Reflections on winning the Grierson documentary award

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Speaker 1 Behold the glens of St. Anthony, you cranky Donicus.

Speaker 1 Welcome to the Blind Boy podcast.

Speaker 1 If this is your first episode, consider going back to an earlier episode to familiarize yourself with the lore of this podcast.

Speaker 1 I've had a very overwhelming week.

Speaker 1 Quite unexpectedly,

Speaker 1 I won that award that I was nominated for

Speaker 1 Best Presenter

Speaker 1 at the

Speaker 1 Grierson Documentary Awards over in England. So the week has been overwhelming because

Speaker 1 I've been exposed to

Speaker 1 quite a large amount of external approval. And that's something I have to be incredibly mindful of.
because

Speaker 1 that amount of external approval winning a giant award and lots of people contacted me to congratulate me. It's wonderful and fantastic and I'm very grateful for it.
But it's like a drug.

Speaker 1 It's...

Speaker 1 It's cocaine. It's sweets.
It's bobies.

Speaker 1 I just have to be cautious that I don't allow external validation to become... to feed my self-worth and my self-esteem.

Speaker 1 Because when that happens, when my identity and self-worth becomes tied with an achievement, I'm a good person now. I'm valuable now because people are telling me I'm valuable.

Speaker 1 I have worth because people are telling me I'm worthy. And then I start to believe it.
Then I become scared of losing it. Because to lose it means that I don't have worth as a human being.

Speaker 1 Which isn't possible.

Speaker 1 So this week I'm focused on

Speaker 1 reminding myself of my intrinsic worth.

Speaker 1 No aspect of my behavior, no achievement defines my worth as a human being. My worth is intrinsic.

Speaker 1 I have intrinsic worth which is equal to everybody else's intrinsic worth simply because I'm a human being.

Speaker 1 I'm no better than anybody else. Nobody else is better than me.
because we're humans and we're too complex to evaluate against each other. And you know art is the same.

Speaker 1 Art is the exact same.

Speaker 1 Even though I won this award

Speaker 1 that doesn't mean that my documentary is better than anyone else's fucking documentary that I was up against or worse than anyone else's documentary.

Speaker 1 You can't compare one piece of art against another because art at its core is one person's

Speaker 1 self-expression. or many people's self-expression through collaboration.
When it comes to being an artist, you can only be the best version of yourself. And you know how you get better?

Speaker 1 How you become a better version of yourself as an artist?

Speaker 1 By failing. By fucking failing.
By making huge mistakes and not winning awards and making a bollocks of things. That's how you become better as an artist.
You strive for failure.

Speaker 1 You don't strive for winning. You can only get better from failure.
You learn from failure. You develop skills from failure.
Whereas success, like an award,

Speaker 1 if you're not careful with it if you take it on board you allow it to define your self-worth it feels good

Speaker 1 then what happens you're scared of losing it and what does that look like you become terrified of failing and what do you do when you're afraid of failing you become scared to try and you make nothing when you fail at least you have something you have a thing you have something you can learn from that you can build on but when you don't fail because you were scared to try, you legitimately don't have anything, you've nothing that you can build on.

Speaker 1 And that's the strange dichotomy, that's the contradiction of

Speaker 1 being an artist. What are you doing it for then? Why are you doing it if you don't want successes, if you don't want awards? How can it be enjoyable if the thing that you're saying is good is failure?

Speaker 1 What's the point of any of this?

Speaker 1 And the thing is, the point is the bit in the middle, the process, the the doing, the curiosity, the journey, the frustration, the resolutions, that's meaning.

Speaker 1 That's why you fucking create art for the bit in the middle. You can't do that without failing, without leaning towards failing.
And if you do that well, and you enjoy the process,

Speaker 1 and you take meaning from the process,

Speaker 1 Then the successes just look after themselves and a little success pops up like an award

Speaker 1 and you notice it calmly, and you go, oh, that's nice. You can't stop and be mesmerized by it and drawn into it.
And let it feed your self-esteem.

Speaker 1 You notice it like a little bubble in the air and go, isn't that lovely? Now on to the next piece of work.

Speaker 1 And then if you can do that, hopefully, when a failure comes up, when you don't win the award, when you see a negative comment online, when you get a bad review, hopefully when they pop up, you can also go, oh,

Speaker 1 there's a shit review, or this piece of work isn't great, I could have done better. You go, okay, and you move on, where's the next piece of work? Where's the next thing for me to be curious about?

Speaker 1 For me to ask questions about, for me to enjoy doing? You just keep moving then. You keep moving.
And then you keep creating.

