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Nigel Berman engages in a
little blarney with Brighton's leading Anglo-Irishman, funny
guy and
bestselling writer Pete McCarthy
 Pete McCarthy is one of the
golden ones. You know, those ones who are both gifted, and
lucky and successful. He has spent his life putting his energy
into doing the things he loves, and it has paid off; McCarthy
has been discovered, not just once, but at least three times.
Right now he's on the phone.
He's very apologetic but he can't meet me face to face, which
he would have preferred, and can we do the interview later on
today over the phone? He's just found out that he's flying to
Tangiers in the morning, one of his daughters is in a school
play tonight, there's something else he has to get done first,
and as he has to leave at about 5am tomorrow… well, it's
going to be tricky.
Despite all this madness,
McCarthy sounds as cool as a cucumber. And he's so
accommodating and reasonable. His warm northern lilt - he
hails from Warrington - could make anything sound plausible.
I've been chasing him for about two weeks, and this is the
first time we've spoken. So, no problemo, a phoner later on
today will be fine.
This speedy departure for
Tangiers is the beginning of an extended journey to research
his second book. His first, McCarthy's Bar, described in the
Oxford Times as "Bryson without the boring bits",
was set in Western Ireland, and was based around the premise
that you should never pass a bar that has your name on it. To
me it sounds not a million miles away from Dave Gorman,
another stand-up comedian, who has spent his life tracking
down other Dave Gormans. But "it's nothing like
that," according to McCarthy.
In fact McCarthy's Bar is more
than just a travel story. Born of an Irish mother and an
English father, McCarthy meanders through interesting
encounters and colourful characters exploring his confused
Anglo-Irish identity. "When I return to Ireland, I feel
that I belong in a way that I have never belonged in the land
of my birth," he writes.
His exploits and freewheeling,
humorous style paint a picture of "modern Ireland in all
its splendid contradictions," says the Daily Telegraph.
The book has been a great success, topping bestseller lists in
Ireland and around the world and establishing McCarthy as one
of the funniest writers around.
Comic writing and witty,
intelligent storytelling have been McCarthy's forte for the
best part of 23 years. Now 47 and living half an hour outside
Brighton, over the years McCarthy has been a performer, a
sketch writer, a stand-up comedian, a radio and television
presenter, and a travel writer. You may remember him from
Channel 4's Travelog, or Meridian's The Pier.
Although he has been writing and performing since the 1980s -
first in Brighton's Cliffhanger Theatre company, and then
doing one man shows and stand-up - he was first 'discovered'
in 1990 after telling an anecdote about having a hangover at
the bottom of the Grand Canyon on Radio 4's Loose Ends.
"It was a true story but it was part of a show I was
doing called The Hangover Show, which was short listed for the
Perrier Award in Edinburgh. I got a phone call at the theatre
the next day, from a woman who was about to put together a new
travel show for Channel 4. She said, 'it sounds like you might
have a new perspective on travel,' so they sent me off to
Paris."
"The brief was to do a
film that didn't have the Eiffel Tower in it. I'd never
presented before and never been on TV as myself. I'd appeared
on sketch shows and comedy shows and dramas but that was
always as an acting role or a stand-up role. They liked it and
they asked me to do another one and another one. The next year
they asked me to present the series, which I did for seven or
eight years. I also presented The Pier for three years, and I
got asked to appear on other things for Channel 4 and the BBC.
The way I got the job on Travelog, if I'd written to Channel 4
and said, 'I'm a comedian who writes this kind of thing,'
well, they get ten letters like that a day… "
But then McCarthy has made a
habit of being himself and doing what he loves; the breaks
have followed: "When we started Cliffhanger we barely had
enough to pay the rent, but it was a great thrill doing
something that I really loved and it still is."
Getting into offbeat travel
documentaries also allowed him to pretty much be himself:
"Very early on I tried to keep any artifice away from it,
I figured that if you put yourself on the screen, no one could
find gaps between your image and what you really were. There
was a consistent writer's voice behind everything I did. I was
shocked and outraged at how so many presenters don't write a
single word."
Ever since those early forays
into television presenting, he has always made a point of
writing every script himself, a skill he learned from writing
dozens and dozens of TV scripts through the 90s, from which he
says: "you get a very good discipline, of getting your
own voice down on paper."
These script-writing skills
were honed writing for Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones. "I
used to write the bits when they would come on in suits as
themselves, usually at the beginning or the end of the show.
