{"id":664057,"date":"2026-10-24T13:14:17","date_gmt":"2026-10-24T13:14:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/664057\/"},"modified":"2026-10-24T13:14:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T13:14:17","slug":"colm-oregan-im-tipping-away-at-sorting-my-parents-stuff-into-artefacts-and-rubbish-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/664057\/","title":{"rendered":"Colm O\u2019Regan: \u2018I\u2019m tipping away at sorting my parents\u2019 stuff into artefacts and rubbish\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Colm O\u2019Regan<\/a> is sorry he doesn\u2019t have a garden shed for \u201ctipping away\u201d at stuff. The comedian and author grew up on a small farm in Dripsey in west Cork<\/a>, where his father was often \u201cout, like, tinkering\u201d \u2013 building fences, picking stones, mending things. He would see a job that needed doing, then tip away at it in the grand stretch of a summer\u2019s evening. Tipping away has an \u201celastic\u201d meaning, he says, in that it can mean working steadily at something, often to just avoid being idle, but it can also be an Irish euphemism for being absolutely \u201cup the walls\u201d.<\/p>\n

He likes the phrase so much it\u2019s the name of his new book on Hiberno-English, his second in two years. It\u2019s also what he\u2019s been doing recently with the belongings of his late parents. \u201cIn a kind of full circle, I\u2019m gently tipping away at sorting their letters and old bills and receipts and stuff into artefacts that are interesting and pure rubbish.\u201d<\/p>\n

His mother, who died in late 2024, was a teacher, and last year he was delighted to be able to return a 60-year-old copybook he found among her things to one of her former pupils, whom he tracked down through social media. In an age of ephemeral digital communication, he often pleads with people to hold on to their children\u2019s copybooks.<\/p>\n

One of the things O\u2019Regan has taken from writing Tipping Away and its 2025 predecessor, Gallivanting with Words<\/a>, is that it is never too soon to start preserving language. Even the fact that fewer Irish people grow up on a small farm now than in the 1980s \u2013 he was born in 1978 \u2013 has lent a greater impetus to his desire to record the kinds of words that were ingrained in him when he was five years old, but that he hasn\u2019t used with other people since leaving home.<\/p>\n

He adopts a narrator\u2019s voice. \u201cWith tears in his eyes, Colm said, \u2018I have no one to talk with about beastings.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

By beastings \u2013 \u201cnot a good word\u201d \u2013 he means the agricultural slang for colostrum, or the first milk from a cow, though Google<\/a> AI<\/a> prioritises the British military definition (harsh punishment or extreme training exercises), while Apple\u2019s<\/a> AI transcription of our interview hears it as \u201cbee stings\u201d and \u201cbeef things\u201d. With AI yet to grasp Hiberno-English, maybe we will end up keeping our language away from its automated small-talk prompts, the way we used to keep it away from the English, he suggests.<\/p>\n

Tipping Away, or what he jokingly calls \u201cthe second book in the Gallivanting Cinematic Universe\u201d, includes a chapter on farms, bogs and \u201cmart lingo\u201d, another on what the decline in religiosity means for language, and another devoted to \u201cfighting words\u201d such as ructions, kerns (Gaelic warriors) and galloglass, which he loves. It comes from gall \u00f3glaigh, meaning foreign warriors, which he thinks sounds like a health and beauty product or an up-and-coming software company, not a word for mercenaries from the western highlands of Scotland.<\/p>\n

His father, who died in 2015, kept an \u201cinner circle\u201d of books that included English As We Speak It in Ireland by Patrick Weston Joyce, which recorded expressions in circulation in 1910. \u201cPeople seemed to delight in two things in Hiberno-English then: criticising women and people being perceived as eejits. So there was \u2018she\u2019d coort a haggard of sparrows\u2019, as in she\u2019d go with anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not necessary to understand the exact context of phrases like these, he notes, to pick up on the general tone of sexist disapproval. \u201cIt\u2019s like, f**k\u2019s sake.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ColmColm O’Regan’s new book is his second on the topic of Hiberno-English. Photograph: Dara Mac D\u00f3naill\/The Irish Times <\/p>\n

I confess my fondness for the Dublin term \u201cgurrier\u201d (used, often lightheartedly, to describe young troublemakers) and wonder if it\u2019s dying out. \u201cThe band Gurriers<\/a> will keep it alive, just like there\u2019s a band called The Latchikos that keeps my favourite word my father used alive,\u201d he says. (Latchiko is a catch-all term for an untrustworthy person.)<\/p>\n

Dose, meanwhile, is one useful Hiberno-insult I\u2019ve adopted in conversation more recently, usually as a label for a vaguely annoying and massively over-exposed celebrity. \u201cAnd it was a venereal disease in [James] Joyce\u2019s writing, you know? It\u2019s great. I love that. The other thing is that words will survive if they sound good. Like why has f**k survived for however long it is? It just sounds like frustration. You can mourn the decline of some words, but others were simply never going to make it. The ones that did well were good product.\u201d<\/p>\n

I ask about the Cork use of \u201cseptic\u201d to identify someone suffering from high self-esteem. \u201cYeah, septic as a noun \u2013 he\u2019s a septic. It just means that you love yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s not sure if the traditional mortal fear of being accused of being \u201cup your own hole\u201d is as strong in Ireland as it used to be, but he did see some graffiti near Smithfield that implied it definitely still lingers. \u201cSomebody had written, \u2018You need to love yourself.\u2019 It was this really lovely sentiment. Then about two days later somebody had added, \u2018You need to shove it up your hole.\u2019 It was like we just couldn\u2019t bear the idea of self-care.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Regan also explores the meaning of county names in Tipping Away and his favourite, \u201cin fairness\u201d, is Dublin, which has two: Dubh Linn (black pool) and the adjacent settlement of Baile \u00c1tha Cliath (town of the ford of the hurdles), the hurdles being the wooden rails that were placed where the river was low enough to cross or, alternatively, the mythological bones of a slain monster.<\/p>\n