Speaker 1 But if I stop to be mesmerized by a success, then it means that when the next failure comes along which it will because it's inevitable when if I mesmerize myself with the success when the next failure comes along it cuts like a knife and it stagnates me and I get writer's block and that happened with my my last book sure I told you about it when it was I had writer's block for one fucking year and I was miserable it was very very unpleasant

Speaker 1 it's a very unpleasant thing to be a creative person and to have lost or forgotten how to create because you're like a rabbit in the headlights. And what caused that creative block?

Speaker 1 Well, not what caused it.

Speaker 1 What created that creative block was

Speaker 1 how I responded to one particularly negative review of my second book. I read that review.
And whatever the way the fucking tone was, it brought up all my insecurity from being a kid in school.

Speaker 1 And I read that review and I just felt absolutely worthless. And I felt like anything I'd ever created before had been a mistake.
And this reviewer had found me out. And they'd found me out.

Speaker 1 And finally, they'd proven to me that I was worthless. And that's absurd.
How could I be worthless? Because a book got a bad review.

Speaker 1 Because I'd placed my self-worth. and my self-esteem and my identity in being a good writer.
I'd let the good reviews go to my head.

Speaker 1 I'd taken the good reviews from my books in as

Speaker 1 external validation and approval of me as a human being. And why am I like that?

Speaker 1 Cause I was shit at fucking school as a kid. I was shit at school, undiagnosed autistic.

Speaker 1 But I was very good at anything to do with creativity and whenever I wrote a little song or painted a little picture or wrote a little story when I was four or five years of age, the adults were telling me that I was good.

Speaker 1 Because everything else I was doing was shit. But as soon as I created something, then my teachers, my parents, my brothers and sisters said, wow, that's amazing.

Speaker 1 And as a tiny little kid, I internalized that as conditional worth. Because that's conditional worth.

Speaker 1 The little child... Looks around and goes when I do these certain things The adults tell me that I'm I'm good.
And then that external conditional worth becomes internal conditional worth.

Speaker 1 Oh, well, I must be good. Then, when I'm good at creative things, at artistic things, I must be a good person when I do these things well.
Then the flip side of that is,

Speaker 1 oh, when I don't do these things well, when I fuck up in something creative, then I must be utterly worthless, worthless, pathetic, terrible human being. being.

Speaker 1 And that there, that's called conditions of worth.

Speaker 1 And we live in a society which is full of conditions of worth. We're told by

Speaker 1 media, advertising. We're worthy if we're physically attractive, we're worthy if we're wealthy, we're worthy if we have successful jobs.
Capitalism thrives on this.

Speaker 1 absolutely thrives on conditions of worth because then

Speaker 1 advertising doesn't need to sell you a product, it can sell you a better version of yourself. Some people are lucky enough to have been brought up with unconditional positive regard.

Speaker 1 You know, some very, very lucky people who I reckon are the minority were brought up

Speaker 1 by caregivers who were like, you're worthy of love no matter what.

Speaker 1 Nothing that you do. Doesn't matter if you're good at drawing or good at sports or polite or physically attractive.
Doesn't matter about any of these things, okay? They're nice.

Speaker 1 But regardless, we love you regardless. You have worth regardless.
And people who are lucky enough to have grown up in a regulated environment like that,

Speaker 1 these tend to be people who have high self-esteem. And high self-esteem isn't, I think I'm fucking great.
High self-esteem is having a stable, consistent sense of self-worth.

Speaker 1 The capacity to regard yourself as

Speaker 1 being worthwhile even when you fail, even when you're criticized, even when you're unexceptional. That you understand intrinsically that no aspect of your behavior defines your worth as a human being.

Speaker 1 Children who are raised with the privilege of that tend to have parents who also have very high self-esteem, who are very emotionally regulated, calm people.

Speaker 1 Fair play to those lucky individuals, but the vast majority of us

Speaker 1 are caregivers, our parents,

Speaker 1 were fallible human beings, fallible human beings navigating their own shit, stressed out, navigating trauma, pain, their own self-worth. And then

Speaker 1 for us as kids then, you don't have the the consistent feeling of safety as a little child, that consistent feeling of I'm safe and loved because you're a tiny little kid, you don't have critical thinking skills.

Speaker 1 So you end up thinking, oh my emotional needs are burdensome on my parents, because my dad is stressed or my ma is stressed and I'm four, so it must be my fault. I better stay quiet.

Speaker 1 I better stay quiet in case something I say or do will make my parents upset. Or

Speaker 1 Jesus, I'm a bit of a fuck up. Except when I do these one or two things really, really well.

Speaker 1 When I do these one or two things really, really well, all of a sudden, all the adults around me tell me I'm fucking brilliant. So I must only have worth when I do these things well.

