Declan Duffy told David Hennessy about his one man show Call Yourself An Irishman?
Declan Duffy’s one man show Call Yourself an Irishman? explores issues of second generation Irish identity.
Declan is one of these people himself born in London to parents from Cavan.
The show explores Irish identity amongst those born in Britain to Irish parents and
grandparents.
It considers the complex history between the two nations and the experiences and realities of those Irish who moved to Britain and the impact their doing so has had upon their
children born and raised here.
In the show Declan tries to make sense of it all.
Often times poignant the show is also funny and includes music including the quintessential London Irish song, Maybe It’s Because I’m an Irish Londoner by The BibleCode Sundays.
Declan presented the show in London for two dates earlier this summer. Next month he will take it to the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith before taking it to Guildford, Liverpool, Manchester and to Ireland and even Cavan, the home of his parents, next year.
What reactions have you got to the show so far?
“All of the responses have been very good.
“People have been extremely encouraging and what they’ve wanted to do is tell me how much of their own story I’ve just told back to them which was exactly what I was hoping for.
“People who have been born here to Irish parents of all generations have all said to me that their experiences are my experiences and my way of being able to simply lay out in front of them what is my story, but is, in fact, their story is what’s really drawn them into it.
“When I started, I wanted two reactions.
“From second and third generation Irish people, I wanted them to feel that I was telling their story and from non-Irish people, I wanted them to tell me that they had learned something and that there was a lot of this that they didn’t know, and that’s been happening as well.
“So the response thus far has been great.”
Do you remember what inspired you to start writing this show?
“I’ve been doing some acting locally and there was a lady who’d seen a number of the things I’ve been in and said, ‘You need to write a one man show’.
“I dismissed the idea immediately because I’d never done that.
“I’m a musician and I could put a set list together for you in five minutes but I’d never done anything that involved writing for the stage but within a couple of months, the idea had crystallised in my head.
“She was right.
“I had to write something for myself to deliver and so I just started with the maxim that many writers start with, write what you know.
“I was born in London to Irish parents who ran pubs.
“They weren’t in Kilburn or Willesden or anywhere like that where you would expect there to be a lot of Irish people, they were actually right opposite Kensington Gardens.
“They ran a pub called The Black Lion on Bayswater Road and that was where my formative memories began.
“Then they moved to Ealing so, of course, more Irish people there.
“I just started writing about my memories of being amongst Irish people and being in pubs and how all of that had affected me as I’d grown up because both myself and my sister have a very strong Irish identity.
“We acknowledge that we’re Londoners, we’re born and raised in London, we’ve never lived in Ireland but we’ve always been very keenly attached to our Irish ancestry.
“I just started writing about all of that.
“And then I thought to myself, ‘Well, I can’t really tell this story without saying why the Irish are over here’.
“So then I started looking into all the reasons the Irish came over.
“I started thinking, ‘Well, there is such a huge breadth of information there in why the Irish came to be in Britain’.
“So it broadened and it basically encompassed the full gamut of Anglo-Irish history.
“It took me years to get to write it and then with all of that research that I’d done, bring it back down to something that can fit into an hour and 15 minutes on stage rather than four and a half hours on stage which I think would be pushing the goodwill of any audience really.”
What was it like for you to grow up Irish in London?
“I became aware through going to Ireland on holidays and also going to church over here and reading the Irish newspapers in this country that we were part of a community and at school that there were some other people that were a part of this community as well.
“And then joining the local football team, Ealing Whistlers.
“We played in the Harrow Youth League so we were playing teams from Neasden, Willesden, Wembley, Harrow so we were playing against teams who were similarly Irish to ourselves.
“We had a lot of players in the team from all over the place but the clubs were run by Irish fellas so all of that- the pubs, the football, school- really formed in our heads.
“We weren’t like our friends that were fully English.
“We were Londoners and we had a very strong identity from this other place that was Ireland.
“There would have been times where non-Irish kids at school would say things.
“Sometimes they were unkind, not always.
“Sometimes it would just be, ‘Your dad speaks differently’, just something like that.
“It wouldn’t necessarily be something where someone was trying to ridicule us.
“Of course that ridicule took place, of course it did but it would be people saying things like, ‘I like the way your mum and dad speak’.
“When you had an Irish teacher they might say, ‘Oh Declan Duffy, you’re Irish’, and then realising that there was that little bond that had formed there.
“The staff working in mum and dad’s pubs who would come over from Ireland and they would treat us as one of them, it wasn’t like we were English people.
“Because they knew mum and dad were Irish, they treated me and Roisin the same.
“So I wouldn’t say there was one thing that suddenly made me think, ‘Goodness, I’m Irish’.
“It was that whole amalgam of everything I’ve just gone through with you there that built this identity, patchwork, all of it coming in and making us realise how we were being formed.”
Of course that was also the time of the IRA bombing campaign and much anti- Irish feeling, do you remember becoming aware of any of that because the community was under siege at that time..
“One key event was someone put an envelope through the door of our pub.
“It wasn’t quite a poison pen letter but it was a picture of whatever had been the most recent bombing and informed my dad, by name, that if there was another one of these in London, he would suffer the consequences and it didn’t really go beyond that.
“It didn’t really say what that meant.
“It probably meant a brick through the window or something like that.
“But that really does make you realise you’re part of a different community.
“But one thing I would say as well is that Mum and Dad were fully aware, to use your phrase there, parts of the community were under siege, they were aware of that.
“They would also tell you that personally they didn’t suffer an awful lot of it.
“Yes, there was that with Dad and Mum would tell you when she first came over and she was very young, working in restaurants, there would be the odd customer who wouldn’t want her to serve them because of her accent.
