Episode 2 The Blame Game

CHEERING

Hello.

Hello, hello, and welcome, welcome, welcome.

Or, if Arlene Foster is watching, cead mile failte.

Yes, Arlene is watching, she's at home right now feeding a crocodile.

Yes, welcome to The Blame Game,

the show with more laugh-out-louds than a West Ham United tax return.

GROANS

You're booing that? Oh, this is going to be an easy show(!)

I'm Tim McGarry and our regular panellists are, of course,

Colin Murphy, Jake O'Kane and Neil Delamere.

APPLAUSE

And our special guest tonight is a brilliant local comedian who's done

gigs all over Northern Ireland and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

He's also a former yo-yo champion.

His career so far has been up and then down...

and now it's back up again.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the fabulous Terry McHugh.

APPLAUSE

That's our panel, now on with the show.

The audience ask the questions and our panel provides some very

unreliable answers. So, what did you, the audience, ask us tonight?

Who is to blame for the non-alcoholic refreshments in reception?

LAUGHTER

Your BBC.

Who's to blame for every contact on my social media providing

a weather update?

I have windows.

That's not Barra Best, is it?

So, what is our first question tonight?

Who do you blame for unusual matches?

Yes, Rory McIlroy got married last week.

The Belfast Telegraph said the wedding was

a who's who of Irish sport, which is of course completely wrong as

Jackie Fullerton didn't get an invite...

and golf isn't a sport.

LAUGHTER

Security at the wedding was incredibly tight,

not to keep out the paparazzi but mainly to stop

BBC Sport presenter Stephen Watson from doing live updates from

the marital bedroom.

Musical genius Stevie Wonder played at the wedding.

If you're planning your own wedding,

I can tell you it costs £500,000 to hire Stevie Wonder.

But Hugo Duncan will do it for 500 quid and a dozen cream buns.

But who can we blame for unusual matches?

Yeah, Rory McIlroy got married in Cong in County Mayo and,

as you said, Stevie Wonder was the entertainment.

Which is brilliant, because I saw Stevie Wonder years ago in

London and he was amazing and I haven't seen him since.

And vice versa, I suppose.

I kind of hope he got a big fee, rather than a spliff from the door.

"How many people are here?" "12 or 13, Stevie."

And...

Erica, his lady wife, Rory McIlroy's lady wife,

is American, and so all the wine, apparently, was American

but all the food was Irish so it's this

bizarre fusion of Irish and American. And G-Mac

wasn't there, apparently, which is a shame because, of all the people

whose accent is a bizarre mix and fusion...

of everything Irish and America, it's him.

But there was a lot of other people who had loads of craic there.

Like, Shane Lowry said he didn't go to it but we don't know.

Padraig Harrington is a bit of craic, he doesn't get on with Sergio Garcia. He was at it.

So it was a proper Irish wedding.

It must have been bizarre with all those Americans going,

"This is the most magical day of my life!" And all the culchies

going, "Yeah, but Stevie Wonder's going to play Rock The Boat

"at about half eleven, it's going to be brilliant. Whoo-hoo!"

Cocktail sausages would have come out at 12 o'clock.

Like, there's no way they didn't get buckled and Skype

Tiger Woods at four o'clock in the morning. There's no way.

They were all, "Hello, Tiger. We're at a wedding.

"Weddings are very expensive. Not as expensive as divorces. Ha-ha-ha!"

LAUGHTER

"You would have loved the falconry we did on Thursday.

"It's where a bird you've never met before lands on your arm

"but she doesn't ring the papers."

Do you know who's not going to get married in the next

while here? Gay people. If Jim Wells has anything to say about it.

Jim Wells said this week,

"Peter and Paul will not get married in Northern Ireland."

Yes, even though, according to a pie chart I saw,

it's something like between 70% and 80% of people in

Northern Ireland would vote in favour of equal marriage.

I think we all know the bakery that isn't making that pie chart.

APPLAUSE

Yeah, but Peter and Paul never got along.

I know Peter and Paul, it's fair enough. I think he's right.