Speaker 1 And then we internalize these things and we grow up to be fallible human beings. Fallible fucking human beings.

Speaker 1 So if it it seems like I'm downplaying winning this award or if I sound ungrateful, because some people have a go at me at this over this shit.

Speaker 1 Some people say, cheer the fuck up, be happy for yourself.

Speaker 1 I am happy. I'm happy for adult me.

Speaker 1 But the little child in me, the little autistic kid, is incredibly insecure. And he's crying out for approval.

Speaker 1 For approval from a teacher, from my ma, from my da fucking crying out for that approval and adult me now

Speaker 1 I have to be a parent

Speaker 1 to little young me

Speaker 1 and the good parenting there is to go fair fox you won an award did you oh that's great

Speaker 1 what are you doing here a painting is it let's look at this you enjoying that is that fun

Speaker 1 oh don't worry about whether it's good or bad you enjoying it do you like doing it? What do you want to do next? Oh, you want to write a story?

Speaker 1 Oh, it doesn't matter if it's good or bad. Do you like doing it? Yeah, fucking do that if you enjoy it.
So that's what I'm doing right now. So winning a big, big award like that and having...

Speaker 1 Like I posted it on fucking Instagram and it got 25,000 likes. That's nuts.

Speaker 1 In the machine, the machine that I use every day, Instagram, which has conditioned my my brain to interpret a like

Speaker 1 as

Speaker 1 a little dopamine hit

Speaker 1 I have to really step back from that I have to step the fuck back and go none of this matters the only thing I should acknowledge here with we'll say 25,000 likes I acknowledge the the kindness

Speaker 1 of those 20 25,000 people who give me a like I acknowledge their kindness and I take on but isn't that lovely? Isn't that nice?

Speaker 1 Isn't it wonderful to have the that someone has the compassion to take that little bit of time out of their day to be happy for me?

Speaker 1 And when I frame it that way you see it's not about fucking approval that's that's empathy. I'm using empathy there now.

Speaker 1 Instead of it being about

Speaker 1 someone just said well done to me I'm putting myself into the shoes of the person who is saying well done. And then I bank that you see I bank that.

Speaker 1 And then I'm reminding myself to extend that little bit of human connection to someone else. To someone else for whatever fucking reason.
I want to fail at winning this award.

Speaker 1 And you know how you fail at winning an award? By recognizing and acknowledging that the value we place on awards is a social construct. The award is for my work, for a piece of work that I did.

Speaker 1 It's not for me as a human being. And a piece of work that I do doesn't define my worth as a human being.
And if this isn't making sense,

Speaker 1 I've mentioned this before, a little thought experiment I always use when I'm trying to describe this particular scenario.

Speaker 1 I think of something that I do. where my identity isn't attached to it at all.
My self-esteem and identity isn't attached to it at all. And for me, that's cooking.
I fucking love cooking.

Speaker 1 I love making dinners. I'm really handy at it.
I adore doing it. I used to not be able to cook.
Now I can cook. Sometimes I fuck up a dinner.
I put in too much salt.

Speaker 1 Or I don't look at it and I burn it. What does that mean?

Speaker 1 I'm momentarily disappointed. I'm inconvenienced.
Ah fuck's sake. I have to get a takeaway now.
Bollocks.

Speaker 1 I was really looking forward to that batternese i let it stick to the pan and it burnt fuck's sake

Speaker 1 better take note of that the next time and i just move on i just move on could not give a shit couldn't give a fuck that i've burnt the batternes i'm merely materially inconvenienced that i've burnt the batternes

Speaker 1 i do not come away from that experience going There you go now.

Speaker 1 You're a fucking failure.

Speaker 1 That last batterns that you cooked that was delicious, that was an accident that was.

Speaker 1 And this barnes, the one that you burnt, this is proof that you're a worthless human being, that you're fucking pathetic and worthless. And

Speaker 1 any good meal you've ever cooked before is an accident. And everyone can see how pathetic you are.
You think I do that when I burn a baronet? No, absolutely not. That's mad.
It's absurd.

Speaker 1 What a terrible lot of things to say to myself about a baronet.

Speaker 1 But I will absolutely say that to myself if I get a bad review. Absolutely.
I'll say that to myself for fucking months. I'll paralyze myself.
Why is a short story or a documentary?

Speaker 1 Why is that more important than a baronets? It's not. They're both just things that I do.
The difference is

Speaker 1 I didn't grow up in a house where the adults told me I was good or bad. if I was cooking food.
Just didn't happen.

Speaker 1 But if I painted a picture, if I drew something good, if I made a little song, wrote a story, then everyone's like, oh my god, you're brilliant, you're incredible, my goodness, oh, we gotta show the neighbors, this is astounding.

