95: The Wayback #95 | David Nihill - Ketchup Stick Ups

Summary

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.

Transcript

[A]

Hey, guys, this Friday is the premiere of my new special, Live and alive on my YouTube. All right, I'm going to be live in the comments. Make sure you get over there. You join me. There's a countdown going on right now. You can get over there. Set a reminder, be there, be live in the comments. You know what happened on my last special? YouTube demonetized it. But when I did the way back, over 2,000 of you guys showed up and we went live and we had a great time. So come join me this Friday. This Friday, October 24th, 6pm Eastern, 9pm Pacific. I'll be live in the comments for the premiere. Join me. Let's have a good time. And then they come in and they say, Mr. Sickler, you are lucky to be alive. You have massive pulmonary embolisms. They traveled through your heart. Your heart is swollen twice its size. And we're going to be honest with you, the next 48 hours are touch and go. You're probably gonna wanna make some calls. And I was like, my phone's dead. I was playing it on three hours. You know what I'm saying? I came in with it on 66%. I didn't even bother gassing it up. And I knew things were about to get wild when I heard one of the surgeons say, well, Mr. Sickler, you and your phone are about to have a lot in common. I said, oh, my God. What kind of bedside manner for somebody with Blue Shield silver? You talking to me like I got the bronze package right now and I'm not really feeling it. So back your Kaiser Permanente attitude up and recognize my second tier status.

[B]

Hey, baby, we gonna be here all day. We gonna be here all day, baby. I like this kind of party.

[A]

Welcome back to the Way Back, everybody. Ryan Sickler here. Ryan Sickler on all your social media, r sickler.com. thank you guys for, I always say, supporting this show, but for supporting anything I do. Thank you for this show, all of it, man. You guys are the best. I love this show. I'm very excited to have this guest on today. We've been waiting a minute to get this guy in here. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome David Nyhill. Welcome to the Way Back, buddy.

[B]

Thank you very much.

[A]

Appreciate you being here. You're our second Irish guest.

[B]

It's hard to be the second Irish.

[A]

Anything you are, but DEZ Bishop spent time in Ireland, so that's what it was. But Shane Todd. So welcome to the Way Back, buddy.

[B]

That's what it qualifies to be Irish these days for Americans like, this guy went there. He's Irish now. All right, There, he went there.

[A]

He had a connecting flight.

[B]

That makes me Swedish for the purposes of this show.

[A]

Before we get into your stories here, you have a special out now on your YouTube.

[B]

I do. But if you're watching that, you're wasting your time because he has a special coming out in a few weeks and that would be way better use of your time. Mine is nothing special about it at all. It's more of a loose collection of complete waffle that I put together in a moment of madness called Shelf Help Shelf, which people think is called self help and do not watch it. So it's working out well.

[A]

Great, man, great. Go watch Shelf Help David nihil on your YouTube.

[B]

Right, on YouTube.

[A]

I'm excited to have you here because as we talk before the podcast, I asked people about their past. And then slowly things start coming out. So before we get into it, I ask people always about that. They ride in the seat. You said this thing didn't even exist in Ireland. I said, what about pickup trucks? You're like, now, no.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What are you guys rolling around? And as a family, what's your get around vehicle?

[B]

What? The first one that I remember was an old BMW that my dad had. 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. And he has no intention of doing the maintenance to keep it going. So he's always last owner and the destination of debt for the car. And he had a BMW that was cool at some stage, but wasn't anymore.

[A]

So once it's done, it's done. He then just gets another one for another six months.

[B]

Yeah, I'm not sure he's ever sold a car before. They always just disappear to die or be scrapped or we would go with the pickup truck to go rescue them somewhere. And then that was the last. But we had. It was a little BMW. And I always remember push starting it outside the school. He'd come to pick us up after school. He's a teacher. And then we like, do we go? Yeah, do we go now? It was like, no, we're pushing. We're pushing this away and not his school. No. I was like, there's no way. I get beaten up every day. If I went as a kid to.

[A]

My dad's beating you up and you got a push start the car out in front of your school to go home.

[B]

I remember pushed out in the car quite a lot. Yeah, that. That was not that's something that's turned into my adult life. I remember when I moved in I had. When I moved.

[A]

Is it on level ground and you got a little bit of a hill where you could have.

[B]

A slight bit of a hill but it was against us. Yeah, that's how, that's how confident he was that this car was going to go up the hill that he's like.

[A]

Push it and pop that in second gear. That's hilarious.

[B]

Yeah, well and there was, you know there's no automatic cars in Ireland when I was a kid so they're all manual. So like you, you can push start it. I remember I moved to America popping a clutch bro.

[A]

Yeah, that's.

[B]

That was one of my.

[A]

You when you're pushing back there, you like elementary school, middle school at least you got a little muscle on.

[B]

No, I'm a little split bellied kid. Like a little Ethiopian fel with not much of a tan with a little belly popping out. I was not good for pushing anything. I was like 10.

[A]

Just coming over and helping me.

[B]

There's no wait. Jim was a dude in Ireland until I was at least 18. Jim was a dude. Jim is a new thing, a new place.

[A]

Is that right?

[B]

Oh yeah. I used to say I'm going to gym and this girlfriend. I was like who's Jim? That was the question. When I was 18 I was one of very few people go to a gym.

