Irish comedian set to premiere new show in Leitrim ahead of national tour

The West Belfast comedian and ex-bouncer will visit the theatre fresh off a stint in America, where he will be headlining the Kansas City Irish Festival and playing gigs in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago.

“I come home and then Manorhamilton's getting hit 2 days later so the Ireland premiere is going to be in Manorhamilton which is a big deal because normally they take it to Dublin or they take it to Belfast so they're getting something special.”

The show will be the Belfast funnyman’s first in the North Leitrim town and he thinks that it could be the start of a “beautiful thing” as he brings his new show to smaller venues around the country - a long overdue adventure for him.

“We've been all over Australia, Europe, America; I haven't been to these wee places in Ireland, and I'm like, this is where I'm from, why am I not doing this? So I think we're going to tackle that. We're going to places, I'm going to Manorhamilton, I'm going to Clonacilty, all these wee places that I've never played before, and it's just going to be interesting.”

O’Donnell, well-known as known as Paddy The Dagger, is the lad at the bar you want to get chatting to because that is the craic for the night sorted. He has a style that mixes energetic crowd work and irreverent storytelling. His comedy is based around the stories he has built while growing up as an Irish man in West-Belfast, being a bouncer, a taxi driver, and a father.

He began doing stand-up comedy as a form of therapy after he had a finger bitten off while he was working as a doorman; soon after, he was playing gigs with the nickname Paddy The Dagger, before that, however, after a mishap with a tattoo on his stag do.

“I have a tattoo in a very intimate place that I got done on my stag do as a present for my wife on the wedding night.

“She ended up having to see it before the wedding because it's not a great place to get a tattoo and things got infected and she had to see it, so yeah let's just say she wasn't too happy with her wedding present.”

He will deliver the tour ‘Paddy Powerful’, which he intended to tour two years ago, which focuses on his journey to get fit in his 50s while preparing for a charity boxing match. Unfortunately, that had to be shelved when he got gout and couldn’t train.

Instead, after leaving the doctor's office in Belfast, he saw graffiti on the way: ‘Tout’s Out’ and decided he would do a show about that experience - brilliantly titled ‘Gout’s Out.’

He is a man who is steeped in West Belfast, growing up there in the 80s at the tail end of the Troubles in a family that was involved.

“I love where I come from. It's a very special place to me because it was a tough place to grow up.”

“You had that sense of not being able to be who you are, if you know what I mean, and we used to get across the border, and you would have taken a deep breath because you knew if you went across the border that you could wear whatever you want, you could be whatever you are”

He remembers one episode from his youth, when his father, an avid Celtic fan, suggested that they should get Paddy an English team to support so he wasn’t singled out in the city.

“When you think about that in terms of being from West Belfast and then your daddy saying you should maybe support one of the English teams because nobody will know what you are if you're wearing one of their shirts instead of wearing a Celtic one - I think that gives you an idea of how bad it could have been.”

Things are a lot better now, he tells the Observer, while making lunches for his kids before they go off to his daughter's camogie match for Antrim.

“My kids have no understanding of all that trouble that we had; they live a normal, typical Irish upbringing life. They all go to the Irish school; they all do Gaelic sports whereas when I was younger you couldn't even carry a hurl because it was seen like a weapon and you could have been stabbed.”

He sometimes wondered how his style of comedy would transfer to other places outside of Belfast but has never had an issue, as West Belfast has exploded into the mainstream culture in recent years with the advent of Kneecap, Vittorio Angelloni and other artists coming out of the area.

“It's untapped,” says O‘Donnell, who feels that in the past people didn't want to be involved in it because they felt there was danger there, but that image has subsided.

“I think even last week we had the Fleadh and it was probably one of the most, if not the most successful Fleadh ever and it just shows that we can hold events and be events and have all these talented people and have all these lovely people that live in our city and I think that's why people are starting to come to it.”

Paddy the Dagger will be in the Glens Art Centre in Manorhamilton on the 10th of September at 8 pm.