8 Interview I DONT LIKE EXTREMISTS. BUT I FIND THEM THRILLING AS CHARACTERS TheUSwriterandhumouristtalksabouttheseriousbusinessofbeingfunny onthepageandathislivereadings ByPatrickFreyne WEEKEND INTERVIEW DAVID SEDARIS A few days after I interview David Sedaris, I receive a thank-you postcard featuring an image from 1897 of two skeletons holding a baby skeleton above the caption The First Tooth. Its funny and dark. It is, in fact, perfectly David Sedaris. He has been publishing beautifully written, blackly hilarious essays about his life since his first book, Naked, in 1997. His new one, The Land and its People, contains 28 essays, some on serious subjects (ageing, all the dead friends in his address book, his late mother, convalescence), some seemingly slighter (giving someone a lift, helping a stranger carry a piece of furniture, ChatGPT), all very funny. I call him in his home in England (he has another in New York) where I can hear him potter away as we talk. He is forthcoming, mischievously shocking and very happy to talk about the serious business of being funny on the page and at his live readings. I want the audience to make a sound, he says. And I want the sound to be laughter. It wasnt always like that, he says. I wasted a lot of time everybody does writing like other people. Trying to be Raymond Carver and trying to be Truman Capote . . . I just felt if you were writing humour, you would never get any respect. Why is humour writing disrespected? I think people conflate it with stand-up, he says. People will say, Oh, I really like your stand-up and I say, Ive never in my life done stand-up. Everything I read was written down. I chose this word over that one. I deliberated. I didnt just talk it. He discovered his métier a little accidentally. He was writing fiction when renowned US broadcaster Ira Glass saw him reading from his diary at an event and began having him on his radio show. The brief was that he read non-fiction. I just started writing about my life, but not in a way that I think Im important [or] even necessarily interesting. I think its more like the way Cindy Sherman photographs herself to talk about the world . . . I feel like thats what I do. Underneath the jokes theres often serious material. In this book he has an essay about buying his sister an expensive cape after she gets a cancer diagnosis. [That] gets some really outsized laughs, but it gets them because it follows a harrowing part. The audience thinks that my sister Gretchen died of cancer. I do everything to make them think it. When I read it out loud, I choke up a little bit, and then when they find out that shes fine, and then I want the cape back and I say, Oh, Ill get it back eventually it gets a laugh because its like a pressure valve. Is he a softie at heart whos hiding his emotions in the humour? There are certain essays that I [read], like the essay about my friend Dawn, about my friendship with her, and its really hard for me not to cry at the end of that essay, he says. I just dont like sentimentality. Im not afraid of feeling. I just dont want to be cheap about it. Theres a book that I really love by Calvin Trillin . . . [His wife, Alice] was a character in so many of his more lighthearted books. And then she died and he wrote a very slim book, About Alice, and he never wrote in the book that he loved her. He never said the words. He never says, I miss her every day. He shows it to you . . . He doesnt need to poke us to get us to feel something. He trusts us to feel something. He goes on a riff about American sentimentality. You could go right now to Arkansas and you could ask a straight man about 9/11 and hell say, Sedaris says, through fake tears, in an exaggerated Arkansas accent, And I saw an American flag on fire . . . He laughs. He also loves bad wedding toasts and a show called Intervention in which families confront addicts. [Americans] cry at the drop of a hat. His family were allergic to performative feeling, he says. I dont remember any of us crying when my fa- THE IRISH TIMES Weekend Saturday, August 1, 2026 ther died. When my mother died, we did, but I dont remember a lot of cliches being passed around . . . We all had a similar sensibility and we just really like to make each other laugh. Where did his own humour come from? I think it started off as a defence mechanism, he says. I wasnt popular in school, [but] I wasnt bullied. There was always someone lower than me. [Humour] was a way that I could get attention. There are kings and queens [at school] and they sit atop their thrones, and everyone else is just at their feet . . . And I just tried to get through my days without being found out as gay. Im 69, so no one even really imagined then that anyone could be anything that awful back then. You might call somebody gay, but you didnt imagine they actually were. You cant talk about good things that you do because you just sound like an asshole. So people just assume that all you care about is, in my case, shopping Is he constantly looking for material? I never turn it off, he says. I wrote that essay about being bitten by a