WHAT does he do all day? This is what he does all day: "I get out of bed in the morning thinking `Oh my God, what I am doing with my life? How dare I think I'm funny?' and this mood lasts right up to the five minutes before the gig starts," says comic Ardal O'Hanlon in his soft Monaghan accent. "By this stage of the evening though, I'm thinking more along the lines of my material is no good, it's terrible and I've done it too many times. What am I playing at? What am I doing standing here? Then I go on, do the gig and afterwards I think to myself `This is brilliant, they all laughed, all those people out there love me.' That's my typical day."
It was the "oh my God, what am I doing with my life?" sentiment that dominated his thoughts one particular day in Dublin two years ago. Up to the age of 28 he was mildly content with writing "the funnies" for Phoenix magazine and gigging at the Comedy Cellar on Wicklow Street. Realising that in two years time he would be considered a veteran in stand-up comedy terms, he took the emigrant plane to London. His diary of what happened when he arrived makes for interesting reading.
Day 1: Arrive sign on dole. Day 3: Win Comedy Newcomer Of The Year Award at the Hackney Empire, come first out of 120 other comics. Day 6: Win "Spitting Image" performer of the year award. By Day 7 he had signed off the dole and the phrases "can't believe this is happening" and "it's like a rollercoaster" crop up regularly as he goes on to become one of the biggest box-office comics on the London circuit, to sell out his shared Edinburgh Festival show, get cast as Father Dougal McGuire in Father Ted, go on a one-month tour of Australia, play the prestigious Montreal Just For Laughs festival and win Top Television Comedy New-comer at the British Comedy awards.
The rush of success in such a short time is best summed up when the phlegmatic, laid back and even a touch lazy Ardal O'Hanlon writes at the end of the year: "This is the first time I've ever got excited about anything in my life.
The story takes a twist when you realise that Ardal O'Hanlon isn't your average pushy showbiz go-getter. He, is very wary of the term "ambition" - mainly because he thinks it might involve some hard work and all he's ever wanted to do in the way of employment is "something that doesn't involve too much energy". Brought up in Carrickmacross he was educated at Blackrock College, Dublin and after that did a suitably vague third-level course in communications. He thought it would be a good idea to avoid a nine-to-five job - "for my own political reasons" - and for a while entertained the notion of becoming a writer.
He got into stand-up comedy for the perfectly legitimate reason that it seemed like a very cool thing to do". He's old enough to remember the time when comedy was called "alternative" and says his first exposure to the pioneering programmes of the 1980s such as The Young Ones and Friday Night Live was "a godsend".
"I just couldn't believe you could get up on stage and talk like that," he remembers. "It was the immediacy of the whole thing and the talking to your friends about it the next day. When I started to do it myself in the Comedy Cellar it was just out of frustration at, not being able to write... I wanted to express myself to be articulate, to make sense of what I was feeling about things and thinking about things. I find that sort of communication very hard to do in a conversation. So I became a comic." After a pause he adds in an unusually solemn voice: "Comedy is a great medium for people who have very little talent in other areas.
The move to London, where his career has taken off over and above anybody's expectations, was prompted not just by frustration, but by a feeling that he was at the Last Chance Saloon. "It was a terrible wrench leaving Dublin I was living with my girlfriend, who's now my wife, and in a way I would have been content living there and having the occasional regret. Because of the fact that I'm not an overly ambitious person, in the pushy sense, I really worried about how I would get on over here. I'm not driven and I've no real hunger for the job so all that has happened has surprised me."
As night follows day so jealous follows success and he's had his fair share. "You get it a bit in dressing rooms, and it can get a bit tense. People sort of look of you as if to say how come you got to go on the fast track to success. It may sound like a cliche but what has happened to me over the last two years hasn't changed me, but it has changed some of the people I used to know. I'm not going to apologise for my success."
The dilemma he's in now, albeit a welcome dilemma, is that just as his stand-up career went into orbit, his character in Father Ted has made him a cult celebrity in trendy London media circles. "It is true that I'm stopped in the street and asked for my autograph as Dougal and not as Ardal and that is a bit strange at first. I see Ted as being a very enjoyable detour from what I really do. I'm delighted to be doing it but there is a significant difference between Dougal and Ardal."
Such is his perspective on the whole "television" experience that he says the highlight of the last, two years was doing his stand-up at Montreal's Just For Laughs rather than winning Comedy "Newcomer at the British Comedy Awards. "I won that award for Dougal and while in terms of my career, it's easily the biggest thing that's happened to me, personally I wasn't that excited. I was more excited putting on my first one-man show in Battersea Arts Centre - that was a real landmark for me - and anyway the Comedy Awards were a bit on the tense side you're sitting in this room full of big egos and it's not enjoyable." It" was a bit too bosy and backslapping for me. I don't mean to be an ingrate but it wasn't a big deal."
By the same token he won't find it a big deal doing a stand-up tour of New Zealand next month, or returning to put on his one-man show in a massive West En theatre, then taking it to Edinburgh and then all over the cities of Britain and Ireland. For Ardal O'Hanlon it's quite simple it's not big deal being a big deal.