[A]

So you were saying before we recorded you were a bit of a hellion child, a terror out there. What are you, what are you getting into? What are you doing?

[B]

They were mentioned that the first car, which I thought was the funniest thing up right back and I'm like that's the ultimate example of the hellion kids that we were. Because I remember in Ireland normally in a housing estate there was one dude who was a lunatic and you knew who he was. So I'll say his name is Liam for the purposes of this just so he doesn't kill me because I'm not sure if he's alive or not anymore but if someone was stealing your stuff it was Liam. And the one time I got a little bit of money when I working myself and saved enough for this little Honda CRX car. Right. Which is kind of pimping for a young flow at the time.

[A]

Honestly.

[B]

ARCS was glass rooftop and.

[A]

And a little glass back too. Look it up Kirsten. Honda CRS.

[B]

Honda CRX 1991.

[A]

91.

[B]

Dude, I love this car. So much glass roof.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it had.

[A]

And the. When you reversed that little back panel was glass.

[B]

You could see the whole roof is glass.

[A]

CRX was great.

[B]

This panel here, no one had a car like that. Yeah, around where I lived. I had no idea. This car, I loved it so much. I never sold it. So when I went traveling around the world, everywhere, I just left it around the side of my garden. It was going grass out of lumps out of it. And I had no idea people had this much affection for this car. So I listed it for sale for next to nothing, thinking nobody wanted it. And I must have got about 4,000 messages that nearly became an auction. I was trying to sell it for like four grand, which is what I paid for in 1997. And they were like, dude, this thing could be worth like 40 grand now, you idiot.

[A]

Is that right? We have this car.

[B]

Oh, huge collectors.

[A]

Six years later, how many miles do you remember what you put on on it or what was on it when you were selling it?

[B]

Less than 100,000 miles.

[A]

Oh, yeah, dude, that's.

[B]

But it fall into pieces. My dad, his eyesight's going a bit and he decided to take it back on the road for a few years when one of his cars exploded and he just crashed it into everything. So it was pristine. But now it just had lumps out everywhere. But it was such a unique car at the time. This guy Liam kept trying to steal it. And when I was a kid, my mom lived in the States, so she'd bring home baseball stuff for us as presents just to. Nobody liked baseball in Ireland, but I was the only kid with like a baseball bat and mitts. No idea what to do with them. So I would make up the rules and they would play whatever version of baseball I told them to play. Because there was no Internet, nobody could be checking what the rules were. I remember sleeping in this CRX with a baseball bat and me cat Garfield on top of me every night for a week. Because this guy Liam just decided he wanted my car, the crx. There's no way to stop him.

[A]

I'm trying to catch him.

[B]

Yeah, I'm trying to catch him. And God knows what would happen if I caught him. But there's me sleeping every night in the CRX to keep him away. With a cat. But a few Kent Garfield. He was a big cat. The cat kept me company. I figured the baseball bat was at a stern. But who knows? A lot of people don't like cats, so I might have gotten of my favor. But it was the same guy, Liam. A few years earlier, we had no real guns in Ireland, growing up. So he was robbing a local pharmacy store with a syringe. That was his weapon of choice.

[A]

No, he didn't.

[B]

Yeah, and he had ketchup in it. And he was like, yeah. And he was like, if you don't give me the money, I'll give you the aids.

[A]

So shut up. The pharmacy with a syringe full of ketchup and told him it had aids.

[B]

What's he saying? Steal.

[A]

What's he want?

[B]

Money.

[A]

Oh, he doesn't want the pills. He wants.

[B]

We're not like America. We just got stuff for a cold. You don't rob the pharmacy for pills with ketchup, bro. With ketchup.

[A]

With ketchup is crazy.

[B]

That wasn't his only. That wasn't his only one. We. We were kind of. We were used to it. So if you were asking me where what we were like as kids, I remember at 16, we're sitting on this wall, a whole bunch of us, maybe eight or nine of us as 16 year olds, none of us can drive. And we see this guy Liam turning up and he has a syringe and he's in a stolen car. It's a red Rover. And I can still visualize in my head parked right in front of the local pub. We have this place called the Speaker Connolly. And if you looked it up, I bet you'd get a layout for what's there. But the pub is still there. Okay, what's up? Speaker Connolly. Publisher. Speaker Connolly.

[A]

Speaker Connolly.

[B]

Yeah, that's the one where it is.

[A]

Let's take a look.

[B]

And if you Google Maps in on it, because it's still the same layout as it used to be. Speaker Connolly. So that's it. That's the car park we're sat in and we're watching them and that. See the bigger building that you just zoom back a bit. Zoom out a little bit. Yeah, exactly. So pharmacies in there. Exactly where it says, like, oh, back here.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Where it's at where it says Cinelli's Takeaway. So I used to be delivery driver for this place to Nelli's Takeaway at one.

[A]

So he's going from there and walking.

[B]

Over here, parked at the Speaker Connolly. We're in front of the wall outside where it says Cinelli's.

[A]

Kirsten, will you give me that map view down here?

[B]

This bottom right, that's where I went to school. School of Tracy. Man, this is some serious nostalgia. Yeah, that's Speaker Connelly. So see the orange building? Zoom in on that by the white car, it's changed a little bit, but the little low wall is still there. See the brown building back to your left there? Yeah, exactly. There's a butcher's there.

