{"id":576762,"date":"2026-07-31T07:27:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T07:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/576762\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T07:27:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T07:27:13","slug":"vittorio-angelone-people-in-the-south-never-have-to-assert-their-irishness-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/576762\/","title":{"rendered":"Vittorio Angelone: \u2018People in the South never have to assert their Irishness\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s hard to say what it was like growing up Italian<\/a>–Irish<\/a> in Belfast<\/a> because that is my only experience. Often people ask, \u201cDid it feel culturally Italian?\u201d and then I sort of go, \u201cI don\u2019t think so?\u201d <\/p>\n

I have two brothers, I\u2019m a middle child, and both my parents grew up in Belfast but my dad\u2019s side of the family is Italian.<\/p>\n

We had pasta semi-regularly, but so did everybody else. There were also weird things; we celebrated La Befana, an Italian tradition about an old witch who\u2019s sort of a replacement for Santa Claus. We would go to a community hall with the Italian Society of Northern Ireland, and there was a bouncy castle, and there were sandwiches chopped into triangles, and we would have fun, and then we would all be told to sit down, and a woman dressed as a witch would come in and give us presents. So, there were Italian elements, but I feel much more culturally Irish. <\/p>\n

I always find you define yourself by what makes you different. So, I think a lot of people in Ireland know me as the Italian comedian, whereas a lot of people in England would know me as an Irish comedian.<\/p>\n

I moved to London when I was 18 for music college and I think everybody was scared for me. I was an anxious child who wasn\u2019t very good at crowds of people or busy-ness. <\/p>\n

It was financially frightening. I didn\u2019t want to lean on my parents, so I had a bad events agency-work job lined up before I moved to London. I was like, \u201cHow am I going to afford to live here?\u201d My student loan didn\u2019t cover my rent, never mind food. <\/p>\n

But I got very lucky. The Guildhall School of Music and Drama is a very artistically diverse place. There was lots of theatre and music going on; jazz, classical, pop stuff. There was weird performance art too, which I got involved in. It felt like a real education.<\/p>\n

A common experience for Irish people is that when we move away, we suddenly become a lot more Irish. Like my mam says, I\u2019ve gotten a stronger accent since moving to London.<\/p>\n

At Guildhall, there were posh southern English people who would parrot accents. Any time my friend from Glasgow or I spoke, it would get a little titter in the room. I was adamant I would keep speaking out in lectures and keep asking questions. I just did it to the point that people stopped tittering. <\/p>\n

\"VittorioVittorio Angelone: ‘I think [northerners] have a darker sense of humour’ <\/p>\n

Now, I live in north London, and the number of posh English boys who live here who are desperate to be Irish and are splitting the G [the drinking challenge popular on social media where people take a first gulp of Guinness in the hope of the beer settling across the middle of the logo on the glass] is quite funny. <\/p>\n

I started comedy in London, and I have always performed for a diverse range of people. I\u2019m very proud that I\u2019m not a comedian who goes around the world and just performs to Irish people.<\/p>\n

I have endlessly been told that I\u2019m not \u201cproper Irish\u201d by southerners. I talk in my new show about coming to terms with the northern Irish part of my identity, and the fact that that it is a distinct and culturally different thing. I think we have a darker sense of humour, and I think we have a different sensibility, but in the same way that people from Cork are different to people from Dublin, to people from Galway, to people from Kerry. I have been very frustrated in the past of being told I\u2019m not Irish by people who\u2019ve been passively Irish their whole life.<\/p>\n

People in the South have never had to assert their Irishness. And, listen, I\u2019m a sort of ceasefire baby, a post-Troubles child . I haven\u2019t had to fight for my Irish identity in the way that lots of people have had to fight. But I do find it frustrating. How dare you tell me I\u2019m not Irish? And what benefit is it to [people] to exclude the North from their idea of Irishness?<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018Southerners think Northern Ireland is as foreign as Siberia\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Landing in Cork and driving through the South, I feel much more at home than I do even in parts of the North. There are bits of the North you drive through, and it is Union Jacks and not a very welcoming place for someone who feels Irish. <\/p>\n

I feel a cultural connection to the South. That means more to me than whatever sort of border has been drawn. I feel culturally connected to Irishness, and at this point, it doesn\u2019t matter what anybody else says. <\/p>\n

In conversation with Niamh Browne. <\/p>\n

Vittorio Angelone\u2019s new show You Can\u2019t Say Nothing Anymore will be at the Gaiety Theatre on October 22nd and 23rd<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s hard to say what it was like growing up Italian–Irish in Belfast because that is my only…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":576763,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[4501,72,61,60,102,99,709,1454,2443],"class_list":["post-576762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-belfast","tag-business","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-italy","tag-london","tag-magazine","tag-me-myself-and-ireland","tag-northern-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}