Winner of the top prize at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, a beloved presence across UK panel shows, and a bestselling children’s author to boot – with a career spanning three decades, David O'Doherty has achieved just about everything in the funny business.
Still, of all the comedian’s accomplishments, I like to think beating Westlife in the Irish charts ranks among his proudest moments.
The track, Orange, a PSA on the romantic risks of using fake tan, was made as part of his fondly remembered (though criminally underseen) six-part faux-docu-series, The Modest Adventures of David O’Doherty. Airing on RTÉ 2 in 2007, episodes followed the Dublin comedian blundering through hyper-specific low-stakes challenges, like paying his rent on time or performing in front of the toughest of comedy crowds: schoolchildren.
While providing a perfect platform for O’Doherty’s trademark lo-fi whimsy, the show captured what was a true boom time for Irish alternative comedy. Today, it remains a quietly affectionate tribute to creative misfits, from chronic overthinkers to proud underachievers.
Back when Irish stand-up was dominated by shouty, sweaty men (your Tommy Tiernans, your Ed and Jason Byrnes), O'Doherty carved out a niche in the late90s/early aughts by mixing off-kilter silliness with the occasional plonkety-plinks of a cheap Casio keyboard.
Even sillier, in 2003, he co-wrote The Bees of Manulla with his brother (and co-creator of Soupy Norman) Mark Doherty, a show that remains the only RTÉ Radio series about bee detectives.
Though he dialled back the surrealism when bringing his comedy to the screen, his keen sense of mischief remained intact. Directed by John Carney (co-creator of Bachelor's Walk), Modest Adventures puts a sly spin on gonzo participatory documentary-making – the same format that made a household name of Des Bishop just a few years earlier with The Des Bishop Work Experience. Orange may have nudged the series into mainstream attention (peaking at a respectable No. 30), but in hindsight, it is perhaps the gag that has aged the worst, feeling mean-spirited - and even sexist - in 2026.
Modest Adventures was at its best when positioning O'Doherty as the ultimate underdog, devising loony workarounds for trivial problems. At one point, we watch him set out to film an Ernest Shackleton biopic, and what begins as a small folly quickly spirals into a cursed passion project. Think Megalopolis on a €45 budget, starring inflatable penguins and malfunctioning kites.
What resonates most today is how the series recalls a golden age of alternative comedy. O’Doherty filled the frame with comic peers, from already established names like Maeve Higgins to then-budding talents such as Eleanor Tiernan, Bernard O’Shea and Australian comedian Claudia (no relation) O’Doherty. This was a time when TV companies were embracing off-beat comedy, with Flight of the Conchords (HBO), Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! (Adult Swim) and Soupy Norman (RTÉ) all arriving the same year as Modest Adventures.
"We did not know what we were doing when we made that show," O'Doherty later told the University Observer, "we just stumbled into it". Almost 20 years later, I'm praying he stumbles his way into another TV project soon, with more modest adventures to come.
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