dog in the book. Then six months later, I got bitten by another dog, and I was like, F**k. I already wrote about it. That time it really hurt because there was nothing I could do. I started feeding crows. I was just in the park this morning feeding them raw turkey breast and a guy came up and said, Be careful. He said, I was feeding crows, and they attacked me. And then I thought, Oh, I dont want to be attacked by crows. And then I thought . . . He literally sings this bit: I can write about it! What makes someone a good character for his books? I think good characters are sure of themselves, he says. My father was sure of himself. In my opinion, he was always wrong, but he was just brimming with confidence, and so he would tell you what to do with your life, or he would shout at somebody . . . I dont like extremists in politics, I cant stand the far right and I cant stand the far left either. But I like them as characters. I like how tenaciously they cling to their beliefs and how theyre motivated by this mistaken faith in themselves. I find that thrilling. What does he leave out of his sto- ries? There are certain things you cant talk about. You cant talk about good things that you do because you just sound like an asshole. So people just assume that all you care about is, in my case, shopping. He laughs. Which is pretty true. He also plays up extremes, he says. I pit myself against people. When I write about Hugh [Hamrick, his husband], Hugh is like the voice of reason. Hugh is the person who makes the right decisions and who takes care of things. And Im the buffoon. Thats not that terribly far off the mark. I dont know how to buy a plane ticket. I dont open any mail that doesnt look like fan mail. They can write urgent outside of it all they want, and Im not going to open it. So its one person in the relationship being kind of self-obsessed and bumbling, and the other person being steady and capable . . . Hugh has some qualities that I dont mention because they contradict his image. Do his subjects ever get annoyed with what hes written? The New York Times has this column called At Home With. They come into your home and take pictures. Hugh said absolutely not and I said, I have a book coming out and I cannot say to my publicist, Forget it. I dont want publicity in The New York Times. In the interview, when you look at it in the paper, it can sound like youre just boasting, because they ask, How much did your apartment cost? How much did that Picasso painting cost? [they own two Picassos]. He, anyway, he will never forgive me for that, and hes made that very clear. He laughs. But then on most other things, Hugh trusts me. Hugh needs me in his life to make fun of him because he can be really serious and I can get him to see himself and to laugh at himself and he knows he needs it. So I fulfil a purpose that way. What about the rest of his family? My brother and I, we had an argument over something, maybe in 2016, following an election. Huh. I wonder what we argued about? And then he said he didnt want me writing about him any more . . . I respected his deci- DavidSedarisontheseriousbusinessofcomedy.Page8 WalledtownsofIreland:RositaBolandvisitsWexford.Page10 PatrickFreyne:GlenHansardwasIrelandsbandleader.Page5 WEEKEND THE IRISH TIMES Saturday, August 1st, 2026 A WOUND IS HEALED Afterdecadesofheartbreakandnearmisses, Mayofinallyhasitsmomentinthesun By 2 Cover story A HOUSE OF PAIN NO MORE MayosAll-Irelandtriumphreleased75yearsof pent-upemotioninoneunforgettableafternoon ByKeithDuggan M acHale Park in Castlebar has always been best suited to those Saturday-night matches in winter, when the season is young and the promise uncontained. An ideal Cover story meme, the jokes came thick and fast. Through all that, Mayo footballers and supporters never shied away from speaking about it, nor returning to All-Ireland finals. Maybe we make too much of the football, Fr Leo Morahan, the former county board executive, said back in 2007. Mayo has the 4 Cover story 2004, when he was beginning his sec- ond term as Mayo manager. By September, he had the county back in an All-Ireland final, when Kerry defeated his young team. Like most GAA counties, the network of names and connections within Mayo football are impossibly dense: you could fill the People GLEN HANSARD WAS OUR NATIONAL BARD TheFramesfrontmanwasIrelandsbandleader, anditfeltlikehewouldbedoingthejobfor alongtime ByPatrickFreyne I n the 1990s, I wasnt convinced by The Frames. They felt a bit mainstream. A bit major label. I was a young idiot. Later, a friend convinced me that I 6 Music THE PIANIST WHO PLAYS WITH ONE HAND ONLY Freya Terris is the first pianist to pass their Grade 8 piano exam playing solely with their left hand ByJohnOConnor L ike countless other young musicians, Freya Terris discovered her love of music at the piano stool. Yet her journey has been anyt People 7 Fearkeptmefrom doingwhatIreally wantedtodoorsay Q&ARevJanetBroderick The Donegal-based priest on childhood games with her brother actor Matthew Broderick, how people react when she preaches sermons, and who could play