PJ Gallagher uses bare prose, humour and self-deprecation to impart nuggets of wisdom padded out by fluffy stories
PJ Gallagher, the stand-up comedian familiar to many from TV shows like Naked Camera or The Young Offenders, was born to be a storyteller. The co-host of Radio Nova’s Morning Glory can fill almost an entire page with something as unremarkable as his switch from Penney’s baggy jocks to “grown-up pants that good-looking people wear” and get away with it. Not only does he get away with it, but he does so with a gloriously unabashed, almost childlike disregard for so-called “adult boundaries”.
Written in prose that is bare, unassuming and delightfully idiomatic, Madhouse seamlessly blends the quotidian with the profoundly insightful. These insights surface unexpectedly, as when, after painting an image of himself as a kid guzzling seven Lucozades in his family’s northside pub, he suddenly reflects, “In every pub you can see the tragedy, but you don’t care, you just carry on. There’s no other activity in life you can say that about.
Gallagher’s somewhat masked nuggets of wisdom are padded by a healthy dose of fluffy stories. These anecdotes are designed neither to question the status quo nor to inspire the reader to reflect on life’s tragedies. Instead, they serve to deflect the reader away from such tragedies through a perfectly timed belly laugh.
Beyond his relentless pranks, Gallagher sees the good in people, expressing love and affection for his adoptive parents despite their very visible flaws. He is forgiving of the psychiatric patients – one of whom was convinced that “there was a Jack Russell in their belly” – whose erratic behaviour contributed to what was already a chaotic, unpredictable childhood.
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