Episode 7 The Blame Game

Hello! Hello, and welcome

to The Blame Game Review Of 2015.

Yes, The Blame Game is the topical satire show that loves the news,

the same way Pastor McConnell loves Muslims.

I'm Tim McGarry, and for the last time this year,

please welcome your fundamentally funny men:

Colin Murphy. APPLAUSE

Jake O'Kane. APPLAUSE

And Neil Delamere. APPLAUSE

And our special guest tonight is a Dubliner, based in England,

who's such a brilliant comedian, he's never off the radio or the telly.

You've seen him on Celebrity Juice, Have I Got News For You, and Mock The Week.

Yes, he's half man, half panel chair.

Please welcome the wonderful Andrew Maxwell.

APPLAUSE

And what a year 2015 was.

Greek debt crisis, Syrian refugee crisis and Isis...crisis.

At the start of the year, Jose Mourinho had a job...

..you could trust Volkswagen, and a sentence with the words

David Cameron and Peppa Pig made no sense at all.

APPLAUSE

In May we had a General Election, and the pollsters got it all wrong,

and everyone was shocked when we got the Tories back.

Following the election, some people said we should get rid of polls

altogether, which, ironically, was official Ukip policy.

And it's been a year of dramatic comebacks.

Star Wars made a triumphant return. And, talking of The Force Awakens,

the 'RA made a very unwelcome comeback too.

But then, apparently went away again.

This took some people by surprise.

I mean, Gerry Adams didn't even have time to renew his membership.

Yes, the IRA then flew away like a butterfly.

A heavily armed butterfly.

Despite this, we got a fresh start in the Fresh Start Agreement.

We agreed to agree the agreement we agreed last year.

Peter Robinson said he wanted to make the institutions better.

And true to his word, he made the institutions better,

when he resigned.

Our new First Minister will be Arlene Foster.

Yes, Margaret Thatcher was known as the Iron Lady,

Arlene will be known as the Norn Iron Lady.

APPLAUSE

So what lessons can we learn from 2015?

Firstly, compromise and political agreement are the way forward.

Secondly, and most important,

never, ever go out with Adele and then dump her.

Honestly, you'll never hear the end of it.

On with the show. The audience ask the questions

and our panel provide some very unreliable answers.

What's our first question? The same question we're going to ask everybody.

Yes, the first Syrian refugees have arrived in Northern Ireland.

And can I say, you're very, very welcome.

We used to have a reputation for being a bit backward,

but now Northern Ireland is much more multicultural.

We're used to dealing with all sorts of foreigners

with their strange customs and accents. I mean, just watch this.

Neil, who do you blame...?

Who do you blame for 2015?

I'm glad you mentioned Gerry Adams there, because my moment of the year

was when Prince Charles, or Cathal Windsor, as I like to call him...

..met Gerry Adams. And there was this amazing moment.

It's amazing because they're so different.

Prince Charles is a member of the Royal family, Gerry is a Republican.

Charles is obviously a monarchist, Gerry isn't.

Prince Charles is into organic farming,

and Gerry's probably used fertiliser at some point...

..in his life. People were going,

what do these two men have to talk about?

What do they talk about?

What could a man who's waited for 60 years for the Queen to die

possibly have to talk about to another man who...

Hmm, I don't know... Peace process?

Peace process, me hole,

he was putting out a contract on his ma, that's what he was doing!

I like that thing.

The stuff in America, all the gun laws,

it was just constant stuff about gun laws all the time, and Trump,

and him saying that everyone should have guns, and that would stop people.

And they would be able to defend themselves.

And you go, everybody on this side of the world is anti-gun.

And then, have you ever fired a gun?

-Have you ever fired a gun?

-I have, actually, yeah.

You see, you get excited by the guns then.

I fired a gun, I fired a machine gun on my honeymoon.

That's a weirder sentence than I thought it would be.

She really annoyed me, drrt-drrt-drrt! No.

So we went to this gun range. We didn't intend to go.

And you had to fire three guns.

And there was all these packages, so there was a Scarface package

where you fire a gun that Scarface fires.

There was a US Special Forces package

where you fire the guns the Navy Seals fire.

There was a Northern Irish Troubles package!

Where you fire a gun, deny you've ever fired it,

and then stand for election in County Louth.

So this guy comes out, his name was Robert, he goes,

"I'm an active member of the US military, I'll be your instructor."

And he hands me this rubber gun and shows me how to shoot.

And at the end, right, he says,

"Will you write a TripAdvisor review of the gun range?"

