ARDAL O'HANLON

I remember being chronically shy. I came out of my shell a bit when I went to university, but I'm still fairly shy in company.

I've always wanted to play a detective. Always loved detective shows, right back to 'Columbo', 'The Rockford Files', 'Starsky & Hutch'.

I was a terribly quiet, shy child. The comedy thing came when I was at university and I started doing stand-up, which I think was a belated compensation for all that time I spent hiding behind the couch.

I think I was always this weird, watchful kind of kid, and there was an awful lot of coming and going in my house as a result of my father being a doctor and then, later, a politician... We'd literally be having to get through the window some days because we couldn't get in the door.

I'm as crippled with doubt as the next actor.

Getting up in front of the toughest crowds, you know, playing pubs in South Armagh - where people didn't necessarily even know what stand-up comedy was - you had to force yourself to do it. It went against every instinct in your body, but you did it anyway.

It's quite telling that the really big comedians - like John Bishop from Liverpool, Kevin Bridges from Glasgow, Peter Kay from Bolton - stand out with their strong regional accents.

There are lots of channels and lots of companies looking for content, as they say, but it's quite difficult to get things off the ground.

I read one of the funniest books last week by Don DeLillo. He wrote this book, 'Amazons' many years ago, under the pseudonym Cleo Birdwell. The book is very funny but I also think it's funny that he denies any involvement with it.

My father was driven, active and always busy. We didn't see that much of him, although he never went far away or stayed overnight anywhere.

We didn't have an awful lot of space. There were six of us born within the space of seven or eight years - I was third. I remember sharing a room with one or other of my brothers - at one point we had three single beds in one room.

Father Ted' was written by Irish people, so that was fine, but around the time we were shooting it 'EastEnders' went to Ireland and represented it as this terribly backward society where people were going around with one eye and drunk.

When we left university, in the late '80s, one of the guys had been to the Comedy Store in London, came back very excited and suggested we set up something like it. And so we did.

Irish politicians are very accessible to the public, just the messenger boys for the local constituency.

They were always my favourite scenes working with Don Warrington. He's such a brilliant actor, he has such a presence, you don't have to act with him you just react you know he's so good.

My mother tells me I regaled people with stories but I don't remember that. And she disputes the idea that I might be chronically shy. She says I was the most outgoing of all of us.

I was quite young when my dad went into politics but, as it went on, I became self-conscious about it.

My father was a typical Irish father. He was a nice, hard working, driven guy. His politics were very conservative and I was just a very different kind of kid to that. I was very shy and bookish.

I'm Irish. I don't know how to take a compliment.

I was never ideological in any sense, or a slave to any particular politics or religion. My solace and my inspiration always came from books and literature.

Tony Currie was another great favourite, even if he only played for a short time at Leeds. His wife told me once that she was a big fan of 'My Hero'.

There is something restless and curious about the Irish. Like everybody else, we want to make money and make our way in the world but it's not the be all and end all. We also want to have fun, we want to make friends, make connections, share stories.

While I try to retain the slightly odd perspective and some of the innocence, it's really liberating to be able to talk/rant about all the stuff that bothers me.

The big turning point for me was a school debate in sixth year when, against all odds and to everybody's surprise, I put myself forward... I wrote this funny speech and was determined to do my own thing, and it wasn't on topic and people were laughing a lot. I really can't describe how wonderful an experience it was.

I think a certain amount of depression is sort of a normal state of mind to have. Deep depression is another story - and I wouldn't say I've been quite there, but you know I have been quite down at times, I have not wanted to leave the house for days on end.