NUALA MCKEEVER: ‘Remember when loo roll became like a class A drug?’

Seven years of being in grief (over her late partner Mike Moloney, founder of Belfast Circus School, who died in 2013), Zen meditation, eating banana bread and living on her own, comedienne, actress and writer Nuala McKeever feels lockdown simply brought the rest of the world into alignment with how she had already been living, cloistered and stuck inside her own rambunctious mind.

“People were like you have to stick to your standards, get up, get washed, get dressed, and I was like, yeah, I’ll stick to my own standards!” (The same could be said for many of us, ensconced at home working in pyjamas and sporting untamed hair, odd socks, sans make-up and chain-smoking between intermittent slouching interludes on the sofa).

Nuala is really looking forward to her first live show since restrictions lifted, a one-woman spirited affair about the lighter side of lockdown featuring two self-penned songs she feels are well worth the price of admission alone. She will perform ‘Unlocked’, her typically wry, cheeky, politically conscious, whip-smart standup set at Bangor Castle’s Walled Garden at the Open House Festival on August 17.

“It’s some of the funny stuff about lockdown, the things I liked, the things I didn’t, how everyone became a Covid expert. The chance to stop was interesting. Noticing nature, pursuing material things less, taking time to notice what matters, spending time with family and people close to you, taking time to literally smell the roses, not engaging in constant consumerism at the same frantic pace. Remember when toilet roll was like a class A drug and everyone was hoarding it? And people were stockpiling, the shelves were empty, same with pasta for some reason.
“My friend once phoned me to say, almost with a drum roll: ‘The Co-Op is getting a delivery of toilet roll at 11am on Thursday’, like it was this big event. She had 300 rolls of toilet roll in her spare room at one stage. She said she wanted to be on the safe side. I was like, ‘how much were you planning on visiting the toilet? All that pasta would have you backed up anyway.’

“Like the apocalypse was at hand and all anybody wanted was bog roll. What does that say about us as a society?”

Also as part of Unlocked, Nuala will be revisiting characters she created some time ago, who have now become familiar with her fans, like Mickey’s Ma, the fearsome targe fishwife shouting for her son from her garden gates in her slippers from the top of her lungs in an earthy Belfast wail and Hillary Hamilton, the posho from Holywood who of course lives on an avenue and has her hair in a perfectly preened do. 

But Nuala, who describes writing songs and singing them as one of her favourite pastimes, as well as eating salt and vinegar crisps (she was eating so many at one stage she started to wear away the enamel on her tooth), laughing with friends until her sides hurt and going for meditative walks despite an arthritic foot (‘does that sound middle aged?’) is especially keen to talk about one special song she recorded with none other than Paul Brady - an achievement she lists among her proudest to date: “Two years ago I wrote a song, sang it into my phone and sent it to Paul Brady and he said, ‘Yes, we can do something with that’. So I did the singing and he did the backing. It’s called Cross the Line. It’s been played on Radio Ulster and I have it on a CD in my car. I’m immensely proud of it because I love Paul Brady, he’s an actual legend. The chorus says something like, ‘When are we going to open up and show each other what we are on the inside? Instead of twisting out of shape trying to hide what we think we shouldn’t be? Don’t we know by now we’re all the same on the inside? But you’re over there and I’m over here, but think of all the fun we could have when we cross the line.’

“I mean, I actually did a song with Paul Brady!

“I was walking on air when he first got back in touch with me and I felt like the universe was finally giving me everything I’d ever wanted. I met him at a concert and we got friendly and chatted via Facebook. I invited him to come and see a play I was doing. One day in the bathroom I wrote these lyrics and recorded Cross the Line using the hand basin to tap out the rhythm. When I sent it to him he said: ‘Perfect song construction!’”

So aside from comedy character perfectionist and standup par excellence, Nuala may yet have an album in her, and is looking forward to seeing how fans react to her musical offerings at the Open House Festival. A consummate performer, she also actually managed to complete a novel during lockdown that she had been working on since 2007 and describes it as a rom com set on the north coast during a very hot July, similar in style to the work or popular authors Liane Moriarty and Jojo Moyes.

But performing is her first love, because “what better pleasure can there be than getting paid to make people laugh?” 

She describes the feeling of creative flow while mid-show on stage as something akin to what a jazz musician must feel while riffing at white heat: “My last show, Let Go, Or Lose It, was pretty damn good and I remember just rolling with the vibe from the audience, and ad libbing a lot, and I felt so alive, like I was vibrating from my fingertips. I’m a bit of a show off, so I love performing and when people enjoy what you do you feel immensely satisfied and as though you have justified your existence.”

‘I was very religious but then rebelled’

The youngest of seven, Nuala grew up “not as a wee pampered princess or anything, more of a tom boy really, and I had to wear my brother’s hand-me-down pyjamas for years”. She as an avid reader and was actually very religious growing up, having ‘seen the light’ as she describes it when she was about 14. Though she was a diligent pupil at St Dominic’s on the Falls Road, she became a rebel while at Queen’s University where she studied English and Spanish and promptly became “atheist, anti-religious and anti the Catholic Church.”