[A]

So he's parked here.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

And he's walking back.

[B]

See where the blue car is parked? Yeah, he's parked there. And go to your left a little bit. Oh, this is fun. Cinelli's there. See the takeaway? There's a little wall. See a little wall there. It's real low. We're sat on that little wall. I love the fact that this has not changed, because this had to be like 1996, maybe 1995. He pulls up, he parks his getaway stolen.

[A]

So wait, you're just there and you happen to catch this?

[B]

Yeah, we're hanging out because we have nothing to do. So as kids, we. We, I suppose, for the lack of a better word, we're just there bullying other kids and looking for trouble. For the most part, we're just sitting there. And we are your gang of little hooligans, I suppose, at the time. But every age group has their own gang of hooligans. So we're a couple of years back from this fella, and we're sitting there and he pulls up in this red Rover and the wires are hanging out of a hot wired. I don't think any of us can drive. I certainly couldn't drive.

[A]

How old is Liam at the time? Is he older than you guys?

[B]

Yeah, I'd say he's 18.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And we're 16. And I just remember thinking, oh, this is gonna be funny. Here he goes again with a syringe of ketchup. And he goes in. The entrance is Super Value there, the red one. And that enters into a strip mall. So that's the grocery entrance to the shopping store. But back in the days, it had a different entrance. And you go in. There's a pharmacy in there, what we call a chemist. And we all know the chemist because it's Dermot Moren's chemist. And everyone knows who Dermot Mornes is. Right. It's such a small place in Ireland, you know, everyone. America takes a bit of getting used to because you guys know nobody. Like, you don't even know the person in the apartment next to you. Whereas I can go around a neighborhood of thousands of houses and be like, he lives there, this guy lives there, this guy lives there. And we know them all. But yeah, it's brilliant. So at the Super Value entrance, that's where he runs out of the Equivalent of it. Even though if you go in that entrance, it opens up into a little mall and there's about six different shops in there. There's a pharmacy in there. Those apartments weren't there at the time. So we're just hanging around on that exact same small wall. I don't think they've changed it. Yeah, exactly. See your Cinelli's there. Oh, yeah. I suppose you don't know all this. There you go. That's a takeaway. It sounds like fish and chips from Italian fellas. Which was in Ireland was a big thing. There's a little wall. You can see it there. A little bit of grass. Yeah. We're sat there. So he pulls up, runs into the pharmacy. He's got this syringe in his hands. We're like, this is going to be funny. But we're like, wouldn't it be karmatically fantastic if while he was robbing the pharmacy, we stole his getaway vehicle and now none of us can drive. So we're like, let's just push it out of sight around the corner. He won't even know it's there. So we pushed it around the back of the speaker Connolly and we just went back to sitting on the wall. Oh, yeah. So we're on that wall. He's going to come out at any minute. Do not. Nobody smile, nobody laugh, nobody say nothing. He's going to be hot, he's going.

[A]

To be running and everything.

[B]

He came out covered in aids.

[A]

He's got aids.

[B]

He had AIDS all over him. He had ketchup all over his T shirt. And he runs and we're just sat there. We're like, do not look at him. Do not look it up. Obviously he can't find the car. So he panics and we just have the car around the corner. Out of eyesight, but like, you're never going to think to look in that building.

[A]

No.

[B]

Hell no. Yeah. So he took off and we kept his car for two and a half weeks. And that's actually how I learned to drive. I think we were just driving that illegally around the mountains at night.

[A]

Driving a stolen car. Yeah.

[B]

One of the fellas one night crashed it. A place called the Hellfire Club car park. Crashed it into a tree and we just left it there. No one could reverse it out or get rid of it. To the best of my memory, that was the end of that car. But technically that was my first car, even though I definitely didn't legally own it. But, yeah, if you look, Hellfire Club car park there you go, so this, this place, this was our equivalent of a hike because we don't have big mountains in Ireland. So we used to hike up to.

[A]

This thing, like a stone barn. What is it?

[B]

Oh, it's great. It used to be a kind of weird members club where they were rumored to be all sorts of satanic stuff.

[A]

I was gonna say it looks haunted.

[B]

Yeah, it's weird. If you go fields. As kids, we were told stories about property. Yeah, if. Exactly. That's the car park. And we backed the car off the back into that bush on the right hand side. It hung over the edge and we couldn't get it back out because we drove it too far. And that was the end of that car. It lived there. Never heard about it or something. Yeah, exactly. Out of your left there. Well, you're. Someone found a dog. That looks familiar. Yeah, exactly. Oh, this is brilliant. Yeah, Exact spot over that little ledge. And that was the end of that car. Cause this place, when we were kids, we'd hike up here. I slipped and fell and knocked my own toot out up here. And I had to walk back with it. I have a fake too, because I knocked it out when I was.

[A]

They couldn't put it back in.

[B]

No. My parents just weren't too worried about dental care, so they just left it. Nobody said anything for seven years. I have that in the comedy special I just put out where I was talking about it because it kept falling out in kind of awkward situations.

[A]

Go watch shelf help.

[B]

Don't watch it. It's horrendous.

[A]

You said you got when you were a kid.

[B]

Yeah, a few times. The first time, the. The most serious one I had, I had like a thing called a juvenile liaison officer. So if you're in a bit of a gang in Ireland, the police kind of become aware of you and your friends as doing kind of crazy stuff. And we were doing crazy stuff. Like I remember at one stage we went to a bonfire. You know, Halloween's a big deal in Ireland. We invented Halloween. Americans don't seem to know that you just added peanut butter and trick or treating. Yeah, but it's. We don't want peanut butter as part of Halloween. But we just. It's an Irish tradition they've. With Celtic origins. And obviously the bonfires are a big part of it. And you'd go around stealing wood for weeks. And we'd like hide it in bushes, making sure we had the biggest pile.

[A]

I don't mean to interrupt you, but I'm imagining that castle thing there. We just saw A killer Halloween place. Yeah, they do there for it. Halloween?

[B]

No, it's. They're being. They've been talking about redevelopment as a community. Yeah, it's got. It has. It feels like somewhere you shouldn't be. That was the big adventure, just to walk up there and just be doing nutty stuff and making fires and.

[A]

So Halloween's a big deal here. You're saying it was even bigger when you were a kid in Ireland for you guys or.

[B]

Well, no, I mean, Americans, you make everything a bigger deal than it is. Right? Like even St. Patrick's Day, you took what we did and you're like, we see your work and we're gonna raise you. You know, we're worried about environmental protection and fish, but we're gonna bleach our river green for a whole month. It's so insane when you think about it. You're like, we are protecting the fish. You will drink that. You must use a plastic straw. And we're like, didn't you just make that puffer fish green? Especially if you want one of those fish that changes colors for survival. And they're like, you're not going to survive this one. You're green for Ireland. I did not sign up for this at all as a fish. I remember getting gas canisters, actual gas canisters. Like big ones the size of your house. Like the sound of a beer keg and putting it in the middle of someone else's bonfire. And we're like, well, that'll be funny when that blows up. And you're like, did you think of the consequences of what happened?

[A]

You were rolling in the middle of the fire and then what? Get the fuck out.

[B]

We make sure we were there on the night to see what would happen. And this thing blew. And like, these are huge on it.

[A]

What is a keg size canister gasoline look like?

[B]

Well, it wasn't. It was natural gas and it was an empty one. So the same amount of gas isn't in there. But that's a ginormous, like, mushroom kind of explosion. And we'd put something in there and something shot out and hit someone's dad in the side of the head. Thankfully didn't kill him. But we're like, run. And we had like, pipes.

[A]

How far away are you?

[B]

Not not far away enough at all. Yeah, we don't know nothing about safety at this stage. What do you mean?

[A]

You guys are humans and there's fire. You know, enough.

[B]

We're just fascinated by it. Do you ever go through that phase? I don't think all teenagers go through it. There's a loss. Yeah, they're like.

[A]

They're just like where you're a pyromaniac. And my brother did that. My brother was the fire guy.

[B]

Yeah. Someone always.

[A]

Everything's getting on fire. Well, we. Not just a fire going. If you had a toy, a Star wars figure or something, he was just around. He's burning that.

[B]

I mean, that was the first thing I got arrested for was a steel and aerosol cans from the local super value, the one you pulled up in there. And I had every collection of links, which you call Axe, I think in America.

[A]

Axe body spray.

[B]

Yeah. My mother just thought I was going through a phase.

[A]

What is it? L, Y, N, X?

[B]

Yeah, it's just what I was reading.

[A]

Are they just calling something different in.

[B]

A different market, but same product? But I think me man was thinking I was going through a phase. You know when you start sweating as a teenager, like, oh, you must be sensitive to how he smells at the moment. But realistically, I was just attaching lighters to them and using them as flamethrowers. And when we go hiking up to this, the place you showed with the. The castle on the top there, the Hellfire Club, it was gorse bushes that are. Yeah, exactly that.

[A]

Africa.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

Yeah. There isn't many people in the world that are like, I want to smell like Africa, but they must be out there.

[A]

Smell like Link Good.

[B]

Apparently people are paying for it. Oh, yeah. Water flavors. When I was good. But I had.

[A]

You're a mime. We used to do that, too. Like, we would take Lysol cans.

[B]

Oh, yeah, same.

[A]

And then you. You know, one friend around leaves it too long, and that's when we learn that the flame can go back into the can and blow up in your hand. Yeah, but, I mean, you would be sitting around, listen, Nintendo down here. You and I are sitting around playing Nintendo. My brother would come by out of nowhere and just flame right across our face like that. And that's the kind of. You're growing up.

[B]

There was a phase where they were doing that, where lads were putting this deodorant on their hands and setting fire to their arm. In school, it was definitely that. And then another guy really ran with this, and he made his own explosive device where if you ran, like, he ran a ring along it. You know, what's that game where you have a piece of steel or a cord or something, and you get electrocuted if the ring touches off it. This guy made it to a level where it actually blew up. And he wasn't meant to. And it blew up. And it blew one of his fingers off. That was his dedication to this game. Yeah, we were 16, but he was just, you know, he was like one of the guys who, like, fire injured himself, injured other people, and does general mayhem. And he got a set of speakers long before we even knew what a portable set of speakers were. And he put them in his school bag and he recorded the bell. So like, every hour we'd have a bell that goes off. And that means you change class. But if this guy was in your class, we knew he had his own bell. And he'd set it off about 15 minutes early. So 15 minutes. We were just unsupervised maniacs. Oh, yeah. And no one figured out, like, all.