And I said, absolutely.

But I wrote the TripAdvisor review of the gun range

pretending I was someone who should never, ever be allowed in a gun range.

I pretended I was called Seamus from West Belfast and I'd just

been released under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, right?

So not only is it still up on TripAdvisor, Robert wrote a reply to it.

I'm going to read it out to you. You'll get what I was hinting at.

"Wow! What a great experience.

"I'm a bit rusty, but I was really looking forward to getting back into shooting."

Straight over his head, right?

"Robert, our brilliant instructor, was full of chat, telling us he thought it was

"every American's right to bear arms, but that was quite a Republican principle.

"I told him I was a bit of a Republican myself, lol!

"To familiarise us with the weapons, Robert showed us a rubber gun and some real bullets.

"We told him we were more used to that the other way around.

"Robert was so patient, even correcting my technique

"when I fired into the paper target's knees.

"Force of habit!

"He also told us how important it was to oil the weapon regularly.

"We didn't know much about the oil

"but told him we could do an excellent deal on cheap diesel.

"Safety was the number one priority.

"We had to wear goggles at all times, which is a first for me.

"On previous firearms trips, my eyes were the only part of me NOT covered.

"Every one of the staff was so friendly, and we'd would particularly like to thank them

"for their quick thinking when Seano started having his flashbacks.

"I'm sure most customers love having the paper targets of figures as souvenirs.

"The staff couldn't have known that laying the figure of a man he'd just

"shot into the boot of his car would bring on Sean's terrible episode.

"Everyone should try this, you can even go on your own.

"Just turn up, present one of your passports...

"and fire some rounds.

"We might be back later on, because we haven't gone away, you know?"

Robert writes a two-line reply to this.

The first line is, "Oh, my God, thanks so much for an amazing review!"

The second line is,

"Hope you had a blast!"

APPLAUSE

The guards, in the South, we don't let them have guns.

We think it'll only encourage them.

-Yeah.

-We just give them...

They're excitable.

Yeah, we just give them, they've got a stick and a dream.

As someone, I mean, I've borrowed one of their uniforms this evening.

I remember when I was 16, I was caught in the park,

drinking with me mates by the guards.

Drunkenly, I was being put in the back of the cop car,

and I drunkenly asked the guard, "Have you got a gun?"

And I quote, he said, "Why would I need a gun

"when I can take off me shoe and bate you with it?"

APPLAUSE

Thank you very much for that.

Yes indeed, Donald Trump has outraged mainstream opinion in America.

A Republican opponent described him as unhinged.

Unlike his hair, which clearly has some sort of hinge mechanism.

It wasn't, however, all bad news this year -

there was, of course, sporting triumph.

Yes, both the Republic and Northern Ireland

are going to the Euros next year!

Things have changed, yes -

even Martin McGuinness supports Northern Ireland.

He'll be there in France, singing along with the fans,

"We're not Brazil, we're the North...!"

And, "Northern...part of the island."

So, who's next?

Yes, in 2015, we asked ourselves the same questions again and again -

will we ever get stable government at Stormont?

Does the IRA still exist?

And, most of all, what the hell is that thing around Jake O'Kane's neck?

So, Jake, who do you blame for 2015?

Irish language.

What?!

Marty O Muilleoir, wee Marty, ex-Lord Mayor, he was up in arms

because you can't order a Big Mac off the Falls Road in Irish.

You can order it in Spanish, you can order it in French,

but you can't order it in Irish.

Which is disgraceful. And for the Protestants whose cars may one day

break down in West Belfast, and would starve otherwise,

it's called a Mac Mor.

And the other one they did, they put -

even loyalists had to smile at this -

when they put the tricolour on Stormont.

-They stuck a tricolour up on Stormont.

-Was that this year?

And I don't care how mad a loyalist you were, you got to smile at that.

The ones who claimed responsibility are the 1916 Committee,

and who they are, nobody knows.

But they were the first ones to spot it and go,

"Sean, phone in! Phone in! That's us!"

Cos there's that many of them now. There's that many!

The IRA have come out and said they're not going to allow

anybody else to use the IRA name.

Because there's that many - Real IRA, Continuity IRA, Dissident IRA, 1916 Committee -

it's going to be like Spartacus - "I'm the IRA!"

"No, I'm the IRA!" "No, I'm the IRA!"

You're having a go at the Irish language,

-didn't Peter Robinson speak a little bit of it recently?

-Wasn't that a joke!

