Al Porter: "We judge ourselves by our intentions, but we judge other people by their actions"

Irish Examiner

6 days ago

Not for the first time, Al Porter is riffing on a memory. 'I found this clip of me on Gerry Ryan when I was 12,' he says, going a mile a minute as he recalls one of his earliest roles in a childhood production of Bugsy Malone.
'I listened to it in the car the other day, and Brenda Donohue says, 'Gerry, I've got a young man here from Tallaght, he's 12 years old, his name is Alan Kavanagh, and he's playing the part of Knuckles. Say good morning, Gerry.'
And she says to me, 'Can you do that?' I'm obviously nervous. And I go, 'Good morning, Gerry.' And the unbroken little boy's voice.'
And here Porter switches to Gerry's booming broadcast tenor. 'And Gerry says, 'Good morning, Alan Kavanagh, what a great part to get.' And I go, 'It is a great part.'
'And I went: 'That's the top of my show.''
The show is Algorithm but, as the Tallaght-born comedian describes the background to his new material, it's clear why the pre-fame Alan Kavanagh is also name-checked: Porter, now 32, believes his writing — and maybe his life — is now more relatable, and certainly more true to himself.
'I almost welled up when I heard it,' he says of the Gerry Ryan clip, 'because of what it means to me. Because the point is that this show definitely seems to be the most firmly grounded in the present that I've ever done.'
We're meeting by the seaside in West Cork, down at Dunmore House Hotel, to which Porter has been driven all the way from Dublin by his friend Alan.
Looking slim in his blue Oxford shirt and occasionally tugging on a rhubarb-and-custard coloured vape, Porter is gearing up for a string of shows, including a night at Cork Opera House. He's raring to go — 'I need to stop talking, I'm sorry' — but, over two hours of conversation, he springs a few surprises: how despite his love for stand-up, for all he knows, this could be his last tour; about taking on a lead role in a new self-penned play only because the budget isn't there to cast someone else; why he's not particularly bothered about doing a podcast or being on TV; and — no joke — becoming a certified celebrant for weddings, baptisms, and funerals.
It seems there has always been two sides to Al Porter/Alan Kavanagh — but now?
'Oh yeah, I mean, they've met, right?' he says. 'I used to think that being funny was a bit of a mask, like a bit of a barrier. And the suit tied into that. I always talk about how I was able to present as composed on the outside but total chaos on the inside. And when I went to college and I left school, I was actually pretty ill-equipped. In my school, everybody knew me. I was 'our Alan'. 'That's our Alan.' 'That's what Al is like.' And everybody knew me for all my quirks. And then when I went to college, everybody thought I'd be fine because I've been such a good student but suddenly I felt totally lost and really exposed, and like really all this anxiety came to a head, and I went, 'I'm not doing this.' Being a 19-year-old, greasy college student with no friends, I'm not doing it. And I invented something else to be.'
For the new show, 'I wanted to have that element of loose, rough around the edges, spontaneous,' he says, referencing his conversational, come-here-and-I'll-tell-you style. 'What I like is the idea that maybe you don't know what you're going to get, because humans are messy and full of contradictions. And if you're sitting there and you're going, 'What's he going to say next?' That, to me, is the excitement in stand-up.
'I only chose the name [Algorithm] because I went, 'What am I going to call the show?' And I went through all sorts of names. I asked my followers online, 'What do you think I should call it?' They gave me some pretty mad suggestions, like, 'What about Al Porter Rides Again? Or Al Porter Back On Top?' And I went, 'No.' And so then I just saw Tommy [Tiernan] did Tomfoolery, Emma [Doran] did Dilemma!, and I went, 'I'll just take Algorithm.' It feels current but, as I've written the show and now I'm looking back at the material, there is kind of a theme.'
Those themes hove towards the online world but also reflect on the sometimes daft reality of life in Ireland, not least being part of Generation Stuck. Porter only properly moved out of his parents' home last year but, as with most situations, he can see an upside.
'If there's one good thing that has come from Generation Stuck, it is that we got to spend a lot of time with our parents,' he says. 'And at the time, when you're going, 'I can't fucking cough in this house,' you know, 'I can't move, I have no space,' and you feel like your future is stalled… but, in retrospect, I think we're all going think it was nice.
'Being left with your parents as the youngest, you're left with them at their oldest. My sister says, 'Oh, I remember when me and Mam went to Torremolinos,' and I'm going, 'I remember when we went to A&E,' — I got these different parents. But whatever it is, it seems to be getting this heartier laugh. And also, maybe I wasn't that relatable when I was 21, because how many people are an all-singing, all-dancing, suit-wearing 21-year-old, hosting a game show. As opposed to now, where you go, 'He's living in a house share, he's 32, he doesn't know if he wants to get married.' Yeah, that's real.'