[A]

Right, there it is. On autopilot.

[B]

Kind of the school it was called for Hills Community College. And it was sectioned on the upper level, so there'd be four classrooms in each section, but other than that, you wouldn't hear the bell. So everyone in the four classrooms around him would hear the bell. So we were out. And we knew this guy was the source of it. We're like, right, we got 50 minutes to do anything. So people who smoked would be smoking. People who were mischievous were beating up people. At one stage, me, May, had a. There was a lad in our arm, only had one arm and all sorts of nicknames, which I don't repeat, which these days wouldn't be very complimentary. But I remember me May had him hanging out the window by his only arm. This guy only has one arm. And my mate Ian has him hanging out the window. Window. And because the bell has gone off early.

[A]

All his arms.

[B]

Yeah, all his arms. All his arms. He's just dangling. And the teacher, I think he used to be a police officer. He was a cop.

[A]

The school, how high up is it?

[B]

Is it about 25ft? Second story, serious drop.

[A]

Yeah, that's a leg breaker for sure.

[B]

Breaking everything. But I just remember your man's nonchalance when he walked back in. He was like, ian, bring. Bring him back in. Bring him back in now. Sit down. And just said nothing else. And I was like, this guy's seen some stuff for real. He's been a police officer.

[A]

Guy missing an arm, hanging out, the wind, everything.

[B]

But it was the fire phase that I think that got me arrested first, because when they found me, I had this homemade kind of flamethrowers in every pocket, and I was stealing more out of the local super value. And I'D set fired all these bushes everywhere up in the mountains. They definitely knew it was us, but someone told us, this is a harmless crime. They're going to burn these bushes anyway. They're bad for farmers lands. And somehow we justified that in the sapphire to everything for quite a while.

[A]

You're helping the control burn up there.

[B]

Yep, that's what I thought. I'm like, I'm training to be a firefighter, which ironically, I tried to be at 18 or 19 years old. They're like, why do you love this job? And you don't really want to say, I just like burning those things. Thankfully, that phase passed, but definitely burned a lot. And Halloween, we went around so much that we stole all the, like, the fuel tanks from all the construction vehicles around there early and we drained them all. It wasn't petrol, it was diesel, which is flammable, but only if there's enough heat to make it flammable. But it was still good. Once there was a bonfire and you hid some diesel in there, you still had your own kind of, like petrol.

[A]

Oh, I see, so you're using that for your fires and stuff too.

[B]

We were using for blowing up other people who didn't like as well. Yeah, we were kind of nuts. To say we were nuts was the understatement. I think it all went wrong. It was funny because when I sat down here on the couch, I had Nintendo and my dad said he was a teacher, the one who was picking me up in the car. And he was like, listen, you're crap at maths and all these other things, but if you can get a circle, I will buy you the Super Nintendo. If you can get up to a.

[A]

C. C in math or overall. C grade level.

[B]

I think it was math specifically, and I didn't get it. I think I got a D. And he just felt bad and he's like, I'll buy you the Super Nintendo anyway. And I bought and I played the game Street Fighter so much that I could finish Street Fighter without any other fighter touching me. And I just used one character. His name was Dalzeem. But I was so sad. I spent so much time playing this game that nobody else could touch me during the game. So it was like all perfects. You won every single level. Dalzeem was the character use because he had long arms and long legs. Yeah, that's the man. Long arms, long legs and a few fireballs. I think that's him. Del Zim. Yeah, exactly that. He's just been souped up a bit since the version I was playing in the 90s, but I got so good no one else could hit me back. So I was like, geez, my life is pretty sad. I'm just going to sit here, there's nothing left I can do with this game. So without asking my dad, I sold the Super Nintendo that he'd got me as a reward for not getting the marks I was when and I bought a motorbike and I didn't ask anyone at all if that was okay. I think I was 14. I just came home with a Suzuki TS125. Here we go. He's like, the hell are you doing?

[A]

Are you serious?

[B]

Yeah. You dropped. No license? No. They just kind of let me do it. Yeah, there you go, right there. Blue and white. Yeah, yeah, that was a version of that. Maybe slightly newer than that, but it looked horrendous. And I just went and bought it. I didn't ask anyone could I buy.

[A]

It for a Nintendo straight up swap.

[B]

Sold Nintendo for 130 pounds at the time and bought these. And then I just started buying and selling motorbikes. And I was not old enough to drive motorbikes and we had a newspaper called the Buy and Sell. It was like an ads listing magazine. And they banned me as a professional motorbike dealer when I was 16. I wasn't even old enough they were licensed.

[A]

I was flipping them that fast, dude, I was banned.

