David Hennessy spoke to the friends behind the new Irish Londoners Podcast.
When friends Ryan McGill, John Paul Burke and Andy Nolan recently released their new podcast The Irish Londoners Podcast they were not expecting it to resonate so widely and have been overwhelmed by the response.
Andy Nolan has often been featured in The Irish World. Previously a member of The BibleCode Sundays, he now plays music with Two Canoes and The Reels. We also covered his recent launch of the book, Green Bloods. He has also written and produced short films like Tax City and Jack Mulligan.
Ryan McGill has experience in radio and it was in lockdown that he decided to return to his passion calling on Andy and John Paul for the new venture.
In the 12 episodes they discuss their common London Irish upbringing and lives.
Mick Lynch, former leader of the RMT, is a special guest on one episode but mostly it is the three lads talking about everything from the church, Mandy’s shop in Willesden, playing GAA and the common but varied Irish experience in London.
We caught up with the three lads to talk about the new podcast at the London Irish Centre in Camden.
Where did the idea come from? How did The Irish Londoners Podcast start?
Ryan: “I’m a failed radio DJ.
“It didn’t really quite work out for one reason or another.
“After that I got a proper job or just carrying on with life as you do.
“It was something I wanted to come back to.
“I had a lot of time to reflect during coronavirus.
“My wife met me when I was first involved with radio and stuff and always said about it being my passion and love.
“I just thought, ‘I wouldn’t mind doing it’.
“But it took me a couple of years to work out what it was I’d like to do.
“I’ve not had an identity crisis.
“I’m, first and foremost, a Londoner and proud of it and I also identify as being Irish.
“People in Ireland might see me as different, people here might see me as different but I know what I am.
“It’s not that it was being beaten into me by my parents by any means, it was just smoked into our house.
“It was GAA, Irish dancing, doing things amongst the Irish community and church social clubs and stuff.
“I went to school with people similar as well.
“When we all meet back up, we laugh about those times.
“Sometimes the first people you met outside the community were when you went to work and realised that there was such things as families having divorced parents which from our community was quite an out there thing.
“I just think that’s where the idea has come from.
“I think the support we’ve had from people speaks volumes about our community.
“It’s not just our friends and family sharing it, there’s complete and utter strangers that none of us have ever met.
“A friend of mine based in Birmingham said, ‘It’s Irish Londoners but it’s totally relatable to me and my friends up here in Birmingham’.
“I’ve even had it from my cousins that are based back in Donegal or around Dublin.
“They said they don’t see even the community or spirit that we’ve got over here amongst each other.
“I think we really look out for each other over here.
“And there’s some of my friends who are Irish born over here and have got kids.
“My mate said to me the other day, ‘I’ve listened to the podcast. Love it. It’s an interesting window into maybe how my kids are going to interact with Ireland as well’.
“You’re always the English cousins when you go over to Ireland but there’s never, from our point of view, I think people report differently about this: I’ve never felt any hostility from anyone Irish born towards us being ‘You’re this’ or ‘you’re that’.
“That’s something I don’t buy into as such.
“You might hear in the further episodes we look at what makes you an Irish Londoner.
“Everyone thinks, ‘Right, we’ve got to have an aran jumper, I’ve got to drink Guinness, St Patrick’s Day novelty hat, play GAA and do Irish dancing’.
“You don’t, in fact, have to do any of them or be any of those things.
“You could be into rap.
“Everyone that’s an Irish Londoner comes in so many different forms, shapes and sizes and that’s hopefully we’re bringing that as well.
“And a lot of people are thinking, ‘Yeah, this resonates with me’.
“On the road that we grew up I think we were the only house that had a van outside it.
“I don’t think we’ve touched upon this in an episode but the one thing I remember as a kid is my dad working at Stamford Bridge.
“My mum was pregnant so he took me and my brother on a school holiday just to get us out of the house.
“We sat in the stadium at Stamford Bridge overlooking the pitch.
“We went on the pitch with a ball.
“But on our way into work on two of the days, my dad was stopped and the van searched.
“Because obviously at the time there was the prevalence of the IRA but when I heard my dad speaking to the policemen, they even knew him first name terms, ‘Sean, how you doing? Sorry, mate. Same as usual’.
“My dad has never said nothing but good things to say about this country.
