This interview was conducted back in early March 2020. Some of this information is now outdated.
Bernard Casey is a man of many talents. He is a father, actor, drama teacher and a stand-up comedian who has taken the Irish comedy scene by storm. This 29 year old man may be from Portmagee, county Kerry, but his comedy journey began right here in UCC.
“It was 2011, just before R&G week. It was my last year of college and I saw a sign outside the library that said ‘Comedy Society’,” Bernard recalls, “It was always there and I always wanted to give it a go. I think I was getting the feeling of inevitability of the end of life in college. I thought “if I don’t go now, I never will”, so I just went in and that was the beginning of it.” When asked who his inspirations were, Bernard said, “A big favourite of mine was Dylan Moran. I got an iPod Touch for my 18th birthday and my cousin put his comedy specials on it. I listened to them back to back for 2 years.”
After finishing his arts degree, Bernard take a stab at the comedy scene outside our college gates and started doing open mics at The CoCo Comedy Club. “I did a lot of work with Cornelius Patrick O’Sullivan (the owner of CoCo) and Peter Carroll in a group called Sorcerer’s Apprentice (mind reading comedy),” Bernard remembers, “I went on tour with them in all bars over Cork. And believe me, you earned your crust there. These bars that had no interest in comedy and I was opening for them. It was soul destroying at times.” These were tough beginnings for Bernard, but it allowed him to get more stage time and bigger gigs.
At the age of 24, Bernard decided to quit his job at a call centre and move to Dublin to attend the Gaiety School of Acting and try out the Dublin comedy scene for a year. It was during this time that he truly found his voice in comedy. Bernard says that he “was always good at impressions, but I didn’t want to be an impersonator. You have to be absolutely 100% good at impressions for it to work, so I knew I needed to look at it from another angle. So I used things like impersonating actual events, doing accents and creating characters for my stand up to make it different.”
On top of doing stand-up, Bernard has also been making online content on his Facebook page, which has amassed over 60,000 followers and millions of views on his sketches. One of his first breakthroughs was a sketch on the Irish listening exam. “It was coming up to the Irish aural and I thought I would make a video on the it,” Bernard explains, “The next day I was getting phone calls from Joe.ie and Lovin Dublin and even Radió na Gealtachta thinking I could speak Irish fluently and wanting me to come on their show, and I was like uh, I’ll call you back… amarach.”
Bernard is a man of strategy, because, “Once the first video went well, I knew I could use it as traction to get people to see me live. So that was the aim from the beginning. It allowed me to do gigs in Kerry and Cork.” He then went on to do other massive hits such as Irish Rail, the French Oral and the Polish Barman. “The Polish barman idea happened because there are people down in my area from Poland and they ended up picking up the Kerry accent after a year,” laughs Bernard. “It was hilarious, so it had to be done!”
Bernard’s biggest characters are the Nephew and the Local Gossip, who came to be a year and a half ago: “By pure chance, I just put some milk teeth in my mouth and went from there. Just normal milk teeth you get in a shop. If they were smart enough they’d approach me for a sponsorship.” He recalled the issues of some of his characters requiring milk teeth. “Say I was hired for a corporate event of wedding, they want the teeth. I would bring all my gadgets and the things I use and I’d realise “Shit, I forgot the teeth!”. The amount of times I’d have to pull into shops just before doing a show looking for a bag of teeth. And you would be surprised the amount of shops that do not sell them,” He then joked about having a rather good supply of them at home now. “But the Gossip is the one who got me to where I am, but I do have a soft spot for the Nephew. There’s something about him. I think there’s an hour show in him.”
On the 29th February, all of Bernard’s hard work had culminated when he performed his show Local Gossip in Vicar Street in Dublin to a crowd of almost 1000. “It was fantastic. Vicar Street is laid out really well and is a welcoming room. It was like being in the CoCo,” Bernard exclaims, “It was class looking at the signs of Dylan Moran and Tommy Tiernan. I never thought I would get to here 5 years ago.” And back here in Cork, according to Bernard, our comedy scene is thriving at the moment. “You have Mike Morgan winning the Show me the Funny 2020 competition and Thomas Howarth coming third. And last year, Mark O’Keefe won it. All Cork comedians.” Bernard is very optimistic about the future of Cork. “I don’t think the rest of the scene has realised it yet, but in a few years’ time, it’ll be the primary spot.”
For anyone reading this who is thinking about doing stand-up or putting up online content, his advice is to, “Put in the hard miles. Try and find your own voice. Do what you think is funny. If you watched it, would you find it funny? If you believe in the material, then do it. That will find its own audience.” You can catch Bernard Casey in the Cork Opera House on May 1st (now postponed), which will be the last time he performs his Local Gossip show. “Cork city has been the home of my comedy. Where I honed it and learned it, so it is a bit of a homecoming in a way.” And Bernard is most certainly welcome back home.