Though his role in Father Ted conferred him with national treasure status, actor, stand-up and author Ardal O’Hanlon says that he is still filled with self-doubt. Alongside with the imposter syndrome, however, is a quiet confidence that he learned from his beloved, and recently departed, father
Behind the scenes with Ardal O’Hanlon
Ardal O’Hanlon made his first attempt at writing a book when he was still a teenager. “I actually tried to write a crime novel when I was about 18,” the now 60-year-old comedian and actor says. He is sitting in a back room of The Odeon venue in Dublin, having just finished the photoshoot for this article. He’ll go home after our interview, before coming back into the city centre for a gig tonight. His foot is in a boot, a recent injury acquired while playing tennis with his wife. Despite that, he says: “I would say I have more energy now than I ever had really. I would even go as far as to say I am fitter than I ever was. When you’re touring… the adrenaline is – you’re alert.”
“I was in Chicago,” he continues of that first book. “My girlfriend had gone out to be an au pair,” he says of Melanie, his now wife (the couple have three children, now all in their twenties). “I followed her out. I ended up living in the basement of the house she was working in. I was very inspired by the architecture in Chicago. I was reading a lot of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett at the time. So, I decided to write a hard-boiled kind of book. A noirish novel.”