“He said, ‘Look those men are doing their jobs. I’ve got nothing in my van. I’ll just leave myself an extra 15 minutes in the morning to go through this’.
“And again it just depends which way you flip life.
“His attitude was, ‘Yeah, don’t worry about it lads. That’s it’.
“My dad wasn’t persecuted.
“He was inconvenienced for 10, 15 minutes every day and the way that the police were with him, they were exemplary, ‘Yeah, sorry about this, Sean’.
“They knew the situation exactly.”
Andy: “Back then it was scary times because you had people like the Birmingham Six, the Maguire Seven and the Guildford Four who were put away for 20, 30 years for crimes they didn’t do so it was a real tough time for the Irish community.
“But fair play to people like Ryan’s dad who took it in his stride, kept his manners, kept his cool and it’s a testament to his father and my father as well.
“It happened to my dad so often that he did feel victimised, I think but we came through it.
“The Irish work resolve was so strong back then.
“We were too busy building the country for everyone, building the tunnel system, the underground so a lot of the time they just didn’t have time for it.”
Ryan: “You just tackle it all with laughter and humour.
“We’ll never have a laugh at someone else’s expense before having a laugh at ourselves.”
Andy: “I think the Irish are really good at that.
“They never dwell or brew too much about situations like that.
“Usually if someone tells you a story like that, there would always be a punchline at the end and you would just burst out laughing, probably what they said to the copper or when he had gone.
“I mean there would always be a humorous spin put on it.
“We never felt victims to that extent or dwelled in it to the point where, ‘woe is me’.”
Ryan: “All we’re doing is sharing a few stories with a niche community that also can relate to those stories except as much as we say it’s niche on one hand, we’re finding that actually if it is niche, then it’s a flipping huge niche.
“Dermot O’Leary’s done some really good talks and said some really good things.
“He’s, as we said many times, become the kind of patron saint of our podcast.
“It would be great to do an interview with someone like Dermot.
“Episode eight we’ve got an interview with Mick Lynch who was the RMT leader.
“That was really good because we were a podcast that hadn’t been released.
“Someone like that could go, ‘I want to hear what this is about before I engage’.
“Mick went, ‘Absolutely fine, lads’.
“We had a really nice interview with him.
“Mick falls in underneath our parents’ generation and above our generation so he was able to tell us what London looked like then in that age.
“The Irish that came over in those times just had enough money to survive and keep going and they didn’t have the luxury of going to Ireland for a holiday.
“I’m of the generation that grew up in the 80s and 90s going over once a year.
“That was a great luxury to go over and spend five weeks of the summer.
“I can’t imagine getting that annual leave from work now and taking that time off.”
You mentioned Dermot O’Leary, he symbolises a lot of what we’re talking about doesn’t he as although he was born and raised in Colchester, he’s always professed his Irishness…
JP: “It’s the community that you’re raised in.
“We talk about it on the podcast in that when we were growing up, we were surrounded by people who also had Irish parents.
“Most of what we interacted with was Irish based so it’s very difficult to see beyond that wall when all of your friends go to the same school, they’re all Irish descent.
“You go to secondary school, everyone’s Irish descent so him saying that obviously isn’t strange to us but then the great thing about Dermot O’Leary is that he’s never been wavered by his commitment to saying he’s Irish and I think that is really strong.
“’I’m Irish’, end the conversation.”
Andy: “He’s done us proud and more power to him.”
Ryan: “It’s no coincidence he’s one of the patrons of this London Irish Centre as well so he’s not just saying something or being part of the community as and when he feels like it.
“We didn’t really know how this would take off but the great thing about it is that of our listenership 42% of it is made up of females and for me, that really gave me a lot of delight.
“I know it’s three blokes talking but it’s never just about a lads’ conversation.
“It’s conversations that when my wife’s come out with me and my friends or sat there in the pub and listen to us talk, she’s never had to get up and go, ‘I’m going to go over there and chat to the wives’ or anything like that.
“She wants to stay there and be part of that conversation because the craic is good.
“People find it funny.
“We review and analyse the Boyzone documentary.
“We’re promoting this place (London Irish Centre), Corrigan’s restaurant, your Irish foods.
“We did an England versus Ireland snack wars and food wars.
“Which is the best sausage? We cook them up.
“It’s almost like a really sh*t version of Saturday Kitchen.
