Niall McDonagh never expected to become a television presenter, but he has turned out to be a dab hand at giving familiar topics a twist. Ruadhán Mac Cormaic reports
An experiment. Gather two dozen Irish people in a single harshly-lit room of an early evening. Remove all concessions to conviviality and taste, anything that might be construed as a conversational ice-breaker. Sweep away the props, be done with the comforts. (If it were possible, you would ban idle patter about the weather, commuting times, house prices or the cost of petrol, but good science knows its parameters.) Take away every social crutch except the big one: beer.
Free drink for everyone! Observe change over time by adding the screeching sound of violin strings bowed by an untrained arm. Take the most irritating tune committed to the airwaves and play it on an incessant loop at high volume until the CD melts. Finally, add a noxious-smelling commercial chemical and allow your guests to be overcome slowly by their own awkwardness. They're free to leave, but on one condition: he who goes can't come back. What happens?
Yes. Afraid so. Nobody budges. Smiles all round. Free drink! Three cheers for the host.
It is funny and it is sad, one of a few such moments in the first episode of Peacaí Neelo, a new TG4 series on Ireland's vices presented by Niall McDonagh. In another scene, McDonagh stands on Wenceslas Square, in Prague (the Czechs being the heaviest drinkers in Europe), at 2am and waits for the brawls, the scraps, the smashes and the yells - what in Ireland we like to call revelry. He waits. Save for the obligatory cameo by the generic imported hen party, nothing. Still he waits. The shortest volley of wanton curses, perhaps? A drunken lick of the camera lens, anyone? He goes home.
McDonagh's series takes familiar subjects - drinking, gambling, eating, smoking, cursing and cannabis-smoking - and, instead of a po-faced pummelling, gives them a light going-over while pointing the viewer to the odd and the overdone. So although the programme on alcohol includes an interview with Michael McDowell, the Minister for Justice - McDonagh: "So, where do you drink yourself?" McDowell: "Oh, I drink all over the place" - it is made up mainly of vox pops and scenarios such as these.
"It was a chance to play with the themes we had," McDonagh says. "The thing was to strike a balance. We're not Prime Time, and you can see much better footage there of fighting on the streets of Dublin than we'd be able to get. So we thought, What can we do? We try to take a light-hearted look while being semi-serious. Not to try to be absurd all the time but to take it one step further. To try some hypotheses. What do people do in certain situations?"
The light touch has been his signature over this and the previous series of Neelo, broadcast on TG4 last year. Then, one programme brought him to Kentucky, to attend a Ku Klux Klan festival. Some thought he was too easy on his subjects, that he should have challenged them more forcefully than he did. It was a difficult position, but McDonagh says he could achieve more of an effect without hollering angry ripostes to every chilling word. A deftly timed glance at the camera, a raised eyebrow, a shift in the seat or a well-timed silence is all that is needed when faced by the bile of a skinhead wielding an AK-47 and disputing that Egypt is in Africa.
That first series came about when his friend and director, Rónan Ó Donnchadha, suggested him to the commissioning editors at TG4, who were looking for a new presenter. He had been acting on stage and television for years but had never fronted a show. "They said yes to me. It's amazing that a TV station would say, yeah, go out and make that and we'll see how it goes. And they commissioned 13 shows."
When he finishes recording the current series, he'll start rehearsals for the Cinderella pantomime due to open in Galway at the start of January. Neelo has expanded his range and widened his reach, but performing gives him his most cherished days. "I prefer performing. Now, with the panto, it's playtime for eight hours a day. There's not many jobs where you get to love what you're doing for eight hours a day. Though the presenting is brilliant - and the chance to see the world and get paid for it was incredible - I'm not a polished, classical presenter.
"Some people think panto's not worth it, but the chance to get kids enjoying theatre, to get that interest going, I love that. If you see something good in the theatre, it'll stick with you. It's better than anything you'll see in the cinema."
McDonagh went to an Irish-language primary school and later studied the language at University College Dublin. He doesn't need telling of his luck in making a living through Irish. "It was something I always maintained a love for. I never thought I'd get to use it for work, but I went and did it [ at college]. Now I've got a group of friends who I only speak Irish with, which I love. I'm proud of it, that I'm living half my life as Gaeilge."
Peacaí Neelo is on TG4 on Monday at 10.30pm. Niall McDonagh appears in Cinderella at the Black Box, Galway, from January 1st