{"id":520855,"date":"2026-06-05T23:15:33","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T23:15:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/520855\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T23:15:33","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T23:15:33","slug":"gearoid-farrelly-i-didnt-really-come-out-of-the-closet-my-parents-went-in-to-get-me-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/520855\/","title":{"rendered":"Gear\u00f3id Farrelly: \u2018I didn\u2019t really come out of the closet. My parents went in to get me\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

I grew up in Glasnevin<\/a> and I went to school in Finglas<\/a>. I wasn\u2019t funny in class. I was kind of funny with my friends, but I have always been very much the listener. I come from a family of loud girls, so I grew up with them around a very large kitchen table. <\/p>\n

I have four sisters and a brother. My mam and the girls were always very funny. We \u2013 the boys \u2013 were very much on the sidelines. I learned how to be funny from my sisters, French and Saunders, and the Golden Girls. <\/p>\n

I always say I didn\u2019t really come out of the closet but that my parents went in to get me. My mam was instrumental. She was like, \u201cYou\u2019re gay. Look, you can wrestle with this all you want, but we are this family, and there\u2019s a lot of us, and we don\u2019t have secrets, and if you\u2019re gay, that\u2019s fine, and just come on, cop on and live your life.\u201d <\/p>\n

It took me a while to come out, because I would have been bullied badly at school for being gay, and the whole time I thought, \u201cI\u2019m not gay, this is ridiculous\u201d. So then, when I came to the point of coming out I was like, \u201cOh my parents were right, oh shit.\u201d <\/p>\n

It really helped. I definitely think I could have been one of those people that was out but not out to my parents until I was 40.<\/p>\n

When I started comedy, I was, to my knowledge, the only gay comedian around. <\/p>\n

Ireland is vastly different from county to county. I live in Dublin, and there are things that are very good and very bad about being gay in Dublin. But I think that there are other counties where it is less so and they are the counties that when I play there, I lead with gay, because it\u2019s going to be a gay show. <\/p>\n

It was Dancing with the Stars that made me really think about that. As a middle-aged man, there\u2019s a certain responsibility that comes with having any sort of cachet. It\u2019s about the gay 15- and 16-year-olds who are struggling in their bedroom.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Irish comedians share their funniest moments from Christmases pastOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

A lot of people said to me, \u201cYou need to go to England. You\u2019re a gay comedian in Ireland. There are no other gay comedians in Ireland\u201d. I always dig my heels in when I hear stuff like that, because I\u2019m not being run out of my own country just because I\u2019m gay.<\/p>\n

\"GearóidGear\u00f3id Farrelly: ‘Quitting the 9-5 is the dream, but it\u2019s way more doable than people realise.’ <\/p>\n

But as soon as you start to get any sort of success in comedy, everybody just says, \u201cGo to England, go to England, go to England\u201d. That used to really annoy me.<\/p>\n

I remember reading this article, and it was basically saying that all of the good comedians leave Ireland. I remember thinking, \u201cthe absolute neck of them\u201d, is the definition of a good comedian that you just don\u2019t feel bonded with your family?<\/p>\n

To me it felt like people were saying, the thing that you need isn\u2019t in Ireland. The thing I needed was people to enjoy my comedy, and there are five million of them here, so I thought \u201clet\u2019s have a go\u201d. <\/p>\n

A lot of people say that Irish comedy was destroyed by RT\u00c9 not having the money to make it, but personally, I think it\u2019s the best thing that ever happened to comedy. It made all of us find other routes, and we did that at a good time through podcasting, Instagram and Substack. Everybody took control of their own career. <\/p>\n

Whereas years ago, it used to be that you got on television, and you know 80 per cent of people that saw you on television hated you and said mean things about you. If you didn\u2019t get on television again next year, would you sell as many tickets? Probably not. It\u2019s just not the way it works now. Now if you like a comedian, you listen to their podcast. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018The whole hospitality sector has gone absolutely crazy\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

There are massive comedians that come over and they sell out the 3Arena, and then somebody mentions them to me, and I\u2019m like, \u201cWho the hell does that? I\u2019ve never heard of them.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n

\u2018When you love what you\u2019re doing, it\u2019s so much easier to cut yourself to suit your measure\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Gear\u00f3id Farrelly<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I was a developer working for Aviva in their IT department for 13 years. I was doing comedy a good while, while also doing the IT, and then it came to a point where I was getting so much work as a comic that I could feel a pinch point coming. In 2015 I decided that I could always get another IT job if I needed one, and since then I have done comedy full time.<\/p>\n

Quitting the 9-5 is the dream, but it\u2019s way more doable than people realise. When I suddenly began to make my living solely from comedy, I was earning a third of what I would have earned. But I never wanted for anything. I think everyone underestimates how expensive it is to have a job that you\u2019re not tuned into. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s when you need the night out, the big holidays and the fancy clothes, because you\u2019re not fully invested what you\u2019re doing. But when you love what you\u2019re doing, it\u2019s so much easier to cut yourself to suit your measure. <\/p>\n

In conversation with Niamh Browne. Gear\u00f3id Farrelly<\/a>\u2019s new show No Pressure begins at The Whale Theatre in Greystones this weekend, before going on tour nationwide from September. See gearoidfarrelly.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I grew up in Glasnevin and I went to school in Finglas. I wasn\u2019t funny in class. I…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":520856,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[75],"tags":[52,18,117,155588,15858,19,17,1678,361,14232],"class_list":["post-520855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-dublin","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-gearoid-farrelly","tag-glasnevin","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-lgbtq","tag-magazine","tag-me-myself-and-ireland"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116700049137042053","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/520856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}