“But these were isolated incidents largely because Mum and Dad always ran very good pubs.
“They found that people were very willing to welcome them.”
What about on the other side? I’m sure in Ireland you were told more than once that you were ‘not Irish’..
“All the time, all the time.
“Sometimes it was our cousins just taking the mick because they knew we loved Ireland.
“But there were times where people would say with a bit more malicious intent or they’d hear your accent and then they’d mock your accent, that kind of thing you’d hear.
“Of course, that’s not a very nice thing to hear but as you grow older and you learn a bit more, you can put it in its historical context.
“I fully understand why Irish people in Ireland would resent British people being in Ireland and in terms of the historical context of that, of course I understand it all.
“It’s just when you’re growing up, you don’t like to hear it directed at you.
“In fact I would say we heard more of that kind of thing in Ireland than we did in England.
“We heard more in Ireland telling us we were English than we had English people over here telling ridiculing us for being Irish.”
Identity is a complex issue. Of course you’re right to feel Irish, the blood in your veins is 100% Irish..
“I try to unpick all of that in the show.
“I try to go through that.
“I mean ultimately you can only decide this for yourself.
“No one can enforce your identity upon you.
“You have to be the one that says, ‘Right, here is how I feel’.
“And you’ll have people telling you from both sides of the nationality divide.
“You’ll have people telling you what you should be and how you should feel and you can’t allow that.
“You can listen to it but you can’t allow it to influence you.
“Ultimately you’ve got to decide what your identity means to you and, ultimately, that’s where I get to in the show.
“It’s a case of saying to people, ‘I can’t give you the definitive answer to this because the answer is you’.”
I bet you never, even once, wore an England football shirt growing up, did you?
“I have never worn an England jersey.
“Italia ‘90 was probably the first tournament I have memories of.
“In the semi-finals, the famous semi-final where Paul Gascoigne was booked, I remember my sister really cheering for England.
“I remember my Dad wanting England to win.
“My mum was indifferent and, I still can’t fully understand it, I just found myself rooting for Germany.
“To this day the way I feel about the England football team is I feel like a neutral.
“I’m not one of these that wants England to lose whoever they’re playing against but I don’t find myself passionate about them winning.
“If England win, fine.
“If they lose, I don’t care.
“I’m honestly someone who’s agnostic about England.
“Me wearing an England Jersey would be like me wearing a Nigerian jersey or an Australian jersey.
“I would just be wearing it for the sake of putting it on.
“A lot of my friends born here to Irish parents, will quite happily wear an England Jersey and they’ll support England.
“And good luck to them.
“They find themselves becoming more passionate about England even though they love their Irishness.
“They identify as second generation Irish but they want England to do well.
“And that’s not weird to me.
“I don’t mind them wanting England to win.
“I just can’t find it in myself.
“I can’t find anything to get passionate about.
“We’ve all had people questioning it, asking us why we can’t support the team of the country we were born in and I understand those questions.
“I just can’t answer it.
“I don’t know why.
“It’s my Irishness, my second generation Irishness at that, which prevents me feeling English which is what I’m doing in the show, trying to make sense of all of that.”
You are a musician by trade and music is a feature of the show..
“I write music but I didn’t want any original music in it because I wanted to show, this was very important to me, that this story that I’m telling already exists in song.
“The obvious song that kind of themes the show is the BibleCode Sundays’ Maybe it’s Because I’m an Irish Londoner.
“I know the boys and I asked them could I use the song in the show and they were very good about it.
“From Clare to Here is in it.
“And London You’re a Lady by The Pogues, England’s Motorways.
“That was very important to me to have.
“If I’m talking about my London Irish identity, I’ve got to have music in it because music’s a part of my London Irish identity.”
There is also laughs along the way, isn’t that right?
“Yeah, I was very keen to try to make this an accurate representation of who we are so yes, it’s definitely poignant in places but it’s funny because what we’ve experienced is funny.
“I think I’ve tried to get that balance.
“I wanted there to be music, I wanted there to be laughs. I wanted there to be poignant aspects to it.
“I wanted it to present what we are and who we are.”
You said earlier you wanted those without Irish backgrounds to go away having learned something and you’ve seen it be the case. What have the reactions been there? What have they learned?
“A lot of English people weren’t aware of why Irish people started coming here, then they weren’t aware of the hard time the Irish had once they got here.
“So plenty of British people have said to me, ‘We just didn’t Know. Before we came here tonight, we did not know what the Irish experience in this country was like’.
“And they’ve said it’s quite sobering to hear all that.
“There’s that reaction to it which was almost a mea culpa like, ‘Sorry, we didn’t realise how beastly we have been to your people’.
“But then there’s also people who said that they’re English but their dad was let’s say Spanish and their mum was Portuguese so they can empathise with the show that way.
“Or they’re completely English but they’ve moved from somewhere down to the southwest and they felt like an outsider in that regard so I’m finding ways that, whether it’s through English or British people learning specifically about Ireland and the Irish experience or people who are just realising that at some point or another in their lives they’ve been an outsider, they’re connecting with it that way.”
Declan Duffy brings Call Yourself An Irishman? to The Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith on Wednesday 17 September and Friday 10 October, to the Guildford Arts Centre on Thursday 18 September, Liverpool Irish Festival on Monday 20 October, St Paul’s Centre in Chorlton-on-Medlock on Wednesday 22 October, The Garage Theatre, Monaghan on Tuesday 10 February 2026, St Patrick’s Hall, Sherlock, Cavan on Thursday 12 February, 2026 and Ramor Theatre, Cavan on Friday 13 February 2026.
For more information, click here.