Al Porter in West Cork. Picture: Eddie O'Hare
ALLEGATIONS
And here we must talk about that younger iteration of Al, not least because Al will talk about him.
Back in mid-2017, allegations of inappropriate behaviour were made against Porter. By November 2019, a charge of sexual assault against him was dropped in Dublin District Court but it was late 2023 before he really moved to return to stand-up and performing.
He had gone from absolute media ubiquity to nothing. It was from those dark and confusing years, he says, that he emerged not only sober but intensely reflective about his past behaviour — a personal reconstruction that continues today.
'The joy of it now is definitely not needing it [fame] for validation,' he says.
'And there's only one reason for that, because I, hand on heart, believe I would have become a very strange person and very maybe unhappy person if I didn't drastically change what I valued once I was not doing it any more. Because what I realised was there was nothing I liked about myself and nothing I valued other than other people's opinion of me back then. And then it was gone.
'And so every night I went out there to convince the audience I was great. I was funny. 'Love me, love me, love me.' And if I got that, great, and then I needed the next fix of that, and now that I don't need that, because there are things I value that are to do with personal intention, and that then extends out to family and friends and your God [etc]. So I don't need the audience to like or love me. I don't need it so I don't want anything from them. So now it's even more joyous because it's more generous.
'Because now I go out and go, 'I wouldn't want to be anywhere else than here tonight. I'm going to give you what I got. I hope you like it.' And then I leave, and I really don't worry about whether they loved it or not. Of course, if they fucking hate it, you go, 'Fuck,'' he adds, laughing.
It is a serious business, however; the internet never forgets and Porter says he could never have swept everything to one side.
'I'll never forget,' he says, 'I mean, it's not unrealistic to say that, I think about it every single day. And you've got to be careful, because you'll drive yourself mad, to not relive it every single day. I know the mistakes I made that put me in the vulnerable position that I ended up in, you know, in the sense that I know the ways in which I wasn't respectful to other people, or recklessly was inconsiderate of other people, or regardless of intention, because, you know, we judge ourselves by our intentions, but we judge other people by their actions.
"But I know the moments where I go, 'I wish I could redo that,' knowing what I know now. But if you relived that, how can you move on and live your life and be a good person? So when I say I think about it every day, every day, I remember, this is how you fucked up. You know how that all played out, and you've got to renew that commitment to yourself, to, as I call it, living your amends, you know — go 'You've got to be the better person today,' again and again.'
Given that we live in the age of the spoofer and the double-down, of zero accountability and shameless non-apologies, Porter, at the very least, appears to be reckoning with this past through how he lives his present. He doesn't see people buying tickets to his shows as either forgiveness or as people forgetting, though it could be either or neither; instead, he sees it simply as a show of support.
He says his last show was the therapy, and this one is the party. 'You know, one woman emailed me and said, 'I have my own fucking problems. I don't need to come to Al Porter for 15 minutes of you telling me that you're an arsehole.' But I wrote back and said, 'Listen, I think you'll prefer next year's show, because I think I'll be in a better position to say, 'We already talked about that.''
Yet he's still very much happy to talk about that. 'A good thing to do sometimes is to play a game in your imagination and go, 'If 92-year-old me — please God, I get to 92 — could look back at 32-year-old me and say, 'Was I using the time I got in a way that I'm proud of?' I would say, when I play that imagination game, I go, 'Yeah.' I wouldn't want to come back and shake me and go, 'What are you doing?'
'And I feel like if 18-year-old me could have seen 23-year-old me, like a video, he would have said, 'What the fuck is that?' I really think the person I was who was kind of a smart kid, kind of a nice kid, a smiley kid, and you know, would I have liked the 23-year-old, [who was] very caught up in ideas about ambition and in a haze of money and drink and blah. If 18-year-old me could see me now and know what I've got kind of coming down the line, I think they would go, 'Oh, that makes sense, yeah. That seems like me.''
Porter recently posted an old photograph on Instagram, showing a heavier, drowsier-looking Al. It was posted, he says, as an act of gratitude, a way of signposting his path to today, in keeping with attending AA meetings and in the context of an ongoing autism assessment and all the other facets of his life now.
But he draws my attention to an extensive exchange underneath the photograph, in which a woman takes issue with Porter, revealing she knows one of the people Porter says he has apologised to, and querying whether what is on display — the contrition, the reflection, the life rebuild — is for real.