[B]

I had a friend of mine who since sadly passed away, fairly tragically, fell off a balcony on a Greek hole and passed away. But he worked in our local gas station and they got copies of it delivered late night on a Tuesday and it came out on a Wednesday. But he'd give it to me late night on a Tuesday. So I'd ring all these people and by like 9am on a Monday, I'd already done the deal to buy something. I see for anyone who wanted a fast sale. But I just bought this bike and I didn't ask any permission. I remember the cops pulling me over and they're like, where's your license? You know, the equivalent of license registration? We'd say tax and insurance. And I was like, I am. I think at the time they pulled me over, I was like, I'm 15. And they're like, where's your tax insurance? I was like, you didn't hear that? I'm 15. Part like I'm not old enough to have tax insurance. He's like, you have one week to produce your tax and insurance in the police station. I'm like, I don't Going, okay. I'm like, this is an unusual conversation so far. And then he's like, I remember him going, what's your name? And I obviously didn't want to tell my real name, but I kind of. I was just confused by the whole discussion at this point because none of it made any sense. So I thought of two fellas that sat either side of me in school and I thought, I'll just use their name. And one guy was called Michael o' Neill and the other guy was Stephen Jackson. So stupidly I said Michael Jackson as my name because that was their two names. I was like panicked. And he went, michael Jackson is it? And I went, but yes, he's like, michael, you have one week to produce your taxes, insurance, but then you get to leave. Yeah, then I get to leave.

[A]

You don't have the license, you're underage, and he's just going to let you go.

[B]

For as a kid in Ireland, like we had, there's no, there was no place to put someone who was a lunatic under 18. So you got a juvenile liaison officer, that's what I had. And he visits your house maybe once every six months to sit down with you and your parents and see are you doing stupid stuff. But there was no prison or detention center to go to, so they tended just to. To. I remember one of my friends, he was hammered and the cops found him, he of 17, legally old enough to drive a car, but not legally be enough to be in the pub. And he came out of the pub, got in the car, drove, and they're like, you're not going to drove home, are you? And he's like, oh, I only had one beer. And they're like, don't lie to us. How many did you have? And he's like, four. Don't lie to us. Like, I had about nine. That sounds more like it. Get in the cop car. He's like, why? He's like, where you'll drive your car home? Where do you live? Come on. They drove his car home. Yeah, dropped it off the house. And this same fella, one month before we 16, we bought a Mini up in the mountains and the Mini Cooper had no brakes. So this guy, that was the deal, it was going cheap because the guy who was selling it lived on the top of what for us was a mountain and had no brakes to get off the mountain. But we don't. It's not like we could afford a tow truck. So we're like, we'll just drive it and be careful. And there was two of the lads went to pick it up, that bought it and they drove it down and a cop car pulled around in front of him. A very narrow lane coming down from a place called Blessington up in the outside the hills of where I was from. And the cop car pulled out in front of him. They got no brakes so he' got no way to stop. So he drives the Mini up into the curb cuz the road isn't wide enough to. I don't know if you've driven in Ireland before. A lot of those roads are. Yeah, it's wide enough for one car and that's it. So the Mini pulled up, flew up into the ditch, landed upside down on the roof of the cop car.

[A]

It rolled onto the cop car like that, did everything he could to avoid it and ended up upside down, upside down on top. The worst possible.

[B]

I think he had at the time what was called like a nine bar of cannabis, like a big block of cannabis. They were selling half to us at the time and he had a big hunting knife and nobody got arrested over that. It's. They didn't even get arrested. There was just nowhere to send him. I think 16, you get a juvenile liaison officer.

[A]

What did you get arrested for? Another time then after that.

[B]

I mean we got arrested fairly frequently but it was for like little stuff most of the time, you know, nothing nuts. I think the next time was for. There was definitely one time for pulling mooners in the window of a girl skull.

[A]

Is that just pull like.

[B]

Like just dropping your pants and rubbing your bum off the window? Yeah, it was one of those. And it was one of them. Well, because we' get out. I went to a mixed school but there was an all girls school that was within walking distance and we got a half day every Wednesday but they didn't. So we just, you know, that was the place to be for the next three hours of our life doing whatever at the windows. That was maybe the second time I got arrested. Third one was for hanging off the back of tractors. When they'd harvest grass or the field. The tractors would be driving out there and we would do what we call scuts which is just jumping on the back and holding on for as long as you can as a bunch of kids. And I just remember everyone jumping off, going cops and running away and I just fell off and landed on the ground. Next thing this cop was stand on top of me back and I was like oh damn it. So I think it was that compared with the getting. Oh, I got caught robbing Easter eggs. What yeah, from the same super value. You got to be pretty good at stealing to get an Easter egg out of a shop. You know, they're kind of sizable. It's not like you can just do a little slip. What's.

[A]

What do you guys consider an Easter egg then? Is it like candy one?

[B]

A big, big candy one. Like an American football made of chocolate. Which is the only way I'd ever have an interest in American football. If you just made every. To go chocolate.

[A]

How'd you get caught? You're not hiding that anywhere either. I was.

[B]

We used to have these little like old promo. Promo jackets they were called, which was like soccer teams. Like Liverpool. I had an Arsenal one at the time. Arsenal promo Jack Adidas. Yeah. Which is funny because I was a Liverpool fan, but I couldn't afford their jacket.

[A]

Longer ones.

[B]

It was longer. Yeah. And you could tie it in the middle at your waist, but if you could puff out your chest enough, you could get things into it. And the strings around it. It looked like a weird dress when dudes wear it because it nearly went to your knees.

