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Spotlight On: Comedian and podcaster Mark Mehigan

Mark Mehigan is a natural born entertainer, but it hasn’t come easy to him. 

The comedian and podcaster is Goss.ie’s latest Spotlight On cover star, and in this exclusive interview, he opens up about his complicated path towards being a comic.

While his romance with Doireann Garrihy continues to hit headlines, Mark also gets candid about his relationship with the RTÉ darling, who he describes as “the greatest person” he’s ever met.

Mark Mehigan and girlfriend Doireann Garrihy

Best known for his podcast The Sunday Roast, which has since transitioned into live shows, Mark first branched into comedy when he posted a viral video about his fictional ex-girlfriend Susie on Facebook.

But before all that, the Dublin native tried to make it in the music industry as a writer and producer, which kicked off following a chance encounter with Mark Feehily from Westlife.

Describing his past self as a “jack of all trades, but a master of none”, Mark had many different jobs before he ultimately decided to give up on music and give comedy a go.

After knocking on a lot of doors, Mark landed a role at BBC Comedy in London, but it wasn’t what he thought it was going to be…

Feeling like he was “going nowhere” at the end of 2019, Mark’s friend pushed him to start his own podcast by sending a microphone to his house – and the rest is history.

While his podcast was an instant hit in the charts, the 32-year-old dealt with some personal struggles in the years that followed – which lead to him quitting alcohol in October 2021.

Mark candidly opens up about his recovery in this interview, and how he’s “very, very grateful” for every day he’s sober.

The comic also reveals how he got over his intense stage fright, discusses the “overwhelming” attention that comes with dating someone in the public eye, and his exciting plans for the future.

Check out our full interview with Mark below:

So I want to kick off this interview by going back to the beginning. I feel like you had a really interesting path towards comedy. Is it something you always wanted to pursue?

“Not necessarily. Well yes look as a kid I always dreamed of being a comedian, because I was definitely the most precocious out of my family and my cousins and everything. Now the reality is I thought I was like a comedian from the age of 6 but I was just this kind of charmless rat going around barbecues…

“But yeah I always did want to be a comedian from a young age, but then as I got a little bit older, when I was around 7, I’m pretty sure I bought a Spice Girls tape and I had an unbelievable crush on Mel B and I had a Scary Spice poster…

“And from then on I wanted to be a pop star, I wanted to be a musician, and that was the birth. And then I bought Eminem’s ‘Hi My Name Is’ tape with my communion money and that was the beginning of my love affair with hip-hop and rap music, and also the beginning of this sort of identity crisis wherein I believed, truly, that I belonged in Detroit and was destined to be a rapper.”

I was just going to say I read in a previous interview that your first love was actually music and you spent time in LA working with Mark Feehily, how did that come about?

“So basically I met Mark at Oxegen music festival, I was in some area behind the stage and long story short it was 1am and I got asked to perform a song that I wrote, it was in one of those cringeworthy circles with an acoustic guitar…

“Anyway I was asked to perform one of my songs, Mark was there with a few of the Westlife lads I think, and basically he came up to me and was like ‘that was really good, let me know what your plan is music wise’ and I was like ‘holy s**t, this is Mark from Westlife, he’s a f***ing superstar.’

“So I was just telling him where I was at, I was living in Brighton at the time, and I was sort of trying to write music myself but I was also running gigs there, like open mic nights, and I was working on this thing called Balcony TV, which I was presenting, where we interviewed bands on a balcony.

“So I was trying to find my feet in the music industry, and then I got to know Mark and I started sending him music and then he was telling me that Westlife were finishing and that he was going to be doing some solo work. So I was like ‘wow great’.”

Mark worked with Westlife’s Mark Feehily on his debut solo album

The Westlife singer ended up sending him a backing piano track one day, and Mehigan asked if he could write something to it.

After recording a demo on his phone and sending it to him on Twitter, Mark was invited out to New York to work on the track.

“Mark [Feehily] is one of the first people that ever believed in me, I cannot speak higher of anybody, and yeah he’s just so nice, so nice to my family. He’s one of those few people that lives entirely for the joy of others,” he continued.

