comedians-from-ireland

"I think Catholicism is actually so counter-cultural to capitalism that it’s great to get relief from that economic narrative. It’s great to go to a place where it’s all about the losers. Capitalism is all about winning and ‘be the best that you can be’. That’s a tiresome mantra. ‘I am legend’ is appropriate if you’re a superhero, but not if you’re a human."

"I said "Anyone Jewish here?" and someone goes "I'm Jewish!" and I said … "And what year is this now in the Jewish calendar?" And she goes, "Er, I wasn't expecting questions, to be honest ..."—and then turned to her presumably gentile friend and had a bit of a natter—and then came back with the single finest answer I have ever heard from a member of an audience, where, without any shame at all, she just went, "Yeah, it's the Jewish Year of the Rat.""

"I'm sorry, 'herbal medicine', "Oh, herbal medicine's been around for thousands of years!" Indeed it has, and then we tested it all, and the stuff that worked became 'medicine'. And the rest of it is just a nice bowl of soup and some potpourri, so knock yourselves out."

"Stop taking it literally—it's only the Bible, it's not gospel."

"Science knows it doesn't know everything; otherwise, it'd stop. But just because science doesn't know everything doesn't mean you can fill in the gaps with whatever fairy tale most appeals to you."

"If we were truly created by God, then why do we still occasionally bite the insides of our own mouths?"

"Anyone, in answer to the difficult questions in life, the "I don't know what happens after I die" or "What happens if my loved ones die?" or "How can I stop myself dying?", the big questions, who gives you an easy bullshit answer, and you go "Well, do you have any evidence for that?" and they go "Ah, there is more to life than evidence", get in the fucking sack."

""Oh, but they're [the Chinese] so wise. They have one word for 'crisis' and 'opportunity'." Yes, but they also have one word for 'China' and 'Tibet' and it's 'China', so fuck them."

""The great thing about homeopathy is that you can't overdose on it." Well, you could fucking drown!"

"Right now I would take homeopaths and I'd put them in a big sack with psychics, astrologers and priests. And I'd close the top of the sack with string, and I'd hit them all with sticks. And I really wouldn't worry who got the worst of the belting with the sticks."

"Here's my favorite little fact. If anyone is ever described to you as a nutritionist, just be slightly wary, right? What they're saying may be perfectly true, but "nutritionist" isn't a protected term. Anyone can call themselves a nutritionist. "Dietician" is the legally protected term. "Dietician" is like "dentist", and "nutritionist" is like "tooth-i-ologist."

"And the Day Two pain of the gym! When you go back to the gym and you're in agony, and every bit of you is in pain. And the gym guy, you go up to him, you go "Why am I in so much pain?"—and he goes "That's because you're using muscles you haven't used in years." And you look at him and go "Why the fuck are we wasting our time with those muscles?"

"There are three states of legality in Irish law. There is all this stuff here under "That's grand"; then it moves into "Ah, now, don't push it"; and finally to "Right! You're taking the piss." And that's where the police sweep in."

"(on a line in the movie 2012) " 'The neutrinos have mutated.' Now, for the non-nerds here: neutrinos are tiny, sub-atomic, really really almost massless particles, they're released in nuclear breakdowns, like in the sun, for example. Five hundred trillion of them pass through your bodies every second. They can't mutate. Their structure is fundamental to the structure of the universe. Right? They can't just change. He might as well have gone, 'The electrons are angry'.""

"Chinese medicine, oh, Chinese medicine! "But there are billions of Chinese, Chinese medicine must be working." Here's the skinny on Chinese medicine. A hundred years ago the average life expectancy in China was 30. The life expectancy in China at the moment is 73. And it's not feckin' tiger penis that turned it around for the Chinese. Didn't do much for the tiger, if you don't mind me pointing out."

"I'm not a religious man, right, I don't even believe in God. But still Catholic, obviously."

"Sometimes in your everyday life, you should say the right thing. But the wrong thing is funnier."

"[During 'If This Is The Answer, What Is The Question' -- the answer is "24%"] Is it "What is the proportion of my penis that is medically safe for a woman to accommodate?"?"

"Trying to separate cigarettes and alcohol, that's against God's will!"

"[During 'Unlikely Things To Hear In The House of Lords'] Ive changed my name to E. Lordy, I want you all to call me Lord E. Lordy!"

