cooper, Iron Maiden and The Misfits.
Each chapter, containing one or more vignettes from his earliest years right up until his self-admission to St Pat’s hospital in 2021, could, in theory, stand alone as a successful comedy skit. Yet, when presented as a collection, the stories hang together to form a cohesive narrative populated by familiar characters. Among them is his Ma who “the second one drop of alcohol hit her lips… put on a posh Dublin accent”, his Da with his “magic can of Guinness”, his sister Stacey who showed up “one day, out of the blue”, a string of much beloved pet dogs and the six “mad” lodgers who received a robust daily serving of different coloured pills.
[ Madhouse review: PJ Gallagher’s gently comic coming-of-age storyOpens in new window ]
Written in prose that is bare, unassuming and delightfully idiomatic, Madhouse seamlessly blends the quotidian with the profoundly insightful. These insights surface unexpectedly, as when, after painting an image of himself as a kid guzzling seven Lucozades in his family’s northside pub, he suddenly reflects, “In every pub you can see the tragedy, but you don’t care, you just carry on. There’s no other activity in life you can say that about.”
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Other insights are less philosophical than poignant, presented from the perspective of a child, but viewed through the lens of an adult’s hindsight: “Booze was always a presence and a problem in our lives, not that I knew drink was the problem, I just assumed adults got a bit nasty after dark.”
Gallagher’s somewhat masked nuggets of wisdom are padded by a healthy dose of fluffy stories. These anecdotes are designed neither to question the status quo nor to inspire the reader to reflect on life’s tragedies. Instead, they serve to deflect the reader away from such tragedies through a perfectly timed belly laugh. This commitment to the kind of pure, unregulated, riotous entertainment that leaves people “in actual physical pain from laughing”, appears to mirror his philosophy on comedy: “Don’t make ‘em think, make ‘em LAUGH… Make them forget what’s in the real world.”
From motorbike racing to dogs revelling in that triumphant moment of a well-earned poop, Gallagher joyfully acknowledges his ability to “say nothing about nothing”. In much the same vein, he openly confesses his aversion to hard work: “Even in Junior Infants, I was half-arsing stuff, and I’ve managed to build an entire career on half-arsing everything ever since.” When it comes to his talent in performing, he is quick to note that stand-up comedy is not an art form but merely “scribbling, the verbal equivalent of graffiti”.
These admissions of his own shortcomings, presented with a kind of inverted pride, expose his deep understanding of Irish humour, which at its core, revolves around self-deprecation. With a certain undeniable relish, he willingly volunteers to be the punchline of every joke.
Beyond his relentless pranks, Gallagher sees the good in people, expressing love and affection for his adoptive parents despite their very visible flaws. He is forgiving of the psychiatric patients – one of whom was convinced that “there was a Jack Russell in their belly” – whose erratic behaviour contributed to what was already a chaotic, unpredictable childhood. Unlike Gallagher’s Naked Camera characters who were, by his own description, perverted, egomaniacal and dull, the men who lived in the house “were [never] obnoxious or cruel on purpose; they were just eccentric, addicted, or screwed up. For all of their faults, they were never boring.”
Gallagher’s musings on depression (“the single most articulate liar you will ever meet in your life”), joining Hell’s Angels, and discovering that he and his partner, both polyamorous, are expecting twins, make for a colourful end to the book.
The comedian himself would probably admit that he is unlikely to be in line for the Nobel Prize in Literature any time soon. Nevertheless, Madhouse offers a vibrant, poignant and surprisingly hopeful portrayal of the life of a man who, despite facing enormous early-life adversity, is doing his utmost to “find a place to call home”.