Speaker 1 Or in the context of documentaries,

Speaker 1 I explored this in a short story I wrote called The Cat Piss Astronaut in my last book, which is a lot of it is based on my experience as a child. But when I was

Speaker 1 four or five in school, so I was highly disruptive, not interested in school whatsoever, until he got me talking about something I was interested in. And I was about four maybe,

Speaker 1 and I'd been teaching myself. I'd taught myself how to read from encyclopedias from about three or four years of age.

Speaker 1 And I think it was dinosaurs. If it wasn't dinosaurs, it was the planets.

Speaker 1 But anyway, a teacher heard me talking about dinosaurs when I was four and was like...

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 1 And then asked me more questions and I went on my dinosaur rant and the teacher was like how the fuck does this kid know so much about dinosaurs? He's a little shit.

Speaker 1 How does he know this much about dinosaurs? And then that teacher brought me up the first class to the older kids to teach them about dinosaurs.

Speaker 1 And then all the other teachers came around to see me, the little four-year-old, knowing more about dinosaurs. than the older kids and their teacher.

Speaker 1 And I just remember all the teachers and the students just being mesmerized. And I felt really, really, really special.
And I learned at that moment as a tiny child that if I'm the person who can make

Speaker 1 people's jaws drop

Speaker 1 with knowledge, then I'm safe in that moment.

Speaker 1 And that safety there, that's the fucking approval. I'm safe in that moment.
I'm not getting in trouble. And those are the foundations of conditions of worth.

Speaker 1 So I have to be a parent to that four-year-old. Because I'm after living out his dream.
If you're the four-year-old who gets brought up to the bigger kids to talk to them about fucking dinosaurs,

Speaker 1 and now as an adult,

Speaker 1 I'm after winning one of the biggest documentary awards in the world. Those two things are connected, you see.

Speaker 1 Because the safety that I chase, the meaning that I that I experience when I'm writing documentaries, that's that feeling of safety I got them when I was fucking four.

Speaker 1 And see, that bit is good.

Speaker 1 That's what in the School of Psychology called transactional analysis.

Speaker 1 That's known as the free child.

Speaker 1 Little four-year-old me who used to like reading encyclopedias and learning about dinosaurs and planets and then used to enjoy telling people about all the things that I've learned.

Speaker 1 I used to love doing that. That's me at play as a child.
That's feeling safe, playfulness. That's the free child.

Speaker 1 According to transactional analysis, all of us have in us as adults, we all have in us a free child, an adapted child.

Speaker 1 Free child is where our spontaneity, playfulness, curiosity, creativity, emotional honesty, joy, that's our free child. And you tap into that when

Speaker 1 you're like experiencing creative flow.

Speaker 1 for neurotypical people, when you're having fun with people you love and you're just completely relaxed and roaring, laughing, when you're uninhibited and excited, completely excited and humming and singing, that's your free child and it's wonderful.

Speaker 1 And that's

Speaker 1 there's great meaning in that. And our free child is

Speaker 1 the heartbreaker, is we're all born as we're all, that's what we're all born into.

Speaker 1 look at a two-year-old or a three-year-old

Speaker 1 and the justice the wonder that they have of simply being alive they want love warmth food and wonder and we all we were all that that's our free child the part of our personality that we had before social conditioning and behavioral modification.

Speaker 1 But then you have your adapted child that develops when we're a little bit older and it develops as a response to external authority, environmental demands, fucking approval and your adapted child.

Speaker 1 It's when you're afraid of getting into trouble. Are you a grown adult? Are you a fucking adult? And as an adult, sometimes you're afraid of getting into trouble.

Speaker 1 Now I don't mean getting arrested or legal trouble or anything like that. I mean you're late for work or you haven't responded to an email and you're not going to get into trouble.

Speaker 1 You're not like, what does that even mean? You're a fucking adult. Adults can't get into trouble.

Speaker 1 Your boss or the person you were supposed to respond to, they might get a bit pissed off, they might get frustrated. But no, you feel like you're going to get into trouble.

Speaker 1 You feel like you're going to be punished.

Speaker 1 And now all of a sudden, because you're afraid of being in trouble,

Speaker 1 your body language changes, you're people pleasing,

Speaker 1 you're apologetic, that's your adapted child. Just like in a moment of joy where you're humming

Speaker 1 and singing and laughing and you're right back at free child,

Speaker 1 little triggers can bring you back into adapted child and now you think you're in trouble. And so for me, something I bring into my awareness.

Speaker 1 When I'm creating, when I'm making something, the middle, the process, process, I'm in Free Child, I'm in flow.