"Do you know who I like? No, you don't. So I'm gonna tell you. Because if you all just did know who I like, then that would have been really weird, because it means you're in my head."

"My only problem with the Grand Canyon is Americans are a little bit too proud of it for my liking. Because they're very proud of it, they are, they love it. I spent two and a half weeks in that Grand Canyon, and if one more American was to say to me "[mock American accent] Hey! Bet you don't have anything like this in Ireland, huh?!", there was gonna be trouble! Honestly! They are so proud of that hole in the ground, you'd think they'd all got together one day with a load of shovels and dug it them-fucking-selves! And let's face it, if they were gonna do that, they would have got the Irish to do it for them, anyway. I do like Americans; they've done a lot to be proud of, to be honest with you. They invented Jack Daniel's, they invented Coca-Cola, they put the two together, hohohoho! They're a thinking people! Put a man on the moon, gave us Marlboro cigarettes, Bill Hicks, Jimi Hendrix, they've done a lot to be proud of. But the Grand Canyon was like that when they found it! And it's not like it was hard to find, the fucker's huge! "[mock American accent] Bet you don't have anything like this in Ireland, huh?!" Yeah, if we did, we wouldn't have anywhere to put it! Stupid thing to say! Yeah, move Limerick, we have a big canyon coming in! [pauses] Actually not a bad idea, really. I don't know if you've ever been to Limerick [laughs]. "[singing] Limerick, you're a lady!" A big, ugly, scary lady with a knife!"

"[on LL Cool J's name] He obviously went to a school where you get to pick your own fucking nickname, he did. "I shall be 'LL Cool J', 'Ladies Love Cool James'". "Nice one, God I wish I'd thought of that one for myself." If I'd gone to his school, my nickname probably would have been 'LL Nice E B T G P H A A F', which stands for 'Ladies Like Nice Ed But They Generally Prefer Him As A Friend'."

"I'm all for Workers' Rights and stuff like that, that's fair enough. But imagine if you were working in a pub in some real rough-arse of inner-city North Dublin, ...and you're built like, say, me. And you've got to go up to some bloke who looks like he's been lured down from a mountain with a hunk of meat, and he's just trying to enjoy his 'post-fight' cigarette, and you've got to tell him to put it out. Somewhere in the back of your head you're going to be thinking "Oh, thank you so much to the government for looking after my health." [pauses] Somewhere in the back of your head, where your nose is about to be."

"An isobar of emos. If anybody needs that explaining to them, it's because they are linked by their depression."

"I did think about giving up smoking, but I decided not to, because I'm not a quitter. And I know that every cigarette I smoke takes five minutes off my life, but I also know it takes ten minutes to smoke it. That's a clear five-minute net gain, I reckon."

"Do you know what's odd and weird and strange - a democracy with a fucking Queen...Piers Morgan, who's a cock anyway...sweaty faced bollix."

"...and I've had to call somebody who purports to be some sort of boiler man...am I just unlucky or are plumbers evil lying bags of shit?"

"For me snowboarding is basically like being beaten up by a mountain."

"It's a DVD, and some of it might be shown on TV, so I'll be keeping it clean. There'll be no swearing, bad language or dirty talk. No, no, none of that. Because as my mother always says, "if you have to swear to get laughs, then you're obviously a cunt.""

"[About the Smoking Ban] The Irish are trying to be American, that's all it is. Everything American does Ireland has to do as well. Next thing you know, the Irish are going to start saying 'aluminum', and that'll be the last straw as far as I'm concerned. If that happens, I'm not going back! Everyone's got their own reasons to dislike Americans, 'aluminum' is top of my fucking list, ladies and gentleman. Aluminum cans, aluminum – what the fuck's aluminum foil? Honestly! Everyone knows it's pronounced 'tin'!"

"If it's sent by ship then it's a cargo, if it's sent by road then it's a shipment."

"We spend our lives on the run: we get up by the clock, eat and sleep by the clock, get up again, go to work - and then we retire. And what do they give us? A fucking clock."

"I'm an Atheist...thank God."

"I don't go out of my way to be outrageous, I just go out of my way to look at things."

"I still think of myself as I was 25 years ago. Then I look in a mirror and see an old bastard and realise it's me."

"I've stopped smoking... I think the cost was a lot of it, and not being able to breathe. I first gave up smoking when I was eight."

