Comedian and actor Tadhg Hickey introduces an extract from his new memoir, A Portrait of the P**s Artist as a Young Man.
I chose this extract because it pinpoints the first great metamorphosis of my life, the moment a fragile anxious traumatised teenager became an indomitable superhero - and all it took was a few cans in the park with the lads.
The book was borne out of my critically acclaimed play, In One Eye, Out The Other which was effectively a surreal version of my childhood growing up with alcoholism in the home.
A Portrait of the P**s Artist drops the surrealism and tells the real story, warts and all. My motivation to write the unflinching account was to try to illustrate the trauma and mental illness that underpin addiction; that no-one starts to drink their head off and ruin their lives and destroy their families because they’re simply selfish or idiotic. The night I first drank I realised instantly that something was happening for me that wasn’t happening for the other lads. They wanted to drink, I needed to.
Booze soothed my soul and quelled my neuroses. It solved my problems (or so it seemed). I believed I couldn’t live without it. This is not an attempt to absolve accountability from the person struggling with addiction. Without accountability, there’s no recovery in my experience. It’s just an attempt to help the non-addicted get a sense of why we do what we do: we’re in a lot of pain, and drink and drugs are very effective painkillers. Until they stop working.
If you found that intro a bit intense, why not come see me on tour for some light relief? The Marxist Terrorist-Supporting Scumbag tour is coming to a town near you! Find out more here.
A Portrait of the P**s Artist as a Young Man - an extract
So, I was sitting there in an alleyway in the Lough on the biggest night of my young life, in a way-too-big- for-me shirt and pants, brickin ’it. I might be about to gat. Jesus. What if I do something weird like p**s myself? I thought. What if I die? Oh God, what if I p**s and s*** myself? I didn’t have the guts to go to the off licence so it was up to B. B was the balls of the group. There was very little chat out of the rest of us as we waited, staring at the corner where we hoped he’d re-emerge. Our little heads were gone. You know when you’re fifteen and you’ve got no real sense of how illegal your illegal activity is? You’re assuming the worst. Was he going to get arrested? Shot? Lad buying cans for Junior Cert night? Hello! Helicopters!
Pilot: Just surveying the scene here, captain. There’s a young lad struggling up the road with a load of cans moving towards a young man in a giant green shirt. I repeat: giant, green. Over.
Captain: What’s the thinking behind the giant green shirt, Steve? Over.
Pilot: Attempting to disguise himself as a shrub, Captain? For what dastardly end, we just don’t— No wait, it’s just a formerly fat kid with no sense of style!
But seemingly, against all odds, B dodged the helicopters. Coming around the corner, we saw a flash of red and white of the big, bulging offy bag o ’cans. It was on. B was our shaman and the ceremony was about to begin. He conjured open a can for each of us – Scrumpy Jack. My heart felt like it was going to come out my mouth with the first appley assault on my tongue and the seductive aroma slithering up my nostrils. ‘This is just Cidona with a little kick, ’I said to myself. Jesus, it was happening. I was trembling but it was quite nice and I was like, ‘OK . . . ’And I had another sip, and another, and it was grand! It was lovely. I felt light-headed straight away. Oh my God, I’m doing it. I’m getting out of my head. Like my brothers, like the older lads in the estate, I’m drinking. I wish people could see me now. I’m gattin’!
By the time I was halfway through my second can, I was standing on bollards, cracking jokes, the centre of the group, centre of the universe. Fast forward three cans and I was up on B’s back, the giant green sail of my shirt flapping in the wind as we floated through the dusky skies of Barrack Street and landed in Sir Henry’s nightclub. These oversized clothes were a boon now, if anything. I was a rapper, talking to girls, talking to lads, holding court, kissin’, dancin’, sneakin ’in and out of toilets and suckin ’down more cans because I was under no illusions – I was being fuelled here, I needed this stuff. Before I knew it my cans were gone. I found myself in the toilet with B. He left his by the sink when he was in the cubicle and instinctively I threw it down the hatch, didn’t even think about it. As he was coming out, I feigned an altercation. Like, ‘Hey, hey! ’and told him some other lad just drank it. I wasn’t known to lie – so he believed me. And we were off, tearing around the dance floor looking for the guy to teach him a lesson. Mad though, isn’t it? Just lying straight away.
On the dance floor, I was carefree, bustin ’moves. I was dire but I didn’t give a damn. I was up on B’s back again. We were bouncing off walls and gettin ’drenched in other people’s sweat but it was brilliant, it was extraordinary. I felt extraordinary.
I went into school the next morning and one of the lads turned around and went, ‘Alright Tadhg, ya alcoholic, ’and I was like, ‘Oh boy! ’Because back then, to our teenage brains, ‘alcoholic ’was a badge of honour. And I thought to myself, This is it – I have my place. I have my cure for the ‘something wrong, something not quite right’. This is who I am. I am the Gatman.
A Portrait of the P**s Artist as a Young Man is published by Eriu. Find out more about Tadhg Hickey here.
If you have been affected by issues raised in this story, please visit: www.rte.ie/helplines.