Speaker 1 So I'm right back to being four, reading my encyclopedias, ranting to somebody about something that I learned. That's Free Child.
But then the bit, where I'm at the top of the class and I look around.

Speaker 1 And all the children have their jaws open because they can't believe I know that much about dinosaurs. And the adults are whispering at each other, going, oh my god, he's special.

Speaker 1 There's something different with him. And I'm internalizing this as,

Speaker 1 oh, I have worth. I must be good.
That's my adapted child. And I have to step in and be a parent to him.

Speaker 1 And I go, oh, the teachers, the teachers asked you to talk about dinosaurs to the older classes. Wow, did you enjoy that? That sounds like you really enjoy that.

Speaker 1 What would you like for dinner now? Acknowledging the experience, not placing a value on it. Not saying, goodbye.
Wow, you're brilliant, that's amazing, or thank fuck, I thought you were tick.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, that's my resp, this

Speaker 1 award that I got.

Speaker 1 It's an opportunity for me to be on the lookout,

Speaker 1 to be mindful with my internal world

Speaker 1 and to spot when my little child comes up in me and to be a parent to that child

Speaker 1 as the fucking adult that I am now. So, this week

Speaker 1 I don't have a hot take this week.

Speaker 1 Some weeks I just have to show up and be authentic and I don't want to force a hot take.

Speaker 1 This has been a big week as you can imagine. I've been very busy doing interviews

Speaker 1 and I want to be congruent with my thoughts.

Speaker 1 Let's have a little ocarina pause.

Speaker 1 I don't have an ocarina. I'm in my studio.

Speaker 1 We'll bring the ocarina back when it it feels right. I think I'm gonna jingle some dull keys.

Speaker 1 I need to hear an advert for some bullshit. So let's jingle some dull keys.

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Speaker 10 Hi, it's Paige DeSorbo from Giggly Squad. You ever stand in front of your closet and just say, I have nothing to wear while you're literally surrounded by clothes? Because same.

Speaker 10 So I started listing pieces I'm over on Depop and honestly, it's been amazing. You can sell what you're done with and someone out there will love it.

Speaker 10 And the best part about it is there's no seller fee. So the money you make actually stays in your pocket, which feels very chic.
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Speaker 10 I listed something while watching TV and it sold before the episode even ended. So download the Depop app and list your first item today because your old outfit could be someone else's new favorite.

Speaker 10 Depop, where taste recognizes taste. Payment processing fees, boosting fees still apply.
For more info, visit Depop.com. Hi, it's Paige DeSorbo from Giggly Squad.

Speaker 10 You ever stand in front of your closet and just say, I have nothing to wear while you're literally surrounded by clothes? Because same. So I started listing pieces I'm over on Depop.

Speaker 10 And honestly, it's been amazing. You can sell what you're done with and someone out there will love it.
And the best part about it is there's no seller fee.

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I listed something while watching TV, and it sold before the episode even ended.

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Speaker 10 Payment processing fees, boosting fees still apply. For more info, visit dpop.com.

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Speaker 1 but I must say they're selling quickly because people are buying tickets as Christmas presents.

Speaker 1 So starting in January 26 on the 23rd I'm in Waterford in the Theatre Royal. Then I'm up to Glamorous Nees at the Spirit of Kildare Festival on the 31st of January.
Then in February we move to Dublin.

Speaker 1 to the wonderful Vicar Street for a Wednesday night gig there on the 4th of February. Then let's go to Belfast.

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I haven't had a dose of Carlo in a long time. Then let's go to Cork on the 26th.

Speaker 1 A fucking March there in the Cork Opera House. And who could forget wonderful, gorgeous Limerick, my home city, where I'd be playing the University Concert Hall in April, is it?

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Speaker 1 If not, just fucking type it into Google. So look, I won the best presenter award.
I don't know what to make of it.

Speaker 1 Um

Speaker 1 I'm not being ungrateful. It's just overwhelming.

Speaker 1 I'm conscious of the weight of the award. It's

Speaker 1 the Grierson Awards, documentary awards. It's basically it's like one underneath

Speaker 1 an Oscar. It's like one underneath an Oscar or a Cairns.

Speaker 1 Is Cairns where they do documentary awards? The Oscars for fucking documentary awards. Grierson is like underneath that.
So I'm I'm very conscious of the weight of that award

Speaker 1 and I'm trying to navigate it healthily by saying it's an acknowledgement of the work. Do you know how I won that award? By failing through failure.
And what I mean by that is

Speaker 1 I won best presenter award. I'm a shit TV presenter.
I am not a good television presenter. It's not a skill set that I have.

Speaker 1 Like TV presenters have a certain way of carrying themselves and walking walking and speaking and making eye contact with the camera.

