This weekend, RTÉ Player presents Notions Eleven, the new comedy special from comic Jarlath Regan, host of the popular podcast An Irishman Abroad - as a special Paddy's Day treat, it's available to stream globally, for free.

Recorded in Vicar Street, Dublin in March 2020, mere days ahead of the first lockdown, Notions Eleven showcases The Talented Mr. Regan at the height of his standup powers. Remember live comedy?

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To celebrate the occasion, we asked Jarlath for his choice cultural picks...

FILM

First of all I love this task. I love recommendations. They are so hard to get right that I created a podcast specifically about this called The Selection Box. Anyway, most recently I loved, A Beautiful Day In The Neighbourhood. If you need a movie to brighten things up for you, that is the movie I would go to. As a family, the movie Christopher Robin with Ewan McGregor is a dead certainty in my book. Everyone will love the heart, spirit and humour of that film.

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MUSIC

I have to force myself out of my comfort zone with music. I tend to revert to the old goldies like playlists I made years ago. I make a weekly running podcast with Sonia O’Sullivan where she assigns me different running assignments and I have been forced to get creative with the playlists to keep the motivation up when I’m getting heavy legs. If you are a runner I recommend listening to The Fat Of The Land by The Prodigy, Roses by SAINt JHN, The Chemical Brothers' Star Guitar and ’Til I Collapse from Eminem. Also, listen to Sonia, she’s a great coach...

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BOOKS

Eithne Shortall has been recommending books to me that I’d never normally read, and two that really stand out is Such A Fun Age by Kiley Reid and The Nothing Man by Catherine Ryan Howard.

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I was never a massive reader until I had to read multiple books each week as research for the Irishman Abroad podcast. Now I have a few on the go at once, and a couple of audio books for the long runs on Sundays. We have a book club on the running pod and right now we are all reading the memoir of Phil Knight, the creator of Nike. I’m finding it very tough going, to be honest.

THEATRE

Now, I took this to mean what games am I playing given that nobody is going to the theatre at the moment. My son is obsessed with Among Us but I love board games like Cluedo which is basically the same thing, so we all play that. The all-time greatest board game is Password. It’s very hard to find but trust me it will instantaneously be your favourite game too.

TV

Where do I start? I guess Lupin was the last thing I binged in one sitting. There’s a lot of turkeys out there especially in the "very drawn out boring crime documentary" genre. I have had my fill of that for now. My good friend Aaron Heffernan is in a brilliant Sky series called Brassic. I’m obsessed with that. I couldn’t get enough of The Last Dance and I’m so excited for the return of Last Chance U. I’ve loved every season of this show. It’s the US sports fans’ The Crown.

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GIG

Return Of The Craic is the socially distanced comedy club I created with a friend during the first lockdown. I reluctantly moved it online thinking, "We will see if this works?" Since January, we have run it every single week, had guests like Ardal O’Hanlon, Romesh Ranganathan, Rachel Parris, Abdandoman, Keith Barry, Imelda May and Deirdre O’Kane, and we have raised a tonne of money for frontline charities by giving away all our profits. It’s the highlight of my week and we now have a few hundred regulars who love it too.

ART

My friend Fintan Wall has been creating the most beautiful Irish art for years. I love all his stuff. I feel really lucky to have had the chance to work with him on the visual identity of our new shows and the Return Of The Craic comedy club.

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Tracie Ching is the artist I have worked with on the poster for Notions Eleven. She designed Kamala Harris’s poster and some of the iconic Avengers promotional posters. She is incredible.

RADIO/PODCAST

I still tune into Irish radio even though I live in England. You just can’t beat Joe Duffy, Tom Dunne, Dr Ciara Kelly and The Off The Ball team. I obviously adore podcasts and listen to dozens of different shows without fail each week. There’s a brilliant new show called Craic On by Mairead Doyle. It’s superb. I’ll always loop back to Fresh Air with Terri Gross on NPR and the old reliable You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes. The Headstuff Podcast network never lets me down for great Irish content, and like everyone I was glued to Where Is George Gibney. I had Mark Horgan on my podcast to talk about the making of it. For laughs, I always go to How Did This Get Made?

TECH

Strava is the website and app I’ve become obsessed with. Runners will know exactly why but basically it lets you track and monitor your running and connect with other runners. The community on there is the opposite of most other social media platforms. Massively supportive - no negativity or weirdness. Just eejits trying their best to run as far and as fast as they can. We even set up an Irishman Running Abroad running club on there where Sonia creates events for us to run.

THE NEXT BIG THING...

The next big thing will be the government going abroad and playing hard ball the way they did to get foreign direct investment back in the day. They are going to do the same again and get us all vaccinated. I firmly believe that’s the next big thing.

Notions Eleven is available to stream on RTÉ Player from March 13th 2021