“And he took a chance on me and we got to work then on his solo album in New York and then back to London and then out to Los Angeles. But like, the thing you have to remember is I was 21 years of age, and I was like given this suite in the Mondrian hotel on Sunset Boulevard, so for somebody with a burgeoning ego this was the dream.

“And lots of my friends were over in the west coast of America at the time doing J1s, but like here I was in this suite, so I just started having these ridiculous parties and I just thought I had made it. I don’t know how much writing I actually got done… but no sorry we did actually do some good work, and that’s where we wrote a song called ‘Butterfly’ which ended up being the second single on his solo album.”

And during your musical stint did you want to be a singer or was it just songwriting?

“No, so it was always writing, I had no ambition to be a singer myself. I wanted to write music, I also started producing disco and electronic music, so yeah I suppose a little bit of everything but I didn’t actually want to be on stage singing the songs myself.”

So how did the transition from music to comedy happen then?

“Well you see, throughout all of the music stuff, I was [pursing comedy] behind the scenes. You know comedy was on the same tier for me, as a love, as music, and I started messing around with my phone and I remember just lying in my bed hungover one morning and I just started doing videos, and I put up a video on Facebook one day and it was a long thing about my fictional ex-girlfriend called Susie.

“So I put up that video and it was just mental, like within 10 minutes it had like 1000 likes, and I know for Instagram standards that probably doesn’t seem like a lot but back then it was crazy. My sister started getting text messages from people being like ‘people are in the library talking about your brother in UCD’. The weirdest one was my auntie in England, who lives in the Cotswolds, her kids were getting sent the Susie video.”

So it really started from that viral video on Facebook then, but you also worked for the BBC in London too. Tell us about that. 

“See I had a good few jobs, and I use that term very loosely, prior to the BBC. Throughout my career I’ve always ran the risk of being a jack of all trades, but a master of none. I can be really bad with flitting between projects…

“Like after Mark’s album came out, at this point I had started making lots of disco and house music, I signed a publishing deal and I really thought this was when my personal career was going to take off within music, and then I was due to be releasing a disco record with a Scottish label and I was like ‘this is it, it’s all gonna happen’ and then it just didn’t.

“I remember at that point it was 2015, I was living with a girlfriend at the time, and I just became despondent and I became really miserable, really disillusioned with the music industry and I sort of basically stopped creating. And then I arsed around going between Dublin and London, long story short I just moved away from music and was like ‘right it’s time to give comedy a go’.

“So I was trying to get jobs in production companies in the likes of UniLad being like ‘please give me a chance, I can write comedy, I want to do this’ and it didn’t happen so I got a job selling robot costumes in Brentford, which was honestly like, I mean a gig’s a gig but I was seriously unhappy and I wouldn’t have a huge passion for robots, do you know what I mean? It wouldn’t be something that motivates me,” he laughed.

“But I kept knocking on the door and eventually I got the job in BBC Comedy doing the social campaigns for all of their scripted comedies, so the likes of the Gavin & Stacey Christmas Special. So that was amazing because I assumed once I got the job at the BBC that I would be happy because I would be surrounding by other comedy nerds, and I also thought that because you’re in the room, you know, that you’re gonna get an opportunity.

“But after about six weeks I was like ‘f**k, I really need to be doing something myself’ and I wasn’t familiar with how these organisations work, and there wasn’t that ability to just jump into this part of the job. Like I was there for a reason and that was to just work on those campaigns.”

Despite his feelings, Mark stayed working at the BBC.

However, everything changed in October 2019 when he decided to start his own podcast following some much-needed encouragement from a friend.

After being told to “do what he does best”, Mark said he would simply roast things, from Irish people on holidays to awkward first dates, every Sunday – resulting in the name The Sunday Roast. 

The artwork for Mark Mehigan’s Sunday Roast podcast

Mark explained: “So I came back to Dublin, I was still working in the BBC, in October 2019 and it was my sister’s wedding and I was pretty unhappy. I was just very unhappy and feeling like I was going nowhere.