'I tried to respond by making living amends. I haven't gone without punishment but I also believe in rehabilitation,' Al reads from one of his replies.
'I'm saying I messed up, and will try to work on myself. You're saying you doubt the sincerity of it. I'll have to keep walking my path, knowing not everyone will accept it. I wish you the best. She said, 'I appreciate your response... and I sincerely hope that your behaviour has changed.' So the conversation was worth having.'
Porter seems to be having that conversation with himself a lot. 'The thing about it is that you can perform authenticity but that's not authenticity,' he says. 'I just feel freer on stage. I just feel I'm not trying to be anything other than good. OK, so I have one mission, like I don't have a podcast to protect, I don't have a sponsor, I don't have a TV show. I'm not a culture warrior. I'm not left wing, I'm not right wing, you know, so I've got one job and I'm going, 'It's simplified.''
NO BUDGET
Al Porter on stage.
Does he miss all that — the shows, the glitzier opportunities? 'Well, firstly, nobody's asked, so I don't want people to go, 'You weren't fucking asked,'' he says with a chuckle. 'But theoretically, if I was asked, no. Because I've learned from experience that I spread myself thin. I thought the more I did, the better it reflected on me, like, 'I can do everything. I can do radio. I can write for newspapers. I can do TV. I can write pantomimes. I can write plays. I can do stand-up, and then I can host.' And you end up on fucking Big Week on the Farm, or, you know, eating a sandwich on The Six O'Clock Show, and you just go, 'Wait, sorry, what? How did I get here? Why am I milking a cow on Big Week on the Farm?''
Porter references class quite often, in terms of writing a Perrier Award-nominated show while also seeking a broad appeal, the kind of Frankie Howerd effect.
'I do have a sentimental streak,' he says. 'I think it's something sometimes that working-class writers have. Sometimes, like any man in a working-class pub that I hang out with, can be a bit like when Eamon Dunphy gets teary-eyed at the end of the night, but there is that sentimental thing of needing broad entertainment, of needing to laugh because you'd cry otherwise.'
His play, called The Kavanaghs and likely to receive a big push in 2027, has been co-written with Karl Spain and with Porter's longtime partner, Mike, acting as sounding board. Porter will play a role but only due to budget constraints, recalling how he was told: 'You have to do it, right, because you're going to do it for free.' He is, he says, 'at a crossroads'.
'I don't know if I'll do a standard tour again,' he says. 'But maybe I will. But I'm not trying to do it like it's the farewell tour. I'm about less bells and whistles now. The less bells and whistles the better. I do a stand-up joke about Instagram speak where I go, 'I am delighted to announce that, due to phenomenal demand,' you know, people say this every day, and then I go, 'I am relieved to announce, that due to financial pressure…' 'The only reason that I would say, 'Oh, I don't know if there'd be another tour like this,' is not because I don't enjoy it. I mean, I really love it. I wouldn't have gone back to it if it wasn't that I loved it so much, and it's like, I feel like I disappear on stage.'
The stage is a kind of sanctuary — arguably the most exposed type of sanctuary you can get but the one he's rooted to all the same. Any diverting from it, he says, would be because other things will come along, and he's not talking about going back to presenting Blind Date. Instead, it is the possibility of travel, the reality of studying theology, and the actual process, already under way, of becoming a certified celebrant. But maybe, given how he wanted to be a priest when he was younger and he prays before going on stage, this shouldn't be such a surprise.
'This is a faith-neutral place, it's not humanist or secular,' he explains. 'If you're a humanist celebrant, you absolutely cannot introduce faith. Whereas what I would be doing is a faith-neutral, inter-faith course, so if you say to me, 'I'm Muslim, I'm Christian, I'm not really practising, but Nana would like to hear something she recognises, and Dad would like to hear [something]…' I would be in a position to say, 'I know a little bit about that, I know some readings from here, readings from there, here are some poems, let's mix it up.''
He could be available for the gig 'basically, in a year' and, as to the reasons why, he says: 'To be a part of that special moment in somebody's life, whether it is a funeral, a naming ceremony, or a wedding, which is more joyous, but to be there and to be a part of it. I think a lot of it is word of mouth that you get those gigs. Who is going to want Alan Kavanagh to celebrate their wedding? But some people might.'
The younger Al Porter seemed to occupy all the spotlight. Present-day Alan Kavanagh has no such issue. 'If I do my job right it'll be more about them than it will be about me,' he says. And, just for a second, he sounds like the kid who's just landed the role, the fella who's dazed and a little nervous about it all. As Gerry Ryan said all those years ago, what a great part to get.
Al Porter is at Cork Opera House on August 31. corkoperahouse.ie
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