Speaker 1 A performance, a tone of voice, something which feels television presenter-ish.

Speaker 1 And I'm awful at that. Like really bad at that.
But the thing is,

Speaker 1 you can be shit at something

Speaker 1 and make it look good.

Speaker 1 So long as... So long as you're confident.

Speaker 1 The best way to describe this is dancing.

Speaker 1 There's lots of performers who are actually shit at dancing, like really bad dancers. But because

Speaker 1 they dance shittily, but with extreme comfort and confidence, they're actually now not bad dancers, they're brilliant dancers.

Speaker 1 David Bowie, not a good dancer, can't dance, but what he does do, he does it confidently.

Speaker 1 David Byrne, talking heads, same thing, can't fucking dance, but whatever the fuck it is that he does, it's authentic and congruent and he enjoys it and it works as dancing. Mary J.
Blige.

Speaker 1 Look at Mary J. Blige dancing.
It's like she's trying to put a jacket on, but she's not allowed to use her hands. So she has to shake the jacket on.

Speaker 1 That's how she dances, but she does it with congruence.

Speaker 1 and authenticity and she doesn't give a fuck what you think about her dancing because this is her thing and this is what she does and then before you know it Mary J Blige is actually a fucking excellent dancer.

Speaker 1 I can watch Mary J. Blige dancing for ages.

Speaker 1 I look at her dancing way more than I'd watch someone who's a conventionally brilliant dancer. So therefore Mary J.
Blige is actually a fantastic dancer. So you can actually be shit at something.

Speaker 1 But you if you're shit at it confidently and you lean in towards the failure and make it work for you you can turn you can turn failure into success. Like one example in that documentary I made was

Speaker 1 I was presenting a scene from Shkellig Michael

Speaker 1 an old monastic rock in the middle of fucking in the middle of the ocean

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 the whole island was just there was puffins everywhere fucking hundreds and thousands of puffins

Speaker 1 and I had a job my job was to deliver lines to the camera and I couldn't do it because I kept getting distracted by the puffins how the fuck am I supposed to look down the lens of the camera and deliver lines coherently when there's puffins all around me So I kept getting distracted by puffins when I was trying to do my lines.

Speaker 1 So what did we do? We left it in. First off, another television presenter,

Speaker 1 they're not going to get distracted by puffins. They're going to be able to focus on the work.
But if they were getting distracted by puffins and they couldn't do their lines,

Speaker 1 you'd have to shut the shoot down and the director would get pissed off and they'd go, for fuck's sake, we're after wasting a day's shooting, we have to find a new location because that presenter keeps getting distracted by puffins.

Speaker 1 But that's not how I operate. If If I'm presenting a scene and I'm surrounded by puffins and they keep distracting me, then that's what we do.
That's what the scene is. I'm gonna deliver these lines.

Speaker 1 And the thing, the lines were about death. I was speaking about my own mortality.
Surrounded by hundreds of puffins actively being distracted by puffins.

Speaker 1 And because I was so comfortable with the absurdity of that, and confident in like I don't give a fuck, I'll talk about mortality surrounded by puffins.

Speaker 1 I'd actually prefer to do that than to be pretend serious or solemn. So something which actually should be

Speaker 1 horrendous ends up being good. How was that shit fucking present Keith Floyd?

Speaker 1 I've spoken about Keith Floyd before. He was a television chef in the 80s and he used to get shit faced.

Speaker 1 He used to cook with alcohol and then he'd get shit-faced and he'd be pissed drunk for every single recipe he was making. And it was brilliant.
He made it work.

Speaker 1 He wasn't hiding the fact that he was drunk. It was...
he owned it. He took ownership of it and made it his own.
I'm so shit at presenting television.

Speaker 1 I can't even show my face. I have to cover my face with a plastic bag.
This means you don't get facial expressions. But I'm quite comfortable wearing a plastic bag.
I'm not embarrassed about it.

Speaker 1 I quite like it. I enjoy it.
I think it's good crack. So at all points I embrace failure.

Speaker 1 Failure, failure, failure failure and of course not just me my co-writer producer and the director james who i work with really closely he's a hundred percent in with this method too there's no such thing as right or wrong with him right and wrong doesn't exist there's is this working or is it not and as i've mentioned like I'm consistently mentioning the importance of failure in art and you rarely hear me talking about fucking success.

Speaker 1 Now the only real failure is doing nothing. We've mentioned that.
That's not showing up, not getting up, not turning up for the shoot, turning down opportunities.