“I met a friend of mine, Neil Mulhern, and the following week he just sent me a microphone, ordered all the gear and just sent it to my house and said ‘press record’. That was basically the push, he was just like ‘do a podcast’ and I was like ‘on what?’ and he was like ‘just do what you do best, just give out and talk s***e’.

“I recorded the first one in November 2019 and I was lucky, it just flew up. Within a week it was like The 2 Johnnies, Blindboy and then me at the top of the Irish charts and it was just crazy how quickly it seemed to take.

“It was like scratching the itch that had been in me for probably three years of not making any art, not really writing, not really working on any substantial artistic projects, so it just started working. And then in to 2020 I started getting itchy feet in the BBC and thinking ‘right I think I have to give this podcast thing a go’ because the listeners were growing and I was relatively high up in the Irish charts.”

“I moved back to Dublin in February 2020 with the view to sort of see how I got on, because that was like four months in and things were going really well, I had sort of convinced them to let me move back to Dublin for like six weeks and then obviously we know what happened then…”

“So basically I stayed in the BBC working, and I’ll be honest once Covid came my mental health fell off a cliff. Some people decided to bake brown bread and learn Spanish and I just drank myself into oblivion, which is the reality, I couldn’t cope.

“The podcast really fell apart in both the execution with the planning and the enjoyment. I kept trying to get back into a routine, but then the despair and the endlessness of Covid would just hit and I’d start drinking and everything would just go to s**t again. It was just a year of false starts.”

In December 2020, Mark decided to leave the BBC and focus on the podcast full time. 

But when January came around and we were still in the thick of the pandemic, Mark admitted he went further into himself “than ever before” and confessed 2021 was “a very difficult year” for him. 

I bring up an Instagram post Mark shared last October celebrating one year of sobriety, and ask if he’d like to talk about it. 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Mark Mehigan (@mehiganmark)

You celebrated one year of sobriety in October, would you mind talking about that?

“No I don’t mind. I’m actually working on a project which will involve me talking about my recovery a lot. But all I’ll say is this, like yeah, I’m an alcoholic and I’m very, very, very grateful for every day that I’m sober.

“And if you are struggling, just please ask for help, because everything can change. Like I thought getting better was for other people, like I thought getting sober was something that other people did, and that I was uniquely f***ed. But that hasn’t been the case, and yeah it’s one day at a time, its a 24 hour way of living and if I go to bed sober tonight it will be a good day.”

“I try to choose my words carefully because I’m very nervous when talking about recovery, as you can probably tell, because my life has been saved by other people in addiction, literally, and all I can do is speak for myself and my own experiences. Everybody’s journey of addiction and everybody’s journey of recovery is totally different, so I’m by no means a spokesperson for addiction or for alcoholism.

“But I do think it’s interesting that this idea of an alcoholic being on a park bench, like a park bench can be anything, and I had f***ing several. I had several different park benches, the reality is the only thing that was separating me from the literal park bench was privilege.”

“If you are struggling, just please ask for help, because everything can change”

Shortly after Mark started his recovery, he decided to take the plunge and announce a series of live shows – taking his much-loved podcast to the stage at The Sugar Club. 

I bring up the success of his live shows, and ask did that announcement go hand in hand with his sobriety. 

“Yeah, so I basically gave up and sort of surrendered to my addiction in October of 2021 and everything in my life had to change. I was quiet but then I announced live shows for March, because I knew something had to change career wise as well, so I announced the live shows in The Sugar Club,” he explained.

“We had booked in one, and I didn’t even know if I still had fans because I had been so inconsistent and I had been dealing with all of my personal s**t… I just didn’t even know what my identity was a comedian anymore. Then all of a sudden I announced the live shows and the first one sold out within eight minutes. I just couldn’t believe it, I was floored.

“I remember sitting in my living room, like I’m a comedian I shouldn’t be saying these things, but I genuinely was crying in my living room. I was like I cannot believe that there are people out there that are still willing to take a chance and support me.”

“So I did three shows, and I suffer enormously from anxiety surrounding stage fright, and that was like a bizarre journey. I went to this celebrity hypnotherapist in London, I literally did everything to try and get myself up onto that stage.

“So then once I did those shows, that was like breaking a seal where I knew that I could never go back to just doing the podcast after the live shows.