While living with girls in a shared flat as a student, they would insistently tell her she was so funny she belonged on the stage, and eventually she pursued the path she is now on as an actress, comedienne, and fledgling singer/songwriter after years working as a researcher at the BBC.

She had never intended to be a performer, and really fell into it when she was offered the part of Emer in The Hole in the Wall Gang’s series, Give My Head Peace, and quickly became a household name.

“I have fond memories of that time,” she says. “But now I’ve really found my own own niche.”

‘Comedy is a male dominated game but I think that will change with next generation’

Nuala’s comedy writing is acerbic, eagle-eyed, astute and often focused on satirical exploration of female experience (“I have a song in my new show about how I’m glad there is currently no man involved in my life at the moment”, and she does not lament this one iota). She confides that she is inspired by the “inimitable Nora Ephron, Nancy Meyers, who wrote my favourite romantic comedy, Something’s Gotta Give, and author of Last Tango in Halifax, Sally Wainwright. Victoria Wood is another big inspiration I always name too.”

But Nuala she is very much her own woman, and, it has to be said, something of a force of nature and creative powerhouse, able to embody comedy characters, write brilliant dialogue, lyrics that have impressed even Paul Brady and perform fearlessly on stage, “although I still always get that nervous-excitement before I get up there”.

She’s also a great singer, dabbles in piano and guitar playing and held her own impressively alongside Peter Corry in Sweeney Todd the musical during its run at the Theatre at the Mill in Newtownabbey several years ago.

Nuala confesses that she doesn’t watch too much comedy these days (though she has seen everything on Netflix “at least three times” and loves escaping into other worlds through fiction and film). Instead she concentrates on writing her own material, peripatetically, noting ideas and comic quips down as they come to her on her phone.

Nuala is a great laugh to talk to, her hyperactive imagination producing brilliant one liners that pepper her engaging conversation - not all of them printable, but basically, she’s hilarious, the kind of woman you’d want to be seated next to at a dinner party.

Nuala adds: “Not all my stuff is for women, I like to think men enjoy my work too, and I have politics in there, and for my new show, stuff about Edwin Poots, Arlene Foster, and how we have to have two of everything in Northern Ireland. If they could have come up with a Catholic and a Protestant vaccine for Covid then they probably would have.”

She agrees that comedy can be a male-dominated gig and she thinks this is because panel shows are “hard and competitive and women don’t like that kind of aggro. There are less women in standup than men, but there are now plenty of women on the ascent and I think with the next generation coming up there will be a better gender balance in comedy and I think it will really start to be 50-50.”

Q&A: ‘Laughter is absolutely essential for survival on this planet’

Tell us your earliest childhood memory?

Sitting in a Tansad (buggy). I must have been three. We were outside Clarke’s shoe shop at the bottom of Gransha Avenue where I grew up and I have this memory of hearing my mother chatting away to another woman.

School days - happiest of your life and what did you excel at?

I was a real goody two shoes at school and I was quite religious. I did like school. I was good across the board but I really loved English and Spanish.

Your ideal way to spend a day outside of lockdown restrictions?

By the sea, a lovely beach with my friend Michelle from America and by friend Colleen from Canada. Breakfast in one of those wee beach cafes and then to sit in the shade in the sun, go for a walk and if I had a hope of being good at it, maybe trying my hand at something like surfing or body-boarding. No man involved - thank God there isn’t actually - I have a good song in my new show about that. And lots and lots of laughs. That’s what I miss most, laughing with friends until your sides hurt.

Who in your life makes you laugh the most?

Me. But I also my friend Cathy and my brother John and I laugh a lot and it is the best medicine. Otherwise you would cry. When things are awful, there is always a part of my brain going, this will make a really good story, or great material for comedy. Even in the bleakest circumstances you can find humour. I think laughter is essential for survival on this planet.

Can you describe yourself in three words?

Gorgeous, slim, liar.

Favourite book?

The Truth According to Us by Annie Barrows.

Favourite film?

Something’s Gotta Give starring Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton.

What kind of music are you into?

Singer/songwriter stuff, modern country, bluesy pop. Growing up I loved The Doors and wrote things like ‘Break On Through’ on my school bag. I loved the Beatles too and I was born in 1964 so I think of myself as kind of a hippy 60s person.

If you could have a dinner party and invite anyone from history, who would you bring?

My granny. I’d love to meet her because I was nine when she died and I’d like to know what life was like for her. Then Samuel Beckett, novelist Joe Baker and director Billy Wilder.

What would you serve them to eat and drink?

Well, I’m vegan so I’d do a caesar salad with a vegan Parmesan and a dressing done with lots of cashew nuts and garlic. Then deep fried tofu cubes with garlic and chilli and my famous lemon drizzle cake with non-alcoholic Bavarian beer to drink.

Love is...A decision.

The meaning of life is...Waking up.

See Nuala McKeever perform her Unlocked show at Bangor’s Walled Garden as part of the Open House Festival on August 17. Visit www.openhousefestival.com for booking information.