Angela Scanlon's Ask Me Anything is back for a new season. Here she talks to RTÉ Entertainment’s John Byrne about her new baby year and post-pandemic hopes for the show.
I can’t put a date on when I first realised that Angela Scanlon was a singular broadcaster but it definitely coincided with whenever it was I saw her Oi Ginger! documentary around eight or nine years ago.
Straight away, she had it pretty much down-pat. Chatty, avoiding the Bunny Carr School of Hand Signals, and a natural in front of camera. "She’s great hair," my wife said. Yep. That too.
Add in a cheeky smile, a bawdy laugh and a left-of-centre clothes style to round things off. I haven’t been able to take my eyes off her ever since, and I’m not alone.
After decades of telly-watching, you can spot the difference between the natural ones, the well-trained ones, the I’ll-do-anything ones, and the ones who will be serving you in B&Q in a few years’ time.
If Angela Scanlon’s a spoofer or chancer, she’s a very good one. I’ve seen her on a variety of different shows in subsequent years to her documentary-making, and the one constant is her curiosity. She’s always engaged and all ears. She's an ace communicator.
If Graham Norton has a natural successor, she’s it.
And - despite her taking up what looks like permanent residence in London with her young family - we still get to see her, as David Attenborough might put it, in her natural habitat: having a good oul’ giggle on RTÉ.
Back for a second run from Saturday October 15, Angela Scanlon's Ask Me Anything will once again see Angela and her audience surprise celebrity guests with questions they've never been asked before. As the show blurb goes, everything is on the table and [cue extreme close-up] nothing is off limits.
This year Angela’s guests will stay on the hot pink couch to join in all the fun as the other guests appear. The eight-part season runs until December 3rd - so plenty of time left afterwards for some Christmas shopping.
Ahead of the show's return, I got to talk to Angela by Zoom, with both of us comfortably sat in front of laptops in our respective sitting rooms. My God, this is the life. I can be both productive and lazy.
Although I'm not the nosey type (well, not to stalker levels, anyway) a cursory glance tells me her gaff looks nicer than mine, and - as she reveals - it's certainly been the location that's seen a lot more excitement this year.
John Byrne: It’s been a bit of year, even by Angela Scanlon standards. But there was one very special event . . .
Angela Scanlon: I had a baby [Marnie Fae] in February. A second one. That’s a bit of an adjustment, trying to make them get along. The first one has finally accepted that she’s not going anywhere, so we’ve turned a corner, as they say.
I feel like we might be ‘two and done’ as well. And I’m a second child, y’see, of four - so it’s a slightly different thing. But yeah, the second one is different. You’re kind of just more confident and relaxed, I think. Well, I certainly was.
You’re going, 'I’ve seen this show before'
Yeah, exactly. And also you realise they’re not actually as delicate as you think . . .
And I had a home birth. I literally had the baby in this room. I had to move that table! (Laughs.) So yeah, this is the scene of the crime.
Anyway. Moving swiftly on. How do you think Ask Me Anything’s gone so far, heading into season two?
We had an absolute ball last year. It was madness, and we recorded two shows a week, which was fairly intense, with covid restrictions still in place in RTÉ, with travel restrictions.
We’d moved home, lock, stock - myself, my husband, daughter Ruby. I was pregnant. It was a brand new show. Literally everything, they threw everything at me! (Laughs.)
But actually it was a lot of fun. We learned an awful lot and I think we did what we set out to do. It was never going to be perfect, particularly with a new show. You have to find your feet. But there’s something there, for sure.
And I’m sure there are a few tweaks that you can’t tell me about?
Look, I think the audience will be a big part of that, because we won’t have the limitations on the size of the audience. I think that will have a massive impact because we do want the audience to be a big part of the show, and that was trickier with a small audience.
And you just don’t know what kind of nonsense an audience might come up with?
Honestly, when we did the run-through, there was a woman talking about badgers . . . She was absolutely pissed. ‘Don’t be abusing badgers!’ And I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’ I love that!
And although this isn’t live per se, it’s an ‘as live’ show. And my attraction to anything live like that is when things go wrong, when unexpected things happen. So, the bigger the audience, the looser the audience the better, for me.
You’ve had quite an interesting career so far. Is the chat show road a road you particularly want to go down?
I don’t know, are we calling this a chat show? It’s like an entertainment show, if you know what I mean?
There’s definitely a connection between all of the jobs that I’ve done. It might not seem that way on the surface, I think, but ultimately there’s room and there’s space in all of those things - whether it’s documentaries, Robot Wars, or Your Home Made Perfect, or whatever - there’s room to have a chat with somebody; connect with somebody.
Previously I wanted a big, shiny show, where I read an autocue and I’m in sequins. And I realised that actually there’s not much room for those shows. You read the lines, have 30 seconds and then it moves on to another bit.
What I really enjoy is having a bit of time where you can use your instincts and follow things that you didn’t think would appear.
In Your Home Made Perfect, your role is presenter, but you’re also representing the audience out there. I think your personality lends itself to that dual role.
I like to think that in Ask Me Anything I’m the audience as well. Yes, we have audience questions as well, but hopefully I’m asking the questions that you’re wanting to ask at home.
So that’s very much the kind of motivation for me and it’s always to feel like I’m on that side rather than on the ‘starry’ side.
Angela Scanlon's Ask Me Anything, Saturdays at 9.40pm, RTÉ One