“That just changed everything then, and I started doing more live shows and I’ve been so blessed in how they’ve gone. I mean don’t get me wrong, it’s so annoying when you’re a comedian now in Ireland, anything that you do is just microscopic in comparison to f***ing Joanne [McNally].

“She’s just the king, like its absurd, I don’t think people can even grasp what we’re witnessing here. It is insane and I don’t think you can even be jealous because it’s so unbelievable what she’s achieving. It’ll be a long time before we see someone else achieve what Joanne does, in Ireland anyway.”

Do you feel more comfortable on stage now compared to your first live show? 

“Yeah I feel much more comfortable but I’m still nervous, and that’s the thing like fortunately my supporters and fans are incredibly forgiving and understanding of all of my various neurosis.

“They’re up for me being honest about being an alcoholic or about mental health struggles, or at the same time jumping into the sort of cocky arrogant character and then roasting things. And yeah I’ve been very lucky with a really supportive fanbase I suppose.”

Your comedy is obviously based on roasting people, have you ever had any negative reactions to things you’ve said?

“No, because ultimately the aim of the roast and roasting things is that it’s not to make anybody feel bad, I never target single individual people, you know, everything is tongue in cheek.

“And you know Irish people are very good at understanding irony and I like to put myself in the middle of the joke as well. If you go to any of my live shows it’s not me going out there and talking about how wrong the world is, it’s me going out there talking about how wrong I am in the world.”

Mark and Doireann

While Mark was already a well-known face in Ireland, the comedian was thrown into the spotlight at the end of last year when his relationship with RTÉ star Doireann Garrihy became public knowledge. 

Following a series of cryptic Instagram posts from the same location, the couple eventually confirmed they were an item, and have since gushed about each other on social media. 

While Doireann has claimed Mark initiated their romance by sliding into her DMs, the Dublin native has insisted it was the other way around…

Now, we can’t not mention your relationship with Doireann Garrihy which has attracted a lot of attention over the past few months. Have you found the interest in your relationship strange?

“It has been really overwhelming at times because I don’t think I understood the magnitude of how successful she is, but at the same time it’s absolutely incredible when you see the affect that she has on people.

“I mean walking around, and especially after Dancing with the Stars, seeing children’s eyes light up [when they see her] is just so sweet, and kids getting their mum’s to come over and say hi.

“And I suppose just the complete wide range of people that tune in to Doireann on the breakfast show and then Dancing with the Stars and then most recently when she did the Bord Gais Theatre two nights in a row. I mean that was… again like Joanne McNally, seeing Doireann and feeling that energy in the room you realise that you’re witnessing something extremely special.

“And yeah I’ll be honest the attention at times has been hard, because you get all the articles going out and then there will be a comment going ‘Comedian? I’ve never heard of him!’ As if f***ing Dermot Moriarty, the 72-year-old fisherman from Carlow, is supposed to have his f***ing finger on the cultural pulse of Dublin like.”

“I think I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t very daunting at times, and you know because of the type of person that I am, my instinct can be to flee these scenarios.

“But yeah at the end of the day none of that interferes with just how good things are with Doireann, and she is easily the greatest person that I’ve ever met.

“And not to bring everything back to recovery but I texted one of my friends after our first date, and I was around 13 months sober, and I texted one of my friends and was like ‘thats the first time in the last 13 months that I haven’t felt like an alcoholic’.

Doireann actually said in a recent interview that your relationship is the most genuine relationship she’s ever had, do you feel the same?

“Yeah, its really… it’s hard to articulate how… let me choose my words carefully.

“I don’t really like the phrase ‘when you know, you know’ because this is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before in my life, and Doireann is like nobody I’ve ever met before in my life. But there’s sides of myself that I’m showing her that I wasn’t even aware that I had.”

“Doireann is like nobody I’ve ever met before in my life”

Doireann said that you slid into her DMs first, what was your opening line?

“Well, would you like an exclusive? That is a f***ing fallacy! She slid into my DMs. She’s using big media, she’s using big RTÉ money, to try and silence my truth! But I’ll tell my story,” he joked.

