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No shame in laughing at famine satire
Rush to condemn a proposed Channel 4 comedy has unleashed avalanche of
‘Is even the idea of a comedy set in 19th-century Ireland such a
travesty? Who is to know what could be done with such a notion in the
hands of a skilled comedy writer or satirist?’ Above, a special
commemorative memorial day walk and wreath laying ceremony at the
Famine Memorial at Custom House Quay. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien
‘Is even the idea of a comedy set in 19th-century Ireland such a
travesty? Who is to know what could be done with such a notion in the
hands of a skilled comedy writer or satirist?’ Above, a special
commemorative memorial day walk and wreath laying ceremony at the
Famine Memorial at Custom House Quay. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien
I did not feel any great shame, over 15 years ago, in laughing at a
satirical song about the Irish Famine of the mid-19th century, and I
was not alone. Under the title The Potatoes aren’t looking the best, it
was sung, or more accurately spat out, late at night at a concert in
The craic we had the day we died for Ireland.
What one person finds amusing in any satire of Irish history, another
might find egregiously offensive. The rush to condemn a proposed comedy
by the writer Hugh Travers – what he suggests will be “black humour”
Is even the idea of a comedy set in 19th-century Ireland such a
travesty? Who is to know what could be done with such a notion in the
hands of a skilled comedy writer or satirist? I certainly wouldn’t be
averse to, for example, David McSavage’s take on 19th-century Irish
history given his admirable track record to date in satirising Irish
historic pieties and peculiarities; equally, there would be many who
would find that prospect abhorrent.
The Irish experience of famine has generated satire and comedy in the
past. One of Ireland’s most celebrated satirists, Jonathan Swift,
travelled extensively throughout this island in the famine-afflicted
decade of the 1720s where he witnessed starvation and desperate
administrative and moral failure to reform the country.
Over 200 years later, Flann O’Brien worked on a satirical novel, never
finished, about an American millionaire who sought to prevent more
Irish famines and destitute Irish emigrants coming to the US by
marketing, with the motel’s restaurant called The Famine Room. Poet
Paul Durcan was also on hand in 1987 with the poem What Shall I Wear,
Darling, to The Great Hunger, his satire on a middle-class couple
preparing to attend Tom MacIntyre’s adaptation of Patrick Kavanagh’s
poem at the Peacock Theatre.
In truth, some of the supposedly serious initiatives regarding memory
of the famine have been more farcical than any comedy or satire.
In 1998, the year after the 150th anniversary of the height of the