“That’s kind of what we’ve done.
“We’re here to promote the Irish World, tell people to go out and buy a copy not because you’re sitting here with us now but because that’s what you do.”
Ryan has featured in The Irish World when he was playing GAA in his younger years.
Ryan: “As a 14 year old boy, when I was playing with my club team (St Brendan’s) we ended up winning the London championship and Britain championship.
“The Irish World put the match articles on it and my name might feature in it now and again.
“You go into the shop and pick up the Irish World.
“St Brendan’s were the team of the 90s in London.
“Your paper printed a lot of that and for a kid to be in the newspaper, it’s a big deal.
“And it was the Irish paper.
“Your dad can bring it to work with pride, ‘It’s my son there’.
“It’s a fantastic newspaper.”
Ryan you grew up playing GAA, Andy I know you were playing music, what was your particular Irish upbringing, JP?
JP: “Just being part of a massive Irish family.
“For us it really is just representing mum and dad and that community.
“You would sit in the pub with people when you got a bit older and people who were same as us would say, ‘Oh, f**k England’.
“And dad would always say, ‘Never deny what this country has given us. If it wasn’t for us moving to England, you probably wouldn’t be alive. It has given us a home. It has given us a community and we’re very proud of that’.
“But the Irish heritage is in us, it is just the community that we grew up in.”
Ryan: “Having as many kids as they did and dad having to work, he couldn’t be at all the trainings and all the games.
“There was one game I was playing and I was a good standard at the time and I think we hardly had any players there, we just had the bare 15.
“I come off at half-time and John (Fahey, coach) says, ‘I’m going to take you off in the next five minutes if you don’t turn it off’.
“I was like, ‘I’ve had a good game’.
“And John said to me, ‘Look, Ryan, I’ve heard you swearing and cursing at the top of your voice out there. Your mum and dad aren’t here, I’m your coach and you do not speak like that on a field, your mother and father wouldn’t want you speaking like that so unless you turn it around the next five minutes, I’ll be taking you off’.
“And without any reaction, without me throwing my hands in the air or throwing a wobbler, I thought about it for a second.
“I winded my neck in and I made sure I did it.
“Other Irish dads helped father you when your own dads weren’t there.
“My dad wasn’t always there but It’s the community thing.
“If I went home and says, ‘Oh, John said that to me’, my old man would go, ‘Well, he was bloody right to say that to you’.
“In the teaching profession now if you say to a parent about their kid doing something that wasn’t right, straight away it’s the defensive card, ‘How dare you said that about my child?’
“In our day my mum would take a look at Miss Creedon and go, ‘Don’t you worry. I’ll deal with that’.
“I’ll go home, a word was had.
“Next day at school Miss Creedon would then be saying to my mum, ‘Yeah, that word worked well, Pat’, and that’s it.
“It’s community without needing to be part of a club or having it tattooed on you.
“It just felt natural.
“There’s a lot of bullshittery around.
“Us Irish, we don’t suffer fools gladly.
“We can smell the bullshit from miles away hence the reason why if we weren’t honest and our true selves on this, then our own community would smoke us out within a minute and go, ‘These three fucking chancers. Get them off’.
“And that’s why we want it to be authentic.”
JP: “It just kind of caught fire.
“Maybe we’ve hit a kind of Zeitgeist.
“The Irish are extremely popular at the moment.
“I think sometimes we Irish forget how much work was done here to give us that good reaction that we get now when people come over, they love to see us but there was the 70s, 80s when people were treated like sh*t and they were bad mouthed and all those kind of things.
“We had to live through it and ignorant micks and all of the slurs that went with it.”
Ryan: “This is nothing political, nothing heavy.
“It’s just three lads talking about our experiences and our interpretations of experiences.
“We said in the very last thing of our last episode, ‘If this journey ends here, then we’re so glad we’ve documented it and put it out there’.
“And people are giving feedback that they’re really enjoying it.
“If it was to carry on, I’ve got a second, third and fourth series in my head written.”
Andy: “Ryan is driving force behind this.
“He’s the captain of the ship.”
Ryan: “This only works because there’s all three of us.”
Andy: “I’m not sure what people were expecting but the feedback has been amazing.
“And again it’s a testament just to the hard work that Ryan has prepared for this whole adventure.”
The Irish Londoners Podcast is available on Spotify.