"So, what else is going on? Music? Fine, here is The Beatles, The Stones come here later this evening, there is The Velvet Underground, Janis Joplin has just gone to lunch. So, do you want something to do in between now and then, I'd grow my hair and fornicate if I were you."

"I can't relax here. These people have no pubic hair anywhere. We have pubic hair on the ceiling."

"People do... need... things... that are bad for them. They do. Stimulants and so on. They always have. Every so often, some politician or footballer or actor or whoever it is is caught in a hotel room, surrounded by hookers and cocaine. And everybody else goes: "Oh, the shame of it! How could he? How absolutely dreadful! I'd never do that... I've never had a chance, but I'd never ever do that! Oh, the disgust that courses through me right now — you could bottle it!" But what else are you supposed to give hookers in a hotel room? "Yogurt, anybody? I made some yogurt this morning, would you like some? It's got Granola and everything. You sure? Go on, have a bit.""

"This is our Smeg fridge, the whole house is made of Smeg. We're made of Smeg, aren't we, Roy?" "Yes, dear."

"My ideal body, you know, would be just probably something like, ahm... One eye, you probably only need one. A kind of sucker thing instead of teeth, because they just give you grief in the end, you know. And a long, long tube with my arse way over there so I don't have to deal with it. That would be ideal."

"You see the button with the picture of the guy with the plate, and you push it, AND HE ARRIVES WITH A SANDWICH! ...And you think: "Yes! Yes! I control sandwich monkey! I live in magic land, magic land, magic land. It's my Wizard-Of-Oz phone.""

"And they say that after people make love there's a kind of melancholia that descends; la petite mort, you know, the little death. Well, I'm here to tell you, after a romantic night in with yourself, there's a very acute sensation of failed suicide. And I think a lot of that, if you're men is because of the quality of the gear you've got to work with. I mean it's horrible looking. Like a deep sea fish that ate its own arse after about an hour. What's going on down there?! Do something nice, like a kittens head... or something and you could just tickle its chin until it got sick... it would be alright..."

"Everybody does that now. We all take pics… you do the same with holiday photos. You record something to look back on it, even though you’re not really there when you’re taking the picture ‘cause you’re too busy recording it; so you retrospectively go to look back on where you weren’t and tell yourself you had a good time."

"You see, most modern technology doesn't work. It's supposed to free you, but it's a terrible trap, of course. Mobile phones for example: everybody has one now. I have one and they're awful. They've completely ruined, I mean, people ring you up and say "Hi, it's me, I'm in the bath!" and you go "Well, you're still an asshole, I hope you drown and hello." And they’ve completely dispensed with the whole drama of news, the simple idea of having something to relate, you know. When you could bound in from the garden and pick up the old Bakelite phone that weighted seven pounds and say “MIRIAM'S DEAD”. You can't do that anymore. You're probably there! [pantomiming being on phone] "Yes, her head's rolling back, spit's coming out, her eyes are going everywhere, here, I'll take a picture -click- you see what I mean? Sheeee's fucked!""

"But you see, you measure what a good time you had by how much it fucks you up; you go out tonight, get ripped, get shitfaced. You'll wake up tomorrow and somebody will talk to you and ask, "How was last night?" You'll say, "It was fantastic! ...I can't see. No sens— no feeling, nothing, no sensation down the left side of my body. Oh! I can't even form sentences! You should've come; you would've at least lost an ear!""

"The weak, sensual, pleasure-loving French. You know, not going to war because they’re all still in bed at two in the afternoon, with the sheets coiled about their knees, lying, there scratching themselves, smoking a Gauloise inside a Gitane, sweating Nice sancerre. Before one of them sloughs off the sheets to pad around the kitchen naked. No, not naked, naked from the waist down. To emphasise their nakedity. Picking up yesterday's croissant crumbs with their sweaty feet. Slashing yesterday's paintings."

"But look at the people who use [their potential] — who do actually give it everything... The Beckhams or Roy Keanes of this world. People charging! Running up and down the field, swearing and shouting at each other. Are they happy? No! They're destroying themselves! Who's happy? You! The fat fucks watching them, with a beer can balanced on your ninth belly, roaring advice at the best athletes in the world. "YOU WANKER!""

"What dya mean theres no fackin chips, I come ere on a plane, you cunt! I've got children ere, what am I spose to do with this fackin tomato fiasco."