School’s out and Des Bishop can now speak and perform as gaeilge. Ireland’s adopted son of comedy has been transformed from a spectator to a player with a more attuned sense of awareness. Visiting UCH on Saturday February 28, don’t miss his brand new show Unbéarlable, a hilarious look at life after learning Irish, for a native New Yorker finding his way.
Des chats to the Limerick Post ahead of the show.
“It’s the first show I have done in ages that’s not connected to a massive television experience that I have been involved with which is almost liberating”, he says of his new stand up show. “I was in Australia recently there’s a lot of stuff abut that, I try to explore intimacy a little bit, or fear there of and Irish people and emotions. It can be misconstrued as an exploration of Irish things, I’m in Ireland so I tend to talk about Irish people but they are universal issues. I’m talking about myself really and I know that everyone can identify with it”.
Des’s journey learning Irish was documented for his third television series In the Name of the Fada. Broadcasting to record numbers in March last year, Des went on to perform to sell out crowds with his stand up show Tongues based on the same experience. His subsequent preoccupation with the language and how it is being taught saw Des create an online learning Irish tool on desbishop.com and record and release Jump Around as gaeilge. “I haven’t put it to bed, I’m trying to keep the momentum alive but for some reason when I started writing this new show, new funny ideas didn’t come into my head. I think a lot of the humour in that was really about learning it and I think now the only thing funny about the Irish language is to just be funny in Irish which I’m not going to do on this tour. A lot of people just wouldn’t be into that. I’m writing an easy to read book in Irish about my life taking it away from stand up but keeping it alive in other ways”.
Des has met both Ministers of Education and Taoiseach Brian Cowen to discuss the current Irish curriculum. His efforts for the Irish language culminated just recently with the Gael n Bliana, awarded to Des by Foinse. “It’s not the schools, it’s the curriculum and everyone knows it’s not conducive to learning Irish that’s why I’m not criticising teachers, they get way too much criticism in my book anyway. Really teachers don’t have much choice they have to teach a s**t curriculum. Even in the Dept of Education there is a will to change it, it’s a case of breaking through all the bureaucracy and not ruffling feathers. When someone moves to Connemara for a year and is completely fluent at the end of it, it breaks through a lot of the arguments about whether it’s taught well at school, people learning it for 14 years can hardly speak a word of it so that’s a strong mandate for change. When you get people to just care they are not motivated, the TV programme made people care to want it to be different”.
Des really enjoyed his time in the Gaeltacht and the sense of community he experienced bound by a language. “I have always ended up living in places that have a strong sense of community, usually they are marginalised communities but for all the problems that exist in theses places there is a huge sense of community. Religion has faded as our main moral guide book, loads of things have been in a constant state of flux in our society, in many ways we haven’t really developed a new set of rules. Until we start to realise this, people will be lost and then we have all these other problems”.
Comedy brings a fresh approach to these issues, with Des adding, “it’s very accessible, it’s an art form unlike theatre or any of the visual arts, it tends to not intimidate people so you get people from marginalised communities and people from the most privileged communities all engaging in it in the same way, it’s a powerful medium.
Des has been a frequent face on the comedy circuit here, he also filmed his Des Bishop In The Hood Series for RTE in Southill. “I love Limerick, I have been coming here for a long time, UL has been doing comedy gigs for ages and the Comedy Club at Dolan’s. I’ve always had a soft spot for Limerick I’ve done more gigs in Limerick when nobody knew who I was if you know what I mean. By the time I got to Southill I was pretty familiar with Limerick I have never had that naïve opinion that Limerick was a place of violence, I’ve never believed that for a second.”
Des was 14 when he moved to Ireland with his family still living in the US, he has a huge connection to it. He is thrilled with the up turn in American politics with the inauguration of Barack Obama. “I was more moved by his acceptance speech, from the moment he begun he has shown that he’s more than this charismatic figure with a slogan he’s definitely a good guy for the job, I’m not saying he’s a messiah, he’s everything I would admire in a leader. I’m really happy and from a historical point of view it reminds people that for all its faults America is pretty innovative when it comes to driving change and even though America was founded on the destruction of the American Indians which was a tragedy, the people that came since have proven themselves as a result of being an amalgamation of different cultures to be a very good representation of modern humanity. American’s get a lot of criticism but Barack Obama represents the type of American that I wanted to be as a child and not the stereotypical American that people perceive Americans to be”.
Catch Unbearlable at UCH on Saturday February 28 for one night only. Tickets are priced at €25 and are available by calling 061 331 549 or visiting www.uch.ie.