Ah, it was brilliant though,

because Martin McGuinness was paying tribute to Peter Robinson,

and he said, "We're the only two ministers left from 1999," I think it was.

And he said, "You're going now, and my day will come as well."

And there was a pause, and Peter Robinson went,

"Isn't that tiocfaidh ar la?"

And everybody went, ha-ha-ha,

and were really surprised that he said tiocfaidh ar la.

I was very surprised as well, because tiocfaidh ar la means

OUR day will come, whereas he said MY day will come.

I mean, grammatically, it's completely wrong.

If you're going to speak Irish, make an effort, that's what I'm saying.

There's a weird approach to the Irish language in the South as well.

There was a Romanian dude, and he lives in Swords, just north of Dublin,

and he was done for drunk driving.

And he was over the limit, and he got the off,

because the printer, the breathalyser machine that prints out

a statement, they didn't give it to him in Irish as well as English.

And his defence had to explain that to him.

"You're going to get off, because the breathalyser statement wasn't in Irish."

"I don't speak Irish." "No-one speaks Irish, you're grand!"

"But I was drunk."

"But you have to be drunk in two languages, you're grand!"

And they've changed the rules. Don't mind printing a statement out,

they should print a picture depending on how pissed you are.

You pull up to a checkpoint, now you blow, you blow into that,

if you're under the legal limit, it's just a picture of your face, normal.

If you're like four times the legal limit,

it should be a picture of you drinking vodka,

or Blue WKD out of a traffic cone you stole from a roundabout.

And if you're really drunk, you just blow into that, oh, my God,

you've broken the breathalyser machine, you blew into it

but a picture Shane McGowan came out the other end of it!

Yes, thank you for that.

Ireland has a long and troubled relationship with Great Britain.

Some nationalists say Britain always oppresses the Irish.

Cromwell, the penal laws, the famine, and, in 2015,

they chucked Daniel O'Donnell off Strictly.

Will they never learn?

2015 was a good year for Rory McIlroy.

He got engaged,

and it was revealed that his sponsorships are worth £280 million.

Rory is sponsored by Nike,

Nike don't have much luck with their sponsorships.

They sponsored serial cheater Tiger Woods,

drugs cheat Lance Armstrong, and Oscar Pistorius.

Be great to see the Nike swoosh on his prison uniform.

Yes, that's why Tyson Fury never wears Nike,

he doesn't want to tarnish his good image.

And 2015 was also a very good year for the Scottish National party.

They won a landslide in the general election,

just a few months after losing the referendum on independence.

Some people say this sent out a confusing message.

Not at all, the message is very clear -

Scots hate everything English,

apart from English money.

So, Andrew Maxwell, you've been in Scotland recently,

who do you blame for 2015?

I think 2014 has to take part of the blame.

APPLAUSE

I don't know who to blame.

I think the most amazing thing about 2015

was the equal marriage referendum in the South.

It was an amazing thing, you know?

A little bit of love...

I mean, that level of sexual liberality is just mind-blowing.

The Ireland I grew up in, I just can't believe that the Ireland

I grew up in has come to this level of maturity and open-mindedness!

It's just mind-blowing, like!

The Ireland I grew up in,

people used to write the word "sex" on walls and run away.

You don't know whether they're for it or against it.

Just, "Sex! Arrgh!"

Then you just run away and just look at it for a while.

"Phwoar, if it feels that good writing it,

"can you imagine DOING it?"

The other thing that came out of it,

I didn't even know that equal marriage was the proper term.

You know?

I thought it was gay marriage, I didn't know it was equal marriage.

I'm all for it, like, but I just didn't know that was the term.

The first time I heard that, I thought, I don't care

whether two men fall in love and want to marry each other,

but I don't want them to be equal.

No, no, no - you want a big hairy scary one,

and a little one in a dickie bow.

Right?

"A little one in a dickie bow"?

You know? "I'm a rager!"

"I like little kittens."

APPLAUSE

That's called compatibility!

The last time I was in town here in Belfast was two days

before the referendum in the South.

I did a gig here and I asked, "How do you feel about it?"

Some people cheered and other people weren't bothered.

Both of those are perfectly healthy responses.

-One guy went...

-IN ULSTER ACCENT:

-"I'm against it!"

I'll be honest with you, I didn't know if he was winding me up or not.

He's at a comedy gig, so it wasn't like, you know...

He went, "I'm against it,"

and I was like, "Why?" He went, "It says it in the Bible."

Specifically, I'm sure we've all read the good book.

There's only one reference to man-on-man action in the Bible

and that's in the Book of Leviticus.