There was quite a famous one, of the two of them talking about
men's fear of touching each other. It ends up with them French
kissing. I was in the studio when that was recorded, you could
hear the groan of revulsion from the audience at the thought
of having Mel Smith's tongue in their mouth… "
Smith and Jones 'discovered'
McCarthy through Cliffhanger shows: "They loved our shows
and we became friends .We had the same management as them for
a while, and one thing lead to another."
McCarthy is well aware of how
lucky he has been: "When I read about other people who
are far richer and more famous than I am, they rarely talk
about what a privilege it is, of doing what you love
doing."
"When I was in Australia,
I was doing some shows in an alternative book shop in Sydney
and the guy introducing me said he used to think he had the
best job in the World. 'We have 230 authors here in a year and
I get to meet them all, and it's a great job, and then I heard
about the fellow on tonight who's just spent a year wandering
around pubs and mountains, so here he is, the bastard…' The
downside of it is there's no security whatsoever - if the book
bombs or the next book bombs, where do you go from
there?"
"I meet a lot of young
comedians and I'm very aware of how focused and career minded
they seem to be. They have a plan, like how many years before
they have a TV chat show, things like that never crossed our
minds. I know a lot of performers who have thought like that
and who end up having nervous breakdowns."
"They have a very focused
view of how things will go and when they don't turn out like
that, they go bonkers. I've always been a great believer in
getting out there, doing what you do to the best of your
ability, and if you're lucky you'll get to go to interesting
places. I've always liked the unpredictability and the
uncertainty of it, that's why I enjoy travelling as
well."
Travelling to Ireland for
McCarthy's Bar has been described as a quest for identity, to
sort out the confusion of living in one country but loving
another. "I wouldn't make it quite so serious as that. I
spent all my childhood summers in Ireland, and I came to know
all my 30-odd relatives. I've always felt very at home there.
Whether it's possible to have such powerful feelings for a
country that you've never actually lived in, perhaps it's
genetic memory, or am I just a sad, romantic idiot who's
conned by the Guinness advertising?"
"In writing about Ireland,
I felt I understood the culture, because of going there so
much, and I thought that might be a good cornerstone on which
to base the book. I don't really feel Irish. I don't feel
anything. Because of always being aware of my Irish roots on
one side of the family, I never bought into any one country as
the best country in the world. Being an outsider does help.
Even having lived for 20 years in Sussex, I still feel an
outsider in lots of ways."
But has this caused a real
identity crisis? "Yes, when England play Ireland at
sporting occasions, I'm left confused. Although normally I
would support the underdog. But then I think that we are a
group of islands with a confused identity, any talk of racial
purity is nonsense, if you look at the history and the amount
of traffic there has been, we're a great mixture. The book has
done very well internationally, I believe, because all over
the world there are people who have grown up in one place, but
their parents have come from another."
In typical McCarthy style, the
book came about while he was doing Travelog. He was approached
by a couple of publishers, who said: "We've been watching
you for ages, why don't you write a book about all this?"
"I've been meaning to write a book," I said,
"but first I'd like to write this book on Ireland."
They said, "Ireland? But you're English?" So I wrote
an introduction and a couple of chapters, it went out to four
publishers, and they all wanted it, so I was auctioned, got a
two book deal with Hodders, so now I've been able to write
full time."
"The thing I miss most
about TV is collaboration with other people - I enjoy that
very much, especially when you get on very well. But I'm very
much enjoying this particular stage."
Might he be missing out on
other TV work by taking time out to write? "We live in a
very opportunistic world. There is an awful lot of
fly-on-the-wall TV on at the moment. My moles at the BBC tell
me that the programme ideas that are coming through give you
the horrors. I'm not a big fan of reality on TV, and for the
time being the well-crafted, documentaries have disappeared
over the horizon. I just wanted to see if the book would stand
up."And the new book? At the moment, he's being fairly
enigmatic about it, except to say that it has nothing to do
with bars. "The Ireland book was very focused, and was
based in a piece of land I know very well. I wanted to do
something that had more of an epic sweep to it. It's taking me
to Tangiers, the West Indies, Tasmania, New York, Newfoundland
and Alaska. If anyone can come up with a unifying concept for
all those places, they win a weekend for two in Paris,"
he jokes.
The interview comes to an end.
McCarthy has been polite, answered all my questions and even
made me laugh a couple of times. What's more he's inspired me
enough to consider trying to hunt down Berman's Bars. If it
works for him… !
Pete McCarthy reads from
McCarthy's Bar at Komedia on Friday 23 March, 8.30pm. £8/£6
conc. Late Bar.
McCarthy's Bar is published in paperback on March 16.
copyright New Insight 2000
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