[A]

Jackets, they would wear your American football coach. Exactly what you're talking. I'm a big soccer fan, or football, as you call it. So I know what you're talking about.

[B]

Football. Yeah. Put it. And you could just stick it in there. And this string would kind of keep it in position. So like I'd be putting Easter eggs, bottles of wine. Even though local security guy and he brought me up and he was just one of those dudes who love doing security. He was small, little fella. And he punched me. I remember punch me in the face twice.

[A]

What?

[B]

Yeah, he called. That's the only thing that got me off.

[A]

Security guard punched you in the face?

[B]

Yeah, he punched me twice. Twice. Strong punches. Like I was 15. He hacked me like at least twice. That's the only. Thank you for laughing at child abuse twice, dude.

[A]

Not once. He needed it.

[B]

But we. We were maniacs. Yeah. The only way to stop us was to punch us. I didn't respond to anything else.

[A]

So you got off because he hit you?

[B]

I got off because he hit me. Yeah. Because when the. They call my. The cold cops and cops came and then I told the cops he hit me. And then the cops called my parents. And that's why. That's what got me to JLO officers there. But yeah, I see him now when there was a time when I went back and I'd see him there and I. Like when I was around 21, like when gym became a thing In Ireland. I got real into gym.

[A]

Oh, he was still working there. This guy's a career security guard.

[B]

He was there for quite a while. And I got real big and I was working as a bouncer in nightclubs in Dublin and I was doing a bit of boxing at the time. And I like. I still had the missing two and got the fake one out of shaved head. I look fairly menacing. And I just remember seeing him, I was like, oh, that's the one. Yeah, exactly.

[A]

Kirsten, then.

[B]

Look at that. I have not Googled or thought of these things since I warmed. That was it. And that string would pull in the middle of it. Yeah. So they couldn't see you were. Basically had a blimp jacket on and we could get. We could get anything under there, isn't it? Everything in it. I remember when World Cup Italian 90 came out, we stole every bit of merchandise because I don't. Ireland had never qualified for a World cup of soccer before. And then we got to the quarter finals and we were meeting the Pope and we went mad. So I had to have the merchandise, but I had no money. So it was a standoff. I was like, well, I'm going to own these. This memorabilia, but I will not be paying for it. So I'll go into me Adidas jacket. So, yeah, that was earlier. Good work on the. That was back to 1990 then. Wow. I was a menace young. That was a. What's your.

[A]

Tell me your first job.

[B]

First job is, I think, the most embarrassing one I ever had because I worked at this tile shop. It was called Template Tiles.

[A]

And was that also in Dublin?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, as in Kimmage. And this. This googling stuff, this is kind of like what you've been home doing stoned, just in a real moment of nostalgia and you're like, does this still exist?

[A]

I'll go look at my grandmom's old house and.

[B]

Well, yeah, because the one. The one I used visit as a kid where we were like little terrorists for the summer was a place called Granard in Adair Limerick. And it was like, you know, just one of those little houses in the middle of nowhere on a farm. And you could just go out and just go mental. There's no one around, there's no what to do. Granard.

[A]

Yeah, wait, let's. I'm sorry, I want to just hear about the first job.

[B]

Template. Yeah, yeah. Oh, so embarrassing. If it's like. Because it's tile shops, obviously the floors are all tiles and it's all nice and clean and I'd only worked there on a Saturday, I think I 14. My parents got me the job and I was. I was just meant to give it a clean, but like there was nothing really to clean after a while or organize or move around, so I wasn't doing much. I just remember my stomach was feeling kind of off one day and I was standing there talking to me boss, just face to face with him. And at the time, these things were all the fashion in Ireland called Joe Bloggs jeans. And they were exceptionally baggy and like, you know, in Ireland, we're not ones for the speedo type like underwear that you'd wear in Ireland. It was always baggy boxer shorts. Your baggy boxer shorts meets baggy Joe blogs jeans. And whatever happened, I just remember looking at my feet and not like my stomach made a kind of explosion noise and I was like, oh, boy. And then I looked down and it was like a bald teaser, like a little nugget on the ground, but it was me. I'd crap myself. And it had shot down my leg, bounced out my shoe and it's just perfectly bounced, bounced like Joe Blogs jeans. They're real baggy. And it just came out the leg of it and just sat on the floor and we're just looking at each other and he's kind like, that's yours. And I was like, yeah. I was just so shocked that he's like, you really need to go home today, I think. And I was like, I think I do. Yeah. And I'm not sure I ever went back to that job again. It was so embarrassing. I literally crapped myself. But it just didn't come out like anyone expected to do it. I'd never seen that like it.

[A]

That's crazy.

[B]

It's way too disgusted. I think I went from that. I remember I worked in a place called Dun stores and there's a part I didn't talk about me comedy special. I did talk about Dunn stores because we had these ladies who went on strike many years ago and done stores and they were fascinating. Dun Stores. Yeah, that's exactly. And they were kind of. These ladies went on strike because they refused to sell grapefruits imported from South Africa. And they had a big fight with this grocery store and they won. Took them two years. But Ireland became the first country in the world to ban import and sale from goods from South Africa and became a whole thing. And I ended up working there two years after the Dun store strikers, I think. And they had me packing shelves. Yeah. 1984 also. I worked there longer than in that 1984. And that went on to, like, 1987. And then I think Nelson Mandela turned up to congratulate them in 1990. 1990. So this went all the way like they were. They were marching with reverend Jesse Jackson and all these. Ireland didn't have black people at the time, really. So they're like, why are people on strike? Funny. I worked. That was the second job, I think ended up working done stores packing shelves, which I was not talented. I was so angry that they wouldn't let me near any of the customers. So they just always had me packing the freezers. And they're like, just keep him away from other humans. He is clearly a lunatic.