“She slid into my DMs, she sent me about 15 laughing emojis, and you know as well as I know once you go over three laughing emojis, you’re flirting.”

You and Doireann are both known for your comedy, would you guys ever work on a project together?

Yes definitely, definitely in the future I suspect we will.

Coming towards the end of our interview, I reassure Mark that all my questions about Doireann are now out of the way.

While our chat was sprinkled with plenty of laughter thanks to Mark’s undeniable wit, his ability to speak so open and honestly about his struggles really impressed me, and I commended him for doing so. 

While his path to success hasn’t been easy and featured some bumps along the road, I suspect this is just the beginning for Mark as an entertainer. 

I wrap up our conversation by asking Mark to share what’s next for him, what he hopes for the future, and to share the highs and lows of his career so far. 

You seem to be on a really great path in terms of your career, what’s next for you?

“So it’s a pretty exciting time. I’ll be announcing the biggest project I’ve ever worked on, and I won’t say a complete departure from anything I’ve done before, but it’s the first time people will be getting to see a very whole version of me, and that’s not me setting up an OnlyFans with a pun!

“So that’s the most exciting, and daunting, and terrifying [thing], but at the same time I’m really looking forward to it, and I’ll be able to announce it very soon. And also The Sunday Roast podcast, which has been taking a hiatus whilst I work on this project and do the live shows, is coming back for an exclusive series in June with a brand new sponsor, and that’s very exciting.

“In those podcasts there will be lots of interesting details revealed about my life of late, and then later on in the summer for the first time ever The Sunday Roast will be opening up the doors of the oven to celebrity guests.

“I can’t tell you too much more on it… but that will involve me being one-on-one with various celebrity guests roasting them, giving them the opportunity to roast things, and then giving my followers the opportunity to roast the celebrity guest in question. So it’s going to be an exciting few months.”

You’ve achieved a lot of different things and as you said you’re kind of a jack of all trades. Do you have a particular highlight of your career to date?

“I think the live shows. Like everybody has their own personal Everest, and I had in my head that public speaking was just something I’d never be able to do. I had actually come to accept that I’d never be able to perform on stage because the anxiety consumed me so much.

“And when I did that, that just really, in the best possible way, just shattered everything that I knew about life. Like you’re not unique, you’re not this one broken thing that can’t do things that other people do, and anything is possible.

“However, I’ll be honest, any sort of career success is utterly dwarfed by being sober, none of that means anything. Like that’s the weirdest thing about getting sober, because everything just takes a back seat because it’s not as important to me, in the best possible way.”

“Any sort of career success is utterly dwarfed by being sober, none of that means anything”

And dare I ask, are there any low points you can think of?

“Yes! Jesus, there are too many. I mean I think its all well and good doing interviews like this and talking about the high points and exciting things down the line. But I did a bunch of shows like last September, I sold out like five shows in the space of five minutes, I was like ‘this is amazing’. But then the phone doesn’t ring for two months afterwards, and I’m standing in my kitchen being like what am I doing?

“For me the low points are more just dealing with the existential confusion and thinking like ‘what am I doing?’ and ‘have I made a mistake?’ and ‘when are people going to stop listening?'”

What advice do you wish you could give your younger self?

“You’re not as bad as you think you are. Keep going, and this too shall pass.”

What’s left on your bucket list – professional and personally?

“Professionally I want to write feature films. By the age of 45, I want to be writing screenplays. I would also like to act in a comedy on TV and film. I would also like to bring The Sunday Roast to TV in some capacity.

“And then personally, yeah… house, kids, the works.”

Where do you hope to see yourself five years from now?

“Where? I mean to be honest as long as I’m here, I’m managing and I’m getting by and I’m healthy and sober and with people that I love, like that sounds preposterously cliché but that’s the truth.

“Everything else will figure itself out, and again in a way it doesn’t really matter. The important s**t is the wellbeing.”

You can follow Mark Mehigan on Instagram here, and check out his podcast on Spotify here. 

If you have been affected by anything in this article, call the HSE YourMentalHealth Information Line on freephone 1800 111 888 to help find the supports and services you need.
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