Like, John and Jim have a lovely relationship but Peter and Paul...

Do you know what would be even funnier? If Jim Wells, when he passes away,

he goes upstairs and St Peter's standing at the gate...with Paul.

APPLAUSE

And house music bouncing out from inside.

Oo-uh, oo-uh!

HE SNORTS

"You're not coming in!"

Then he meets God, and God's reading the Irish News.

Well, you know, there is a bizarre connection.

-So do you know that June 29th is the rule...

-Yes.

-Do you know this?

-Did you look it up?

-Yes.

-Oh, man. So I looked this up.

June 29th is the date that Stormont said the negotiations would

go on till. So I thought, obviously like you, "What is...

"That's probably a day of something. Is it somebody's birthday?

"Or is it a feast day or something like this?"

It is a feast day, it's a Catholic feast day,

cos every day of the year is some Catholic feast day.

It's the feast of Peter and Paul. It is.

APPLAUSE

I swear to God. Isn't it?

The one that should be... the woman that should be in the DUP,

-is your women, the Ukip...

-Oh, Gisela...

-Gisela... What is it?

Allen or something.

But she says she doesn't like gays, she doesn't like gays,

and she compared gay love to the fact that she gets turned on

by a gorilla in the zoo.

When she goes to the zoo, she says her hormones go through...

You know, she sees the gorilla and... Do you know what I mean?

Like, has anyone thought of the gorilla? Has anyone considered...?

You know what I mean? She's going to the zoo, up to the glass, "Hello!"

HE GRUNTS

So Rory got married in Ashford...

I got married in a castle, I got married in Belfast Castle.

-And you like Belfast Castle.

-I love Belfast Castle.

I spent my formative teenage years round Belfast Castle.

-Sniffing glue.

-It wasn't sniffing glue, I couldn't afford glue.

Seriously, we'd be sitting up there and you'd be looking over

the lights of Belfast and you'd be thinking,

"God, I can't wait till I'm old enough to go drink in a pub."

Now, on a Saturday night, you'll find me in the pub wishing I was

young enough to drink up the Cavehill.

But Rory should have got married in Northern Ireland.

Rory is a great ambassador for Northern Ireland and

he took himself off down south with all his celebrity mates and

he should've got married up here and he should've done it in Belfast Castle.

Belfast Castle isn't a castle, it's a big house.

The number of tourists I see up there and they're going,

"We looking for castle." I'm going, "It's not a castle, it's a

"big house, there's a couple of turrets, you're going to be disappointed.

-"On you go. You're going to be disappointed."

-The number of tourists I've seen getting on buses,

"Could you take us to CastleCourt?" They think that's the castle.

We have our big castle and we have our Cavehill,

and Rory should have done it. And the other thing with Cavehill is Cavehill is proof, if ever it

was needed, that people from north Belfast are normal and

people from west Belfast are, you know...

Nothing wrong with them, they just think slightly differently.

Seriously, north Belfast, we went there, first settlers,

we looked up, "What's up there?" "Oh, that's a hill."

"What's those wee holes in the side of it?" "Oh, those are caves."

"Right, we shall call this place Cavehill."

West Belfast, same conversation. "What's that?" "It's a hill."

"What colour do you think it is?" "Green." "Black mountain."

LAUGHTER

Thank you very much for that.

Yes, indeed, it's true, Ukip candidate Gisela Allen says she is

sexually attracted to gorillas, and she would castrate violent criminals

and reintroduce the guillotine.

Gisela is what's known in Northern Ireland politics as a moderate.

So, what is our next question tonight?

Who do you blame for dud deadlines? Yes, there's been an agreement.

Our politicians have agreed that since they can't agree anything,

they should agree to not agree anything until the new agreed time.

So the talks deadline has been extended to June 29th,

which is good news, because I think we can all agree that people

in Northern Ireland become far more reasonable and conciliatory

round about July time.

There was much talk of election pacts this week but things went badly.

Ulster Unionist Party leader Robin Swann accused the DUP of arrogance.

You can tell he's new to politics here.

But who can we blame for dud deadlines?

It's convenient because the first wee deadline they had was last month

and then they broke that, but that took them up to the Easter holidays.

Nice, into the Easter holidays,

and then this wee deadline will take them right up to

their summer holidays. Isn't that lovely?

And yet wee Brokeback Mountain... You know the wee Secretary of State,

Brokeback Mountain?

He's decided to jump in

and he's decided to take 50 million quid out of our schools and

he thinks, "I've got an idea.

"Why don't you go up to the white elephant that's called

"the Assembly and take those bunch of idiotic, imbecilic,

"half-witted, bigoted, inbred waste-of-sperms and chuck them

"on the dole and keep the 50 million. That'd be nice, wouldn't it?"

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

And Arlene has softened because she did meet Irish speakers.

She did, she met Irish speakers.

Now, what she didn't tell anybody was, she spoke Ulster Scots to them

when she met them. But it was a nice wee thing. I think...

They were fined £1,000.

Was it £1,000 they got fined? DUP were fined.

Because they didn't inform the electoral commission that

Arlene was the leader.

That's the last time they get Ian Paisley Jr to deliver

a letter, I'll tell you.

The real election is the French election.

I'm not interested in the one here.

-You take a deep interest in French politics, do you?

-I do, I do.

Your wee man's good, what do you call him? What do you call him?

"What do you call that wee French fella? Aye."

I've been calling him Macaroni all week. He's good.

-He married his teacher.

-He did, yeah.

25 years older than him.

Like, I liked my teacher at school, and there's 25 years between us,

but I was never going to marry Brother Murphy.

But it's nice...

It's kind of French.

Because, in French, that sort of thing, an older partner is called

-la...l'amour des jeunes.

-See what he did there?

And in Northern Ireland it's called doing an Iris Robinson.

Ooh-ooh!

-Can I just say, by the way - the election here, it's pointless.

-Why?

Completely pointless because, for a bit of craic,

the Russians are going to just hack it.

Like, they hacked the American elections, the Russians...

Vladimir Putin is in Moscow talking to the lads in

the KGB going, "Who do you fancy for South Down?"

"I like Jim Wells a lot." "But he's not even running."

"Yeah, but we share the same approach on gay marriage,

"a lot of ways." "What about East Antrim?" "Sammy Wilson."

"I like Sammy Wilson. He has tache.

"He looks like Soviet worker from 1970.

"I like him. I like him.

"Oh! You know what else we could do?

"We could also, for East Antrim, yes, have a bit of a laugh,

"elect the Sinn-er. Oh, that would be hilarious!

"Oh, or better still, alliance.

"No, then they would know we're taking piss. Come on!"

The anti-Brexit pack thing was never going to work.

It was never going to work.

You were going to have Michelle O'Neill, Colum Eastwood,

and your man, what do you call him? Steven Agnew, sitting in a room.

You'd have had Michelle and Colum looking at Steven going,

"I wish he'd brushed his hair."

You'd have Steven and Michelle looking at Colum going,

"I wish he'd shaved that beard."

Then you'd have Steven and Colum looking at Michelle going,

"Maybe she's up for a pact,

"but she's talking that bloody fast, I can't figure it out."

Seriously, that woman speaks so fast, I reckon she's the only

person in the world who could get 280 characters into a tweet.

-The dolls, did you see the dolls?

-Oh, I love the wee dolls!

The dolls, I knew you'd see...

I was ahead of that. I was the first one to do a doll...

-This doll...

-Explain this.

-There's a lady in...

-Scotland.

..in Scotland, and she's making Oglaigh na hEireann dolls.

-Cumann na mBan.

-Oh, I was close.

See that Irish, I could never get that.

-She's making wee...

-Get Arlene Foster, she'll teach you.

She was making dolls, wee berets and all.

We have a picture. Do you want to see the doll?

She's selling them for a fortune. £100.

100 quid.

I don't know if they've got names like Barbie, like Barbara and Kian.

Shane or Cindy. Shindy.

He had a better idea. What was it you said?

What she done wrong was that she only really appealed

to one side of the market.

You know, they're wee Provo dolls, like, you know, Bride of Chucky.

All that woman had to do... 100 quid a pop she's selling these things at.

All she had to do was sell them with wee interchangeable flags.

Which I believe you have some of.

The thing is, the Barbie doll thing I think is perfect,

because Barbie changes her job on a whim,

you know, just like our politicians.

They go from freedom fighter to terrorist to jailbird to politician.

But, you know, you could have had accessories.

You could have had Barbie Dream Safehouse.

Yes.

Barbie's H Block.

You have a 1980s Gerry Kelly doll,

you don't even have to take it out of the box, it just escapes itself.

It also fits on the bonnet of the car.

It's a 1980s - you pull a string and someone else's voice comes out.

Thank you. Thank you very much for that.

Yes, indeed, a woman in Scotland has been making dolls

of female IRA figures.

Of course, because it's the IRA,

many of the dolls have already been infiltrated by Action Man.

So, what is our next question tonight?

Who do you blame for back-seat drivers?

Yes, footage of three cows being driven through Newry on the

back seat of a Landcruiser went viral this week.

Good old Northern Ireland - the only place in the world where you

can see a cow on the back of a car,

but you'll struggle to find one in a beef lasagne.

In India, of course, the cow is sacred.

In Newry, cows are magical,

because they can be one side of the border and then magically appear on

the other side, and then back again, depending where the best grants are.

But who can we blame for back-seat drivers?

Before I answer that, I think there's something...

Something yous all need to know, I'm from a mixed marriage.

I'm from north Belfast. She's a culchie.

We've got three kids, all three of whom are being raised culchie.

Which I was dead against.

I was dead against it, but Mrs McHugh came along, and she says,

"I'm from Tyrone, we're going to live there."

I just done what I was told. The woman plays camogie.

She tells you what to do, you do it.

The lads said to me when I said I was moving to Tyrone,

"Put the foot down on her, will you? Put the foot down."

I was like, "Lads, I put the foot down, she'll snap it off.

"I don't mean my foot."

The reason I'm telling you this is basically

so no-one can e-mail in or tweet and go, "Here we go, here's another

"Belfast man taking the hand out of the culchies,

"sure, what would he know?"

Right, I've lived in Tyrone for 12 years.

-God bless you.

-I know.

I know. I know things that I never wanted to know.

I've seen things. I have seen things that I cannot unsee.

You're like Jane Goodall living amongst the gorillas.

Culchies in the mist.

12 years I've been...

I live in a wee place, right, it's just outside Omagh.

It's seven miles outside Omagh. Between Omagh and Fintona.

-Wow.

-Yeah, exactly. That gives you the idea where we're at.

Belfast, we grew up in Belfast thinking that

a culchie was somebody who came to school on an Ulster bus.

No. There is no mobile phone reception and there is no broadband.

It's made me a bad person.

You know when you're watching the news and they put one of

those videos on, the sort of Islamic fundamentalists have put up.

People watch those on the news and go, "Oh, that's terrible."

Do you know what I think when I see them?

"That guy is in a cave in a desert in Syria

"and he's got a better internet connection than me."

When Trump got elected, everyone is sitting going,

"I've got such sympathy for the Americans because they live in

"a place where Donald Trump can be elected."

I'm thinking, "Where's my sympathy?

"I live in Tyrone, a place where Barry McElduff can be elected."

I went to my father-in-law about this. I said,

"Did you see the buck eejit in Newry

"with his three cows in the back of the car?"

He just looked at me and went, "Sure, what's wrong with that?"

I do like that you need some guys coming out of a Halfords going,

"Look, kids, I bought a nodding dog for the back of our car."

"There's three cows in the back of that one."

People say you stereotype people from the country...

It does, it works both ways.

I was going out with Mrs McHugh for about three months.

I remember when she introduced me to her mother.

I could see it, she went, "This is Terry, he's from Belfast."

The mother, I could see her, she was looking going,

"You go hide all the valuables.

"You go buy a stab vest."

It does, it's both...

We were in Omagh for a weekend. Mrs McHugh was visiting.

I'd been kidnapped.

The phone rang and it was her mother. Her mother didn't like me.

Her mother hated me, basically because I was from Belfast.

She's going to hate you more after this.

Don't talk to the woman anyway.

Was it weird that she was called Mrs McHugh before you married her?

It's odd.

That's the only reason she married me, the name.

She rang her and she said, "Get Terry out of the house immediately.

"Get him out here now, straightaway."

I thought, "Great, she's finally realised that I'm a decent fella,

"she's going to apologise for being nasty to me all this time."

We got out to the house, out into the rural-ness of it.

We got to her, and everybody was at their house. Everybody.

The mother, the father, the four sisters, aunties, uncles.

The one protestant from down the road,

he'd come up to see what was going on.

I got out of the car, "What's going on? What's going on?"

Her mother says to me, she says, "Listen, Tricia's twin sister

"has visited and she's brought her two-week-old baby with her.

"She got out of the car, went to the back door.

"That's when she realised she'd locked the child

"in the car with the keys.

"We thought, with you being from north Belfast and all..."

I take the hand out of the culchies, but the culchie, she's racist..

I had to think of north Belfast's reputation at that point in time.

-And you opened the car.

-30 seconds.

Were they all lined up outside the car waiting for you to...?

Well, I sort of turned round like something out of the

Lion King with the child...

Just a row of culchies all standing there going, "That's a disgrace."

It's like a reverse Downton.

Did you see that woman?

Did you see that woman in Glasgow who gave CPR to a pigeon?

-Pigeon, yeah.

-Did you see that?

-How do you do that?

Like that.

-You've got to...

-Ironically, you have to go...

HE IMITATES PIGEON

-What you have to do...

-HE IMITATES PIGEON

That's when you're trying to attract the pigeon.

So she was doing it, right? She was going full Baywatch.

She was going... The pigeon's chest was going like this.

His neck was like... He was gone! He was gone.

There was loads of tweets, hundreds of thousands of tweets,

none from the pigeon, cos it was dead.

What annoyed me was people were going, "Oh, it's disgusting."

It is pretty rank, but what annoyed me - it's illogical as well.

How many heartbeats do you have a minute, roughly, as a human?

About 70 heartbeats. So she's going...

-Yeah, Staying Alive.

-# Staying alive, staying alive. #

Yeah, exactly.

Pigeon, 500-600 heartbeats a minute. She should have been going...

Like sending an angry telegram.

Thank you. Thank you very much for that. Thank you. Yes, indeed.

What's our next question tonight?

Who do you blame for not having nice things?

Yes, a large number of the so-called Belfast Bikes have been destroyed.

Some people say it's a disgrace. I say it's progress.

I mean, 20 years ago, it wasn't bikes, it was buses.

One of the purposes of the bikes was to get Belfast children active.

Indeed, they are active. Actively bucking bikes into the Lagan.

But who can we blame for not having nice things?

I actually came here today on a Belfast Bike.

There's a station across the road from here.

It took me three attempts to get one that worked, so I can understand

why people vandalised them, because they went, "Get out of the stand!"

Yeah, apparently a third of them are out of action.

19 of them went missing over Easter. They were stolen and not returned.

Then they've found six of them, which left 13. I thought...

There was one found cut in half, actually sawn in half.

I thought, "This is getting really weird now.

"There's 13 bikes and then one cut in half. Over Easter?

"This is getting a bit religious." Do you know what I mean?

"I take this bike, all of you, and eat from it. It's one of these...

"And he broke the bike and gave it to his spidey friends,

"and said, 'Buck this in the river and think of me.' "

-That's what...

-He broke the bike, he gave it to the cyclist and said.

He did. Yeah, there were loads of them missing. It's the only place.

Dublin has the biggest uptake of them in Europe.

-12 missing bikes in...

-Ten years.

-Yeah, something like that.

-Oh, aren't yous great?

-Yeah.

Seriously, here,

on the first day they were put in place here two years ago,

one of the stations was out of order because it was vandalised.

The first day. They had to put a sign out going, "Sorry, it's broke."

Seriously, we can't do anything here. Everybody has to break it.

Cos it's weird, they have to attack it.

"It's weird. Attack it. Break it."

That's why when the train still goes through South Armagh, people have

to go, "Right, put a bomb on the line, make the scary worm go away."

Terrified of anything.

Terrified of anything new. They don't like it.

There was man...

This week, the other big transport story this week,

my local corner shop,

a young fella in a car straight through the front door of the shop.

Lisburn Road. He went...

How he got speed up on the Lisburn Road, I do not know.

This was at rush hour on the Lisburn Road.

Lisburn Road, seriously, one month ago they did a survey and it

was the most congested road outside of London in the United Kingdom.

He somehow got enough speed up to go straight through the front doors.

Ram-raided the place. It looked like it anyway, just this mad thing.

It was awful, I was sitting in the house, heard a bang.

This guy was straight in. I was amazed Trump didn't,

cos he claims everything is a terrorist act, amazed...

-IMITATING TRUMP:

-Terrorists have...

Yeah, because Isis have had their eye

on Russell's Cellars for a while.

But it's Lisburn Road as well, it might have been a ram-raid.

It could have been a boy bursting in going,

"Quick, quick, take all the couscous."

It's possible. "Grab it all, Barbara, let's go."

How did Giro d'Italia get through Belfast

without being thrown into the Lagan?

What I love, the story I loved was in Derry.

The guy in Derry, there was... I don't know if you know about this.

Well, anyway, guys were coming around cars and they were

shooting out water pistols. Water pistols out the car.

Squirting people.

So he squirted the wrong fella. This boy went.

"Water pistol? Let me show you my water pistol."

He took out this big Bowie knife and went to the bonnet of the car.

Your men didn't get out of the car, they didn't get out of the car.

In fairness, that's the difference between Derry and Donegal, in

that we wouldn't do that there because the water charges are...

still on people's minds.

The other thing that happened as well in Derry this week

was the spliff...

The cannabis campaign. The legalise cannabis campaign.

There was a protest on Black Mountain.

Yes, there was. Yes, they've written something...

There was a protest in Derry, wasn't there?

There was, but it's on 20th April, which is my birthday.

And Hitler's. Yes, I know.

People were posting that on Facebook, they were saying

"happy Hitler's birthday" to me. I was thinking,

"Oh, I can't press 'like' to that. It's going to look really bad."

So, yeah, on the 20th of the 4th,

they write it in the American style, so they write 4/20.

Then they put a spliff...

It took me all week to work out what it was that they put up on

the mountain in white. I'm standing around going, "What have they...?"

I saw it in the paper and went, "Oh, for f..."

What are we doing here?

There was that. But they had a protest in Derry at the Guildhall.

About 40 or 50 stoners turned up and lit up. They all lit up.

They're all just going, "What are you here for? Protest?

"Why are we here again?"

Police dispersed it with an ice-cream van.

Just drove an ice-cream van in...

Thank you, thank you very much for that.

Just time now for our quick-fire round.

I will read you various newspaper headlines and I want you to be

faster than Jake O'Kane rushing out to get his tickets for Bananarama.

-I'd go to that.

-They've reformed.

Nigel Farage realises that immigrants get into heaven too.

Anne Summers' new slogan.

Archbishops are worried.

That's very...

No, stop them leaving Newry.

Has been identified only as a legend.

You're asking the wrong four fellas.

Ryanair announce new route.

# Cheating and heating, these are a few of our favourite things. #

Finally...

The most common phrase shouted at Tim.

That's it, ladies and gentlemen, that's the end of the show.

Please show your appreciation to our panel -

Colin Murphy, Terry McHugh,

Jake O'Kane and Neil Delamere!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

I'm Tim McGarry. Until next time, don't blame yourselves,

blame each other. Goodbye.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE