Double Troubles

What do you do when one of your pivotal characters runs off with a Basque separatist called Ronaldo? You dig up a sister for her, of course. And make her a glam, failed singer with a dodgy past to boot.

When Nuala McKeever, who played Emer in Give My Head Peace (GMHP), the Belfast-based Hole in the Wall Gang's popular TV comedy on BBC Northern Ireland got her own UTV chat show, the Gang's writer-performers, Damon Quinn, Michael McDowell and Tim McGarry, while wishing her well in her new career, made the most of the opportunities it presented. The three former lawyers, whose speciality is drawing comedy - whether satire or slapstick - from Northern Ireland's tragedies, invented a ridiculous plotline which involved Emer scarpering to Spain before the opening episode, to the delight of her family and in-laws (Look on the bright side, her Da tells Ma, "we've lost a daughter, but we've also lost a son-in-law").

"It was problematical in that Emer was the link between two families - they wouldn't be together were it not for the fact that Billy knew Emer," says Quinn. The series was built around the clash of cultures when Catholic Emer married Protestant RUC officer Billy (Michael McDowell), to the constant irritation of her parents (played by Tim McGarry and Olivia Nash) and his Uncle Andy (Martin Reid), and the fodder for much humour.

The link between the two families was severed, so for the current series "we came up with the very imaginative idea of Emer having a sister [Dympna], and also used the opportunity to go for a much stronger character. She's also a bit glamorous. She's an ex-failed singer and she's lived in England for quite a while and really doesn't have any time for any of this sectarian nonsense in the way that Emer was a kind of "let's join hands across the barricades" person. It has got a great reaction, and it's helped with the storylines - what happens to Billy when Emer leaves him? - and we have started to do things with Dympna. We've got into her murky past for the last episode. . ." The episode involves her ex-boyfriend, an east-end gangster, coming to Belfast.

Primarily made up of satirists, the group is celebrated for its live shows (the latest of which is being recorded at the Belfast Grand Opera House as a BBC special this autumn) as well as series such as Perforated Ulster, the satirical comedy which ran on Radio Ulster for four years. But they have consciously broadened their humour: "You can't make a prime-time Friday night show just for people who read the Guardian or The Irish Times. It has to be popular. It's been a good departure for us as well - there's a lot of slapstick in the show, and things that are just funny. It has helped us as writers to be just funny," says Quinn.

Another movement away from satire is the BBC radio show, Half Sketch Half Biscuit, of which they've just done a TV pilot for BBC2 - "there's a lot of surreal stuff in there, and a smidgin of satire".

Quinn, who is now associate producer of GMHP as well as co-writer and playing Cal ("It was a way of getting paid a third wage!" he says) says that a popular comedy was something they always wanted to do. "You have to work with where you get your first break and ours was in satire. And of course we were all lawyers, so writing satire happened very easily for us, having the jaded view of life we would have as lawyers."

"GMHP is a popular comedy show, a local sitcom designed for a local audience. Because we have the background in satire there's satire in there for those that have an appetite for it," he adds. The local nature of it "tends to be a problem when you try to sell it on anywhere else, because you've got to put local references in. So, while a joke about Michelle Smith de Bruin could work most places, Bob McCartney probably doesn't travel very far." He pauses. "Thankfully."

He points out that the Belfast setting is very particular to the show - the format is based on two families - one Protestant, one Catholic. "But if you took that format and put it into South Africa - an Afrikaaner family and a black family - it would probably work in the same sense - you're looking at the two communities."

Northern humour is traditionally black, and the HITWG has been to the forefront in breaking boundaries even further in terms of where you can and cannot create comedy. The writers mention that people in the Republic are sometimes surprised at what they "get away with" in political terms in a sitcom, whereas in the North people just laugh at it. Quinn mentions M*A*S*H, which was set against the backdrop of the Korean war, as an example of how comedy can exist in conflict situations. "You can deal with these issues in a broad sense, but obviously people being killed or disappearing or the sort of things that are happening over in Drumcree aren't of themselves funny. Having said that, some of the characters we're poking fun at are."

Uncle Andy, for example, a bigoted loyalist and a hate-filled bag of bile: "There's no doubt Uncle Andy is the hit character, among Catholics as much as Protestants. He's such a huge cartoon character - it's quite funny that this Orange bigot has Catholic fans. Kids love him, cause he's such a big, larger than life character and he's got all the best wisecracks, he's got a big Zapata moustache and he's an Elvis fan - an Orange Elvis fan - such an image."

In the opening episode, as Billy drowns his sorrows at Emer's departure, Andy roars: "Not my Malibu! I was saving it for a special happy occasion - like the collapse of the Belfast agreement."

Give My Head Peace is on BBC1 on Friday nights