[A]

He belongs back.

[B]

Yeah, you're in the freezers. It was the second company that did that to me because my dad knew a guy that owned a franchise. My dad's a teacher, but he liked golf. And true to golf club, he kind of knew these guys that were operating in fancier circles than we were. And this fellow had a franchise at McDonald's, so my dad must ask him get my son a job. And I turned up to the job interview with a huge black guy, and I was like, there's no way I'm getting this. There'd been a big fight the night before, before, and someone punched my friend, and I went to try and hit someone, and then this girl caught me by surprise with a can of Foster's beer. Australian, ironically, is creamy in the face with a full can from the side. And I didn't see that coming. I had a huge black eye. So I'm sitting there in this job interview, trying to put on my best face, and I'm like, there's no way I'm getting this job. And I got the job. And I was like, dad, how did I get that job? You must have really pulled in some favors. But they obviously knew I was a lunatic, so they also kept me in the free freezers. And my job was pretty much exclusively to clean the freezers in McDonald's. Normally, they're meant to train you on all these functions, but they were just like, no freezers. Some guy complained once this big Mac was cold. And I was like, well, you wouldn't be a fat booger if you weren't eating the big Mac freezer. But the same Dun stores, freezers, McDonald's freezers. I'm like, I'm not doing these jobs anymore. And then the Cinelli's, the place, the scene of the crime, where the guy pulled up in the Rover. That guy Hired me to do deliveries in a little Ford Fiesta that I had. And I was sitting there. His name was Paul Cinelli. Really nice fellow. I don't know why he hired me, but I was good at driving, reliable, didn't smoke, didn't get hammered. Like if you told me a time, I just love being on time. So that's kind of the perfect characteristics of a reliable delivery guide. The other fellows would be on stand something mental. Well, came there. Yeah, true. Be on time. Yeah. Now do you think about it? But I remember I reversed back. He had come in with his whole family. The guy owned the shop. And I got to a stage now where I had a slightly fancy year. Started in a Ford Fiesta, but delivery allowed me to get enough money to buy this Mitsubishi Colt. And all my friends were going on a lads holiday to the Canary Islands in Spain. And I was like, no, I'm going to spend my money on wheels for this Mitsubishi cult. Which on reflection was a bad idea because I think my girlfriend went in the holiday shag some other dude. I was like, well, I got my wheels dude. Yeah, that, that part. I was doing deliveries. So they hand me the food, I go get in the car, reverse skid out there and as fast as I can and get to the destination, right. Because I want to impress him that I'm on time. All the by shop backwards and there would never be a car park there. But all of a sudden there was and it was the owner's car and he'd left all his kids in it and he'd run into the shops. I slammed into his car and the kids are in it. And I'm like, oh, kids, oh, I'm so sorry. Is everybody okay? Kids, don't say nothing now. And it was about 11pm at night and 11pm The Speaker Connolly pub we saw earlier that would start empty out and all the kind of drunk people came over to get some drunk food before they went to bed. And that's where the, the chips and the greasy stuff comes in that they're buying from this takeaway. And the shop is packed full of people, the owners in there. So I'm like, kids are okay. And there was a big dent in the side of the car. It was like a seven seater, like kind of Toyota Sienna family wagon. And I went in to tell my boss, I'm very sorry. And then his kid just runs behind me. He's like, daddy, delivery guy crashed into our car. And the baby's crying. Yeah. And the whole place are just drunk and baby's Crying. And I'm just standing there mortified, and everyone drunk. And of course, in Ireland, they all have something to say. So now it's just a roast of me for crashing into the owner. So car. And I thought he might let me away with this because he knows. He knows I don't have much money, and he's like, no, give me the wheels off your car. He wanted my wheels because he liked them. Yeah, they were called venom alloys at the time. Very common now, but they weren't back then. And you'd have to have special lock notes on them because no one would see if the leams of the word would come and get you. But, yeah, he. He wanted the. He wanted the wheels. I was like, that was ironic. So that was the end of that job. That's how I ended up with some guy offered me a job in another nightclub. From all the going to the gym and the boxing and the bouncing. Like, hey, you want to do security? We'll just pay you to stand outside the women's toilet and talk to people in a club with 2,000 people. And I was like, oh, I like this more than delivery. So I think that was the trajectory of the jobs at the time. All from dun stores.

[A]

This has been great. Thank you for doing this.

[B]

Oh, man, you're taking me down memory lane. I'm going to be googling stuff all day. Do it.

[A]

I love hearing that right there. Tell them.

[B]

Tell him, do not watch my comedy special. But he has. He has one coming out. There's a film to higher quality and a better location, so check that one out.

[A]

Thank you, guys. As always, Ryan Sickler on all your social media. We'll talk to y' all next week.

[B]

Ra.