\"MovingMoving to Dublin in 2000, Colm O’Regan recalls a ‘culchie revival’ in Irish media. Photograph: Dara Mac D\u00f3naill\/The Irish Times <\/p>\n

He can\u2019t remember being struck by any unfamiliar slices of Dublinese when he moved to the capital in 2000 \u2013 after graduating from University College Cork<\/a> with a degree in civil engineering \u2013 but he does associate that era with suddenly hearing a wider variety of accents on television and radio and the start of what he loosely terms the \u201cculchie revival\u201d.<\/p>\n

He mentions the Irish propensity for filler words such as \u201cara\u201d and \u201cyerra\u201d to mean \u201cah, sure\u201d or perhaps nothing much at all. When he started doing comedy pieces for BBC Radio<\/a>, he became \u201cacutely conscious\u201d of the way he would pepper his speech with ums and ahs rather than slide into a second of silence.<\/p>\n

Hiberno-English, as a subject, is \u201csort of grist to a general mill\u201d he has. \u201cIn comedy, you see the difference that swapping one word in for another makes to a joke,\u201d he says. The order of words is also crucial in both stand-up and written humour. \u201cSome comedy is the gap between what the person is expecting to hear and what they actually hear, and then that surprise hopefully makes them laugh.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Throwing shapes: Frank McNally on the mysteries of the Hiberno-English \u2018gimp\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

This is his ninth book, and for his 10th he would like to write something in the same vein about maths. He used to have a \u201clabour of love\u201d maths and numbers podcast called The Function Room. \u201cI would love to write a funny, interesting book that you could give to a transition-year student and go, \u2018This is not going to come up in the exam, this has no use to you, but here\u2019s why you learn some of the stuff you do,\u2019\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe shut off difficult, complicated topics from people, because we don\u2019t think they\u2019ll get it. They will, if you put it the right way.\u201d<\/p>\n

He would also like to start a podcast on language. \u201cI\u2019m going to start tentatively doing videos. I have to get over myself and get the stuff out,\u201d he says. He sees his 11-year-old daughter Ruby making videos with her friends \u2013 it might be a lip-sync video with cutaways and interesting angles \u2013 in half an hour, but it takes him that long to figure out how to introduce himself.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Regan (48) lives in Inchicore in Dublin 8 with his wife, Marie Dunne, a librarian, and their two daughters: Ruby and nine-year-old Lily. Parenting gives him a window into how words can abruptly fall in and out of favour, he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen my children are looking for something on the internet, they don\u2019t say Google, they say \u2018search it up\u2019. And it seems like a very mundane difference, but that represents the fact that Google no longer means anything to them and they\u2019re searching within an app. It\u2019s a tiny little tweak of language, but hidden behind it is the entire philosophy of how the internet has gone in the last 20 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"O'ReganO’Regan learns about eveolving language trends by listening to his daughters. Photograph: Dara Mac D\u00f3naill\/The Irish Times <\/p>\n

His also loves hearing his daughters use Korean words when they sing along to the girl group Katseye, who incorporate the language into their lyrics. The first song he remembers singing along to himself was Karma Chameleon by Culture Club. \u201cAnd I didn\u2019t hear it properly, so I was singing, like, Come a Comedian. Come, come, come, come, come a comedian.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Regan runs the Inn Jokes comedy club at The Patriots Inn in Kilmainham, where in 2024 he also started hosting Innfant Jokes, or relaxed morning comedy events for people with babies. The \u201cbaby gigs\u201d have since expanded beyond their original venue, prompting him to discard the Innfant pun and rename them as Little Laughs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a different type of gig, because you can\u2019t be roaring \u2018hey, everybody\u2019 into the microphone and get huge applause. People can\u2019t applaud if they\u2019re holding a child. I tell any comedian who does it that if their joke works at this, it\u2019s a really good joke, and if people don\u2019t get it, don\u2019t worry. They\u2019re distracted, they\u2019ve had four hours\u2019 sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n

His main advice to the comedians who sign up for Little Laughs is not to stand on a baby on their way to the microphone. He did one event in Clonsilla earlier this month where the babies climbed on to the stage. \u201cIt was a bit like Father Ted \u2013 the Bishop Brennan episode with the rabbits. There were all these babies crawling around me.\u201d<\/p>\n

We talk a little about his weekly column for the Irish Examiner (now on Saturdays), his love of how language sometimes evolves from mistakes and misheard words, and his defence of the Irish language\u2019s<\/a> \u201cmysterious spelling changes\u201d (thanks to the tuiseal ginideach, or genitive case), then I switch off my recording, wish him luck with Tipping Away and self-consciously deploy a classic slice of Hiberno-English to say goodbye.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll let you go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tipping Away by Colm O\u2019Regan will be published by Gill Books on October 29th<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Colm O\u2019Regan is sorry he doesn\u2019t have a garden shed for \u201ctipping away\u201d at stuff. The comedian and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":664058,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[259599,93,61,60,34095,709],"class_list":["post-664057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-colm-o-regan","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-irish-language","tag-magazine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664057","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=664057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}