her in a biopic Howagreeableareyou? I think life has made me agreeable 8 Interview I DONT LIKE EXTREMISTS. BUT I FIND THEM THRILLING AS CHARACTERS TheUSwriterandhumouristtalksabouttheseriousbusinessofbeingfunny onthepageandathislivereadings ByPatrickFreyne WEEKEND INTERVIEW DAVID SEDARIS A few days after I interview David Sedaris, I receive a thank-you postcard fe Interview 9 I just tried to get through my days [at school] without being found out as gay. Im 69, so no one even really imagined then that anyone could be anything that awful back then DavidSedaris: Idontknowhow tobuyaplane ticket.Idontopen anymailthat doesntlooklike fanmail. Photograph: Leonardo 10 Feature HISTORY EMBRACES US EVERY DAY IN WEXFORD In the first of a four-part series on Irelands walled towns, we visit Wexford, where history is quite literally in peoples back gardens ByRositaBoland I f Billy Colfer talked to you about history, youd sit up and listen, Paul Walsh tells me. W Feature field. We discovered that Sparrow was a surname of ship owners back in the 1830s, Hussey says. Hussey brings me out into their back garden to show me where, more than a century ago, a house was built against the other side of their wall. The medieval wall thus became a party wall. It towers 12 Photo essay Formedtotacklethe siltingissueintheriver Liffey,thereservenow extendstotheentirety ofthebay WILD AT HEART Photographs: DaraMacDónaill andEndaODowd Words: EndaODowd O f the 797 Unesco biosphere reserves across 147 countries, Dublin Bay is the only one to include a national capital Photo essay DublinsNorth BullIsland,partof theDublinBay Unescobiosphere reserve,isnow hometo180 differentspeciesof bird.However, conservationists warnthat,asworks tostopcoastal erosionareerected alongthecoastline, theirlong-term impactonthe ecologyand landscapemaybe difficulttopredict. Photographs: 14 Feature TWINS PEAK WERE PROBABLY MIRROR IMAGES OF EACH OTHER Whetheritsthehighsofalwayshavingcompanyor thelowsofsensingtheotherspain,thebestpartof beingatwinisneverbeingstuckforafriend ByJenHogan I relands birth rate may be falling, but the incidence of twin births continues to rise, with al Feature 15 Its sometimes fun and its sometimes not, because they could steal your stuff had a friend beside you. In fact, the twins only really went their separate ways when they went to college and that was a major shock, Emma says. Rebecca says there are lots of upsides to being a twin, but the T 16 Essay he vintage front page shows a street full of Dublin holidaymakers smiling at the camera, sitting on the kerb, waiting for the bus in the sun. But these early queues soon dissipated. Bank holiday spoiled by weather, announces the reusable headline. The citys thoroughfares were WEEKEND E Essay 17 Governments might fancy deploying bank holidays to foster cohesion and goodwill, but that doesnt mean everybody has to play along crashing out of the Fifa World Cup was that Friday, July 24th, became the bank holiday that never was. Would Keir Starmers mooted last act have applied across 18 Feature BE LIKE JOHN LENNON AND BUY AN IRISH ISLAND Four islands for sale off Mayo, Donegal, Tipperary and Galway, with bidding starting at 299,000 ByJessicaDoyle W hen you attract screaming fans everywhere you go, what do you do to get some peace and quiet? You buy an island, of course. Tha People 19 SARAH MOSS Teenage dieting made me an expert in mental arithmetic I bofin. It is suitable for grazing and features two natural freshwater lakes. The island measures 1.2km by 0.4km and rises to a maximum height of 63.3m above sea level. It is a Special Protection Area under the EU Bird 20 Environment TOMAÍ Ó CONGHAILE Our beautiful, troubled planet needs a skilled reconciler T he World Cup may be over but the fallout continues: Trumps unwanted interventions; Germanys early exit; football not coming home; Argentinas post-final petulance. Not to mention, of course, that banner. Environment 21 British navy, spent several days imprisoned in the Tower of London on corruption charges, and died of smallpox before reaching 40. Initially, a strait running between the two main islands was named after him and, by 1765, the Falkland Islands had become the English name for the entire 22 Obituaries FIRST WOMAN DIRECTOR OF A NATIONAL INSTITUTION, LIBRARIAN AND ACADEMIC Patricia (Pat, Patsy) Donlon Born: January 28th, 1943 Died: July 23rd, 2026 Patricia (Pat, Patsy) Donlon, who has died peacefully aged 83 at Blackrock Hospice, Dublin, was a leading light in that remarkable generat Obituaries 23 RENOWNED ORNITHOLOGIST AND COMIC ACTOR WHO STARRED IN THE GOODIES Bill Oddie BillOddiewasamemberofcomedy trioTheGoodies,whoseanarchicTV sketchshowairedinthe1970sand 1980s.Photograph:IanGavan/Getty Born: July 7th, 1941 Died: July 25th, 2026 Bill Oddie, who has died aged 85, was a mul 24 Last word DAVID McWILLIAMS ThefirstvictimofAI? Theeconomy W e are in an era of great technological advances, or so say all the tech bros who are championing not just AI, but a whole host of technological innovations from finance and healthcare to supply chain management and communications. In