It refers to the pretension and the notions we all have. I don’t mean that in a negative
sense. We all have notions — the Aldi bag inside the Brown Thomas one and so forth. There’s
nothing wrong with notions; Albert Einstein had notions. If Albert Einstein was told not to have
notions, we wouldn’t have space travel.”
Such behaviour is a universal component of human nature, he believes. Nonetheless, something
in the Irish character makes us more particularly prone to talking big while waxing modest.
If you were to compare Ireland and Finland, they don’t do small talk in Finland. If you said to a
Finnish person: ‘Tis a grand day, isn’t it?’ They would respond factually: ‘Yes it is grand’, or, ‘no
actually, it is a better than average day’. It wouldn’t be a prelude to an hour’s conversation.
“We are very indirect in this country. Whether that comes from years of not telling English
soldiers whether someone has a pike in their thatch or because Irish translated into English
doesn’t quite mean the same thing, I’m not sure. Whatever the cause, we do have a tradition of
obfuscation and half-talk that lends itself to bolloxology.”
O’Regan might, in the healthiest sense, be said to have notions himself. In addition to his
stand-up work and Irish Mammies bestsellers, he’s a radio columnist for Drivetime on RTÉ (he
was on air recently commenting pithily on the budget) and for the BBC World Service.
Just last week, he won a PPI radio award for Colm O’Regan Wants A Word, a two-part mix of stand-up
and sketch comedy.