Speaker 1 Failure is when nothing is created. But when something is created, then there's no such thing as failure.
So failure for me is

Speaker 1 instead of trying to make something good,

Speaker 1 consistently

Speaker 1 making choices that are terrible and then trying to work my way out of them. The documentary itself

Speaker 1 was commissioned by the RTA Religious Department.

Speaker 1 They wanted me to make a documentary about Christianity. The fuck am I doing making a documentary about Christianity? I don't believe in Christianity.

Speaker 1 I think I'm the only contemporary Irish entertainer.

Speaker 1 who was nearly charged with the blasphemy law and I had bishops up and down Ireland who brought a formal complaint against me with the fucking broadcast authority of Ireland because I called communion wafers haunted bread.

Speaker 1 So the last

Speaker 1 documentary that I should be writing and I should be making is a fucking documentary about Christianity or religion. Terrible idea.
Brilliant. Now I'm beginning with failure.

Speaker 1 What do I want to make a documentary about? Well, I'm a writer. I'd love to make a documentary about writing.

Speaker 1 Okay, how do I make this documentary about early Irish Christianity, about the Irish writing tradition? So that's what I did.

Speaker 1 It's a very serious, it's a serious academic documentary that has a number of experts in it. The documentary is, it's so serious

Speaker 1 that part of the money for the commissioning came from the Department of Education because the documentary had to be shown in schools on the junior cert syllabus.

Speaker 1 It's not called the junior cert anymore, but I'm elderly. What the fuck do I know? So I knew from the start this has to be a serious documentary.
It has to be rigorous.

Speaker 1 There can't be a fact out of place. It has to be academically sound.
There's no room whatsoever for any for hot takes. This has to be rigorously academic and serious.
So I said, okay,

Speaker 1 let's be serious. while being as silly as possible.
I'm gonna have a dog in this documentary and the dog's gonna have eyebrows for no reason. That's insane.

Speaker 1 That's if another television presenter suggested that they'd lose their job or they'd be in the middle of some type of crisis. Do you get me?

Speaker 1 I can't understand how I won this award and I'm trying to dissect. I'm trying to dissect what exactly went on that led to this.
And I think that's what happened.

Speaker 1 It's the consistent process that's based on failure. If you aim for success,

Speaker 1 Right with any art if you aim for success

Speaker 1 You'll scare yourself you'll frighten yourself. So you end up playing it safe so aiming for success will give you Consistent mediocrity but aiming for failure will give you

Speaker 1 occasional brilliance because you're taking risks you see you're taking risks, you're operating laterally

Speaker 1 and you're

Speaker 1 greatly increasing the chances of doing something new and just something else there around

Speaker 1 confidence and audacity

Speaker 1 something as bizarre as this documentary is going to have a dog that has eyebrows in it and the presenter has a plastic bag on his head I don't feel nervous about any of that or worried or

Speaker 1 apprehensive or concerned it won't work.

Speaker 1 I know that it's silly, I know it's ridiculous, but the thing that gives me the confidence to do that is that the writing is fucking bulletproof.

Speaker 1 So it takes about six months to make a documentary, which I write with James. That's what the rigor is.
Bulletproof thesis.

Speaker 1 Bulletproof script.

Speaker 1 Knowing that the words, the words fucking work. These words work.
These ideas work. Solid arguments are being made.
And once you have that, that's your foundation. That's the fucking foundation.

Speaker 1 And once that foundation is solid and it's not gonna sink and stay in place, then the house that you're building it can be as silly as you want, can be as ridiculous and as silly as you want, because you know it's not gonna fall over.

Speaker 1 And that's where confidence and congruence comes from. So I just have to assume that these are the things that

Speaker 1 had me win that fucking award. The reason I'm flabbergasted is this should not have happened.

Speaker 1 It's the first RTE documentary in over 20 years to win one of these awards. I think I was the only Irish documentary at the awards.
It's really fucking unexpected that I was nominated and 100%.

Speaker 1 I was sure that I'd be coming back to you with this week's podcast going.

Speaker 1 I went over to London, I went to the awards, I didn't win. 100%.

Speaker 1 It was...

Speaker 1 I did not entertain the possibility that I was going to fucking win. I was in the long list with Louis Thoreau.

Speaker 1 Alright? Proper international documentary stuff. So...

Speaker 1 I'm speechless over it, but I'm not really speechless because I just spoke for ages about it. But

Speaker 1 I'm confused and I feel weird. And it hasn't really hit me.

Speaker 1 And then the award ceremony itself.

Speaker 1 I wore my smart casual fucking jacket that worked out well, blended in nicely.

Speaker 1 The venue was in the Camden Roundhouse which wasn't conducive to human interaction at all.