One reference in Leviticus, yeah, to gay action.

And 28 references to not eating shellfish, right?

But we're not shutting down Donaghadee, are we?!

LAUGHTER

It's a hotbed of it!

They're down there, licking shells!

Making strange with crustaceans day and night!

Watching SpongeBob SquarePants in Irish.

Apart from anything else, specifically the wording,

cos I love the good book,

the specific wording -

it says in Leviticus, "Man shall not lie with other man,"

and brothers and sisters, I'm not going to pretend,

as a straight man, that I'm fully au fait

with all the possible gay sexual positions out there,

but I don't think that's one of them.

I don't think they're LYING beside each other.

I don't think they've got a position called "the Twix".

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

"Can you believe this is a sin, Gearoid?"

"That's what I was just thinking, Colum."

We're quite progressive up here.

I know you've had equal marriage - pretty soon up here,

-a gay man will be able to buy a cake.

-He will!

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

SPEECH DROWNED OUT BY APPLAUSE

-But the last vote on same-sex marriage...

-It passed.

..we actually voted for it in the Assembly.

-But then the DUP used their veto.

-A "petition of concern".

Petition of concern.

Which is put there for sectarianism, not for homophobia - get it right.

But they're very obsessed with the gay sex thing.

They're very obsessed with...

The ministers that are often on the radio programmes

are often talking about it - "It's not right,

"man shall not lie with man, it's not right, and it's wrong.

"Man shall not be touching another man,

"no part of a man should go into another part of another man,

"unless he's a dentist."

LAUGHTER

No mention of the women, no mention of the women,

because they think, "Oh, that's normal, that's lovely.

"That's two women bathing each other and washing each other's hair.

"Lovely."

LAUGHTER

But there's nothing that can go into them.

All they can do is kind of knock on each other's front door

over and over.

Thank you very much for that. Yes, it's all change in the Republic

and in British politics as well.

For instance, personally, I'm delighted that Jeremy Corbyn

is Labour leader, not because of his politics -

it's because I now have a sideline as a Corbyn impersonator.

And finally tonight, we have to ask Colin Murphy,

-who do you blame for 2015?

-This year, I...I...

As you know, I'm not a person involved in social media

of any shape or form. It's all about personal information.

This year just seems to be constantly leaks of any description,

any digital information is just being leaked.

I got a letter yesterday from Volkswagen,

because that whole information was leaked out

about them and their emissions and all that.

I got this thing going, "Sorry, yours is knackered as well."

Everything, the weirdest things - the Ashley Madison thing,

a phenomenal number of people involved in that,

that horrible site that was created by this Canadian dude.

It's for people who want to have extramarital affairs

and people - men - sign up to it and the guy that owns this thing

is a guy called Biderman, I think his name is, and he's married!

I didn't realise this, he's been married for ten years or whatever.

He came up...

What kind of person is he married to that he arrives home one day

going, "I've got a great idea for a little website.

"I'm going to have a website for guys who want to have an affair."

And she's there going, "Really?"

You never know, she might have been going, "What's it called?"

Yeah, everybody's details have been flashed around the place.

The slogan of the website is, "Life's short, so have an affair."

I think most people would think,

"Have an affair and life is short" is a much better slogan for it.

-Do you know why it's called Ashley Madison?

-Why?

They just picked two random American women's names

-and put them together.

-Really?

-Ashley and Madison are common names.

The Siobhan Dympna website doesn't do the same thing.

-No.

-Ashley Madison sounds like you're going to have sex

with some sort of Californian co-ed.

The Siobhan Dympna website sounds like you're just going to be

cleaning the muck out of a GAA football boot for ages.

I'd genuinely never heard of it. The first time I saw the headline,

"Ashley Madison leaked,"

I thought it was some ould doll with a bladder problem.

-I genuinely...

-LAUGHTER

-I'd never heard of it before.

-You're right, their motto was rubbish.

Affairs are complicated - I'd just prefer to have a pint in a pub.

It shouldn't be "Life..." What is it?

"Life is short. Have an affair."

It should be "Life is an affair. Have a short."

That'd be much easier.

There's just so much stuff and your Facebook history is going to be...

Everybody can get access to this and what you're looking up.

-Do you know those iWatches? Sorry, the...

-Apple Watch?

-No, the fitness things.

-Ah, Fitbit.

You know the way you upload your information on your Fitbit thing?

Now, all of a sudden, insurance companies

are going to start offering you cheap life insurance,

cos they see how fit you actually are.

