Podcast Summary: The Wayback with Ryan Sickler

Episode 95: David Nihill – Ketchup Stick Ups
Date: October 23, 2025
Length: Approx. 39 minutes

Episode Overview

In this hilariously candid episode of The Wayback, host Ryan Sickler sits down with Irish comic and storyteller David Nihill. The conversation takes a wild, nostalgic ride through David's riotous childhood and adolescence in Ireland—a world of unreliable cars, feral youths, pranks, and early brushes with the law. The pair also explore cultural differences between Ireland and America, the peculiarities of growing up Irish, and the formative (and sometimes criminal) adventures that paved the way for David’s distinctive comedy.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Childhood Memories: Cars, Chaos, and Collectors

[03:34–07:16]

• Cultural gap: Ireland didn’t have pick-up trucks; David’s family drove battered, aging BMWs his father acquired cheap and ran into the ground:

  “He has no intention of doing the maintenance... he’s always last owner and the destination of death for the car.” – David [03:39]

• Push-starting cars: Frequent family ritual outside his school, much to young David’s embarrassment.
• First prized possession: A 1991 Honda CRX—left to rot for years, eventually a hot collectors’ item:

  “I must have got about 4,000 messages that nearly became an auction... They were like, dude, this thing could be worth like 40 grand now, you idiot.” – David [07:04]

Irish Youth Gangs & The Notorious Liam

[07:16–13:28]

• Neighborhood troublemaker: “Liam,” a recurring figure in David’s stories, tried to steal his CRX multiple times.
• Defending the car:

  “I remember sleeping in this CRX with a baseball bat and me cat Garfield on top of me every night for a week.” – David [07:42]

• Ketchup stick-up: Liam used a syringe full of ketchup to rob pharmacies, threatening staff with "AIDS":

  “He was robbing a local pharmacy store with a syringe... had ketchup in it. And he was like, ‘If you don’t give me money, I’ll give you the AIDS.’” – David [08:36] “With ketchup is crazy.” – Ryan [09:02]

The Great Stolen Car Prank

[09:37–13:28]

• Setting the scene: David and friends hang out near the Speaker Connolly pub, watching Liam’s antics.
• Getting ingeniously even: They push Liam’s hot-wired stolen car out of sight while he’s inside the pharmacy.
• **Liam emerges, “covered in AIDS” (ketchup), can’t find his getaway car; the boys drive it for weeks in the mountains until wrecking it at the “Hellfire Club” car park:

  “Technically that was my first car, even though I definitely didn’t legally own it.” – David [13:30]

Mischief, Halloween, and Pyromania

[14:45–18:50]

• Juvenile liaison officer: David earned police oversight after arson antics and Halloween pranks.
• Big Irish Halloween: Massive bonfires, wood-collecting contests—David’s crew once set a gas canister in a fire just “to see what would happen.”
• Pyromaniac phase: Stole aerosol cans to make flamethrowers, set brushfires on the Dublin hills (justifying it as “helping with controlled burning”).

  “I was just attaching lighters to them and using them as flamethrowers.” – David [18:16]

School Days: Mayhem and Mischief

[19:00–22:25]

• Pranks: A friend records the school bell, dismissing class early; another (armless) classmate is dangled out a window, to a teacher’s complete lack of surprise.

  “All his arms. He’s just dangling. And the teacher... walks back in, he’s like, ‘Ian, bring him back in. Bring him back in now. Sit down.’” – David [21:10]

• General unsupervised chaos: Smoking, brawls, and avoiding any academic progress.

Brush with the Law: Low-Stakes Crime

[21:26–28:57]

• Juvenile justice: Frequent arrests for “little stuff”—arson, mooning girls’ schools, hanging off tractors (“scuts”), and stealing Easter eggs.
• Getting off on technicalities: Security guard punches young David twice after catching him shoplifting; the guard’s violence gets David out of charges.

First Jobs & Young Hustles

[31:45–38:50]

• Tile shop catastrophe: David, then 14, literally craps himself, his boss tells him to go home—and he never returns.
• Supermarket packer: Works at Dun Stores, site of the famous South African grapefruit boycott.
• McDonald's freezer duty: Lands a job post-fight, black eye and all, relegated to the freezer to avoid customer interaction.
• Pizza delivery: At the infamous Cinelli’s takeaway—eventually crashes the owner’s car, and his wheels are taken as repayment.
• Teen motorbike dealer: David sells a Nintendo for a Suzuki, then becomes a prolific—if illegally underage—motorbike flipper, getting blacklisted by the local ads magazine at 16.

Memorable Quotes

• On Irish car culture:

  “My dad loves cars that were cool like 20 years ago, and you can get them cheap enough that they might not stay alive for another six months.” – David [03:39]

• On defending his car:

  “I remember sleeping in this CRX with a baseball bat and me cat Garfield on top of me every night for a week.” – David [07:42]

• On small-town Ireland:

  “America takes a bit of getting used to because you guys know nobody... I can go around a neighborhood of thousands of houses and be like, he lives there, this guy lives there.” – David [11:40]

• On pranking the local criminal:

  “Wouldn’t it be karmatically fantastic if while he was robbing the pharmacy, we stole his getaway vehicle?” – David [11:56]

• On Halloween traditions:

  “Americans don’t seem to know that you just added peanut butter and trick or treating. We invented Halloween… with Celtic origins.” – David [15:29]

• Juvenile justice in Ireland:

  “There was no prison or detention center to go to, so they tended just to... visit your house maybe once every six months to see if you’re still doing stupid stuff.” – David [25:54]

Notable Moments & Timestamps

• BMW push starts & humiliations — [03:34–04:34]
• The legendary Honda CRX auction saga — [06:26–07:16]
• The syringe/ketchup stick-up story — [08:36–09:02]
• The stolen car prank on Liam — [11:56–13:28]
• Bonfire gas explosion — [17:01–17:26]
• Making flamethrowers from deodorant cans — [18:08–19:00]
• School window prank with armless classmate — [19:48–21:10]
• Getting caught for mooning and other minor crimes — [27:53–28:57]
• Tile shop 'accident' and early job shame — [32:10–33:54]
• Pizza delivery and crashing the boss’s car — [35:07–38:50]

Episode Tone & Style

The episode is a nostalgic, gleefully irreverent deep-dive into David Nihill's wild Irish youth, punctuated by Sickler’s laid-back incredulity and Nihill’s self-deprecating wit. The conversation is direct, detail-rich, and replete with colorfully absurd anecdotes about crime, community, and coming-of-age chaos in suburban Dublin.

Final Thoughts

The episode offers both laughter and insight into the wild, unsupervised freedom of 1990s Irish adolescence—and the difference in societal attitudes toward youthful mischief on both sides of the Atlantic. Through it all, David Nihill’s story illuminates how trouble, humor, and nostalgia can combine to create comedic gold.

Highly recommended for fans of real-life storytelling, cultural comparisons, and anyone who wants a hearty laugh at the minor tragedies and major absurdities of youth.