Speaker 1 A completely round building. And when I was sitting in my seat,

Speaker 1 there was about two or three thousand people there. When I was sitting in my seat, I nearly missed my own award because I was googling the history of the fucking building.

Speaker 1 But the building itself, it's an old Victorian. It was a turntable for trains.
It's a building for trains. Big round circle.

Speaker 1 And trains used to stick their noses into this circle and then the building itself would rotate.

Speaker 1 And that's how a train would go from one track to another.

Speaker 1 And that's what the building was. And now it's an entertainment venue.
But because it's this massive Colosseum-like circle, it's horrendous for the acoustics of the human voice.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 after I won the award, there's 3,000 people there in the room.

Speaker 1 I get profoundly overwhelmed by the chatter, the cacophony.

Speaker 1 Then I was getting chased down by when you win the award then you see everyone wants to fucking talk to you.

Speaker 1 I spoke to one person from Netflix

Speaker 1 and all I did was talk about the IRA for no reason. So I'm not going to get commissioned on fucking Netflix.
That's a guarantee. I left the awards early.

Speaker 1 I couldn't, there was too many people, there was two or three thousand people and too many people wanted to talk to me and I was overwhelmed and I said, fuck this. I left the awards

Speaker 1 about 15 minutes after I won the award and I went to a quiet pub on my own where I drank a couple of pints, threw on my headphones and I listened to Sepulchura. or a Brazilian heavy metal band.

Speaker 1 And then I celebrated winning my award the next day.

Speaker 1 I went to TKMX and I bought myself some luxury shower gel.

Speaker 1 I bought

Speaker 1 rose water scented a liter of rose water scented luxury shower gel which I combined with

Speaker 1 cocoa butter moisturizer right and I did this because it made me smell like the the memory of a Turkish delight

Speaker 1 Not a Turkish delight as you'd eat it, but what you remember The purple fries Turkish delight to taste and smell like as a child. Then the second thing I did to celebrate winning the award,

Speaker 1 I bought a hat that turns into a balaclava. And then I went out to a place in London called Wanstead, which is near Ilford, the far east London.

Speaker 1 And I went to the City of London Cemetery to visit the grave of the Elephant Man, who was

Speaker 1 a fella in the late 1800s.

Speaker 1 He was very severely deformed. His name was Joseph Merrick and he had a terribly unfortunate life where he toured freak shows

Speaker 1 but then a very compassionate doctor cared for him in a hospital and he became like a celebrity of his time.

Speaker 1 And there's a brilliant fucking film, The Elephant Man, made in 1984 by David Lynch and what makes it phenomenal is because David Lynch is a surrealist

Speaker 1 it's it's a historically accurate film

Speaker 1 but it's also

Speaker 1 possibly one of David Lynch's strangest films

Speaker 1 what I adore about David Lynch's work

Speaker 1 and he said this before he said this before in an interview because his films are nuts

Speaker 1 he said you can't view his films as being good or bad. You have to critique his films the way that you would critique a weird dream.
And I thought that was beautiful.

Speaker 1 Because sometimes we have dreams that are fucking nuts. You just have a dream.

Speaker 1 And for no reason, in the middle of your dream, you're suddenly in a different room wearing different clothes and all your teeth fall out and you just never question it.

Speaker 1 You don't wake up critiquing your dream, going, Oh, that plot wasn't great. You go, Jesus, I had a weird dream last night.
And David Lynch says, That's how you must look at his films.

Speaker 1 And The Elephant Man is like that. It's a historically accurate biography of a very deformed man called Joseph Merrick.
But the film feels like the strangest dream you could ever have.

Speaker 1 An odd nightmare.

Speaker 1 And Joseph Merrick, the elephant man his skeleton was preserved I think it's in London hospital the skeleton was preserved but then his soft tissue they also kept in the hospital but a lot of it was destroyed in the blitz and then what was left of his soft tissue they buried it somewhere and they couldn't find it for fucking years and then a biographer of him found a little grave with some of his soft tissue in 2019 and that's what I visited out in the city of London Cemetery.

Speaker 1 So that's how I celebrated my fucking award.

Speaker 1 I visited the grave of the elephant man with a hat that turns into a banaclava while smelling like a Turkish delight. And I'm happy I celebrated the award that way because

Speaker 1 there's a humility in it. There's a humility in that.
So thank you for all the well wishes.

Speaker 1 The name of my documentary for anyone who doesn't know is called Blind Boy Land, Land of Slaves Slaves and Scholars, and it's still up on the RT player.

Speaker 1 I'll be back next week, hopefully, with a hot take.

Speaker 1 In the meantime, rub a dog,

Speaker 1 wink at a swan, and genuflect to a robin. God bless.

Speaker 1 So good, so good, so good.

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