Interview: Foil, Arms and Hog

Foil-Arms-Hog-2263928

WORDS Kayla Walsh

Sean Finegan, Sean Flanagan and Conor McKenna are the kind of guys you can’t help but like immediately. Charming, good-looking and witty, the trio make up Foil, Arms and Hog, one of Ireland’s only (and therefore most popular) sketch comedy groups. After meeting as fresh-faced students in UCD Drama Society six years ago, they quickly became close friends and decided to band together with the shared aim of making people laugh. Needing a name in a hurry, they decided to create one out of their nicknames for each other.

Since their humble beginnings Foil, Arms and Hog have met with ever-growing success in the comedy circuit, performing at such festivals as Electric Picnic, Forbidden Fruit and The Edinburgh Comedy Festival. They have been featured on TV shows like RTÉ’s Under the Influence and The Savage Eye, as well as radio shows including The Strawberry Alarm Clock. Their weekly YouTube videos have received thousands of views. Do they find it difficult crafting comedy specific to these varied mediums?

“It’s a lot easier writing for radio,” noted McKenna, “the next easiest is film and the most difficult is stage, by a mile. You can get away with a lot more in film and radio, so there’s more variety. We’ve brought so much to the stage and it hasn‘t worked. They were good sketches, but the jokes were too subtle in them. In film you can go right up close, show a reaction.”  However, stage also has its advantages, being more spontaneous and allowing the performers to improvise and change the show whenever they feel like it.  “It’s the funniest when you get it right,” agreed McKenna.

However, while live performance is exhilarating, there’s always the danger that something will go wrong. Finegan explained how sometimes the audience laugh more at mistakes than at rehearsed gags: “We spend months working hard, crafting jokes, being wordsmiths … And then you go in, it goes wrong, and they’re cacking themselves … Like, when we come into your office and you make a mistake in your Excel spreadsheet and we break our bollocks laughing at you, you hate it.”

“But it’s not the negative aspect of it that they find so funny, it’s the live aspect,” McKenna added. “It reminds them that they’re there, this is personal to them, it’s not normally supposed to happen. If it went wrong and we got embarrassed about it, they wouldn’t laugh, it would be a room filled with death. You just have to accept it.

Given the success of Foil, Arms and Hog, why are there so few sketch groups in Ireland? “Our intimidation,” said Finegan darkly. “We’ve leaned on a few of them…” grinned Flanagan.

Serious for a moment, McKenna elaborated on some of the other hardships faced by comedy groups. Making a living out of sketch can be difficult. Over the years the guys have poured much of their own money into their business venture, something that not every group is prepared to do. Logistics too can be problematic, but Foil, Arms and Hog were lucky in that respect, as Flanagan explained: “We had the advantage of living very close together. We share a bed sometimes. ‘Fingo’ is very good, if you know what I mean … Would you like to see a diagram?”

Moving on from this, the group discussed the best way for young people to get into the comedy scene. “Just keep doing it, get as much experience as you can,” suggested Finegan. Taking up the thread Flanagan pointed out: “If you’re doing stand-up, you’re going to hit a few roadblocks. Your jokes are going to feel really stale to you for a while.” They explain that many comedians are deluding themselves about how well their performances are received and therefore failing to improve, even after twenty years in the game. “You have to be honest with yourself,” McKenna confided. “We’re honest with each other. It’s a brutal business.”

Brutal as it is, do they still enjoy performing? McKenna’s response was enthusiastic: “Hell yeah! It’s the only job out there in which people are judging you within the first 30 seconds of your work, but it’s the best job in the world.”

Sharp, creative and hard-working, it’s no surprise that Foil, Arms and Hog are going from strength to strength. Their sketches are well-written and high-energy, and intelligent without being elitist. They manage to make a whole room laugh without insulting or offending anyone. Yet it is the strong relationship between McKenna, Finegan and Flanagan which makes the group so special. They are so comfortable around each other that you can feel the positive energy in the air, something which never fails to get the audience on their side. You get the sense that no matter what went wrong, at the end of the day they’d still be friends.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *