Jarlath Regan returned to the Literary and Historical Society earlier this month to receive the James Joyce Award - an award that he dreamt up. Regan has over 380k followers on Instagram and is coming to the end of his ‘In Bits’ tour which has seen him play everywhere from Killarney to Chicago. Regan spoke to The University Observer in the weeks leading up to the presentation in Fitzgerald Chamber, and a day before the release of his new book.
So what were you like back in UCD?
JR: I definitely showed up in UCD and was a very different person to who I am now. I didn’t really know why I was there or what I was doing there, I just knew I had to come to college. I didn’t have any idea where I was going and arts was just the most general thing I could do. It’s the least amount of hour you can do while still claiming to be in college.
How did you fill your other hours?
JR: I was utterly obsessed with basketball and playing for UCD. I was getting up at 7am and getting up and lifting weights and shooting hoops. I was definitely a jock, mixed with a debater. I loved debating and was deadset on being in the LnH.
With basketball, being part of the University Observer and auditor of the LnH you were obviously pretty involved. How does it feel to be coming back to get the James Joyce award, an award that you created?
JR: The previous year, Brian Flanagan was auditor and he magicked up the idea of a fellowship. Lord of the Rings had come out and it sounded cool. It was the top dog award - you’re becoming a fellow of the LnH! He got some fantastic guests. What we needed, was a second tier prize that could draw people who we couldn’t quite offer a fellowship to but wanted to get them in the building.
The James Joyce award, like every other award, is dreamt up. And this one in particular was dreamt up, by me and my treasurer, smoking cigarettes in Roebuck. We had no idea what the name would do, and what it would become. We never dreamed people would prefer a James Joyce award to a fellowship. The full circle of me actually receiving it is absolutely hilarious, it’s thrilling, exciting and beautiful to me.
When we described it and we wrote the letter to the first person to receive it, who was Damien Duff, we wrote the letter and it say “You are being given the James Joyce Award for achieving excellence in the field of excellence”. So I get that it’s silly. All awards are silly - but still pretty cool.
As a final point on your time in UCD, you met your wife Tina in UCD, can you tell us about that?
JR: Everyone who goes to UCD, especially to study arts, will at one point or another have that person that makes their eyes pop out of their head. She was mine. I remember seeing her across theatre L and fully having the ‘holy shit moment’. I immediately started establishing if we had friends, if we had connections.
I started positioning myself in politics lectures to sit next to her. But every time I sat next to her she would look at me, scoot away and think “why on earth is this person trying to sit next to me”, not at all twigging that this was my attempt at flirting. Months went by and we ended up being at a residence party in Roebuck Hall and telling my friends after a few drinks that I was going to sort it out tonight. I said “I bet you she’s down at the bar” and I went for it as she was leaving. I literally grabbed her arm as she was leaving, and said “it’s me”. The man at the door tried to stop me as I had a pint in my hand and she was totally freaked out, but we’ve been together for 25 years since that day. We have a child, we’ve been married for 16 years and I’m the very luckiest of the lucky. Who gets to find the love of their life in the student bar during their first term in college? She’s now my manager and she’s an extraordinary person and I love her with all my heart.
So moving on to your career, when did you decide that comedy was something you were going to pursue?
JR: So I had worked in an office in Dublin, in graphic design consultancy, and I can’t say I was doing well there. I was deeply unhappy in that job and they let me go pretty promptly. I went home and started looking for a job and I was on the Jobs website. I remember I was doing my CV when my girlfriend at the time, now wife, was like “What are you doing” and I said “Trying to get another job” and she goes “You know what your job is. You’re a comedian. Stop kidding the world”.
Talk to us about the Irish Man Abroad Podcast. How did that come about and did you ever dream it would be such a success.
JR: I had moved to London and it was slow. It was a very panicky period for me. I was really suffering with a lot of anxiety and chest pain at night because I had a small baby and wife and I was in a completely strange place.
And that’s how the Irish Man Abroad podcast series came about. Trying to find people in my phone book who could advise me. I was wondering how I do this abroad and how does a person follow their passion.
You’ve obviously become huge on social media, how did that start and how does online content compare to in-person stand up?
JR: I was very scared of online. Like so many people, I find it so revealing. There’s so much potential for embarrassment. What if nobody likes it? What if people troll me?
It took me until January 2023. I had posted stuff, but I committed to posting every day. That’s what the algorithm requires and it changed my life in the space of a couple of months. I couldn’t sell out shows in January 2023, by the following January I was doing five nights sold out in the Olympia.
There’s so many differences. It’s a completely different set of tools. The online stuff requires you to be a TV station. You need to learn the editing, the subtitles and everything else. It’s completely different timing and you have to learn it.
The In Bits Tour is finishing up at the moment and you’ll be straight into the Gas Man tour in January. How do you find touring?
JR: I can’t tell you how much I love it. I cannot describe how privileged and grateful I am to get to go and play these massive rooms, when I’ve lived the other side of it. From 2005 to January 2023 I saw the other side of it. And now, getting to tour and go to these places to play to these crowds is a high thrill.
Getting back to your podcasting world for a moment, you also host a podcast with your wife Tina, called ‘Honey, you’re ruining our kid’. How did that come about?
JR: My wife, Tina, is a trained Montessori teacher. She’s the brain of the operation. The show came about as a result of her finishing the school day and she would give parents a strategy on how to cope with their child’s behavior. They’d come back the next day and say ‘you’ve changed our lives!’. They say to her, you could make a podcast out of this.
She told me this and I was at home with the mics at and I said ‘let’s go’. So we did it. It went to number one in the parenting charts right away. We’re on the fourth season now and the people that listen to it absolutely worship Tina. They really need her help so we have that still going and it’s still flying in the charts.
So, what can you tell us about your new book?
JR: It is a book for the times we live in. It is called ‘The Gobshite Guidebook’. Anyone who’s trying to navigate the world at the moment knows that gobshites are having a really good time. They’re getting elected and they seem to be in a lot of positions of power. They’re also remarkably successful in romance!
Oftentimes, people are very confused as to whether they are gobshites. It’s a self help book in a way as it shows you how to navigate the gobshites in your life but it’s also just to laugh at the absurdity of these people.
Have you found as a comedian you’ve had to watch your step, in terms of the growing threat of ‘being cancelled’?
JR: I mean, isn’t that how we move through the world? It’s that manners? I get that we have to be free and there has to be a certain amount of creative license. I do agree that the joke that you’re most afraid of saying is the one that you should be saying. But it’s how you say it. Tone is everything.
You have to make sure it’s your joke to make. It’s the same reason that Quentin Tarantino got criticized for Django. Was that his film to make?
Of course I have to watch my step. It would be tone deaf to not take into account the feelings of other people. I produce all my comedy with a consciousness for the well-being of others, and I don’t think that’s a crazy thought!
Thank you very much to Jarlath Regan for speaking with the University Observer. You can buy Jarlath’s new book ‘The Gobshite Guidebook’ at bookstores now and follow him on Instagram @jarlathregan_irishmanabroad.