People fill in those forms - "Do you do much running?"

"Yeah, run about ten miles a week."

"Do you drink?" "Naw, a glass of wine on a Friday."

"Well, it is difficult finding vegan wine where I live!"

People lie about this and say they do all these things

and now this actually proves what you actually do,

so what I'm thinking is if you got one of these watches,

strap it to a 17-year-old.

Just let them...

What have we done with Facebook?

I mean, as a generation, what have we done?

If your government came to you and went,

"We want to know everything about you,"

not just once every ten years fill in a long, boring form -

every hour, every minute, every day, who are your friends,

what are your connections, what do you like,

what did you have for dinner?

"Take a picture of your dinner and send it to me!"

You'd rightfully tell your government to back off,

but we've given that to Facebook for free

and all we got back in return was the vague possibility

of becoming reacquainted with some bell-end from our primary school.

APPLAUSE

"You! You!"

That was the whole thing as well, that was the 'RA Report...

-It should have been called the Raaar! Report.

-Raar! Rar-rar-rar!

-It turns out the 'RA do exist, but...

-What(!)

-Yeah!

When you say "the 'RA Report", it sounds like a school card -

"Yeah, could do better."

It said the Army Council exists, but like most councils,

it isn't working.

In Dublin, the Shinners have actually now taken over

-the 1916 commemoration.

-Of course they have.

-Yeah.

I mean, it's what they're into.

You know what I mean? It's what they're into.

I mean, there it is.

Everybody else has moved on to other stuff.

You know what I mean? That's what they're into.

You know what I mean? It's a stroke of genius, really, isn't it?

Taking over a post office and waiting till you get killed.

LAUGHTER

Not just a post office.

-A post office and a biscuit factory.

-A biscuit factory!

Not only a post office and a biscuit factory.

Also digging trenches in Stephen's Green,

a small square surrounded by high buildings.

"We have been very clever for a very long time."

And it was bank holiday Monday, so it was a nightmare

trying to get into the post office in the first place. It was shut!

I can just hear heads exploding in West Belfast.

As long as that's all that's exploding in West Belfast.

Stroke of genius, that's what they were doing,

while up here, the Prods were signing the Covenant.

"Give me your finger, Sammy!

"Let's write things in blood like we're teenage girls."

LAUGHTER

"Best brethren forever!"

"I'm signing it!" "So am I!"

We've been ruled by utter bell-ends forever.

-I did this...

-JAKE:

-I love the fact you've offended everybody.

LAUGHTER

That's the aim, people, that's the aim.

I had to do a tourism gig, right,

where I had to do... It was put on by Discover Ireland,

which is the all-Ireland tourism initiative, yeah?

I'd done some gigs and a few bits and pieces for them,

so I did this gig, this is about three or four years ago,

for Australian travel agents.

Right? It was about 200 Australian travel agents in a hotel in London

and afterwards... I'd taken the piss out of all of this rainy,

god-awful island that I love so much cos I'm a comedian.

Afterwards, these guys came up to me, dead serious, they're like...

-IN AUSTRALIAN ACCENT:

-"Excuse me, we want to ask you a question."

"Yeah?" He goes, "What's it like in Northern Ireland?"

I went, "It's sort of like the rest of Ireland, only with health care.

"But they seem to have a lot more accidents."

He went, "Would we be safe going there?"

I was like, "They're not looking for you!"

LAUGHTER

This guy genuinely went, "What's sectarianism?"

I was like, "How...?"

It's only then, when you're that far away for it,

how am I going to explain 400 years

of ethno-religious internecine tribal warfare

to somebody who's never even owned a pair of lace-up shoes?

The history of Ireland - up to about 15 years ago,

we didn't have anybody else in Ireland. You know?

You know?

We had nobody to actually be racist to.

We knew eventually somebody would show up.

So for the last 400 years, we just split ourselves into two teams

and just practised.

LAUGHTER

-Here we are.

-APPLAUSE

Thank you, thank you, thank you very much for that.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we've just got time for our quickfire round.

I will read you various newspaper headlines

and I want you to be faster than Neil Delamere asking,

"Can I be paid in sterling, please?"

"What to do if you're married to a sex addict."

Buy a padded headboard.

LAUGHTER

"Too fat to be an American soldier."

Join Isis!

Their flowing robes will hide a multitude of sins.

"Standing next to the edge."

The title of Bono's new autobiography.

And finally, "House prices to rise by 70,000 next year."

Houses in Lurgan will now be worth 70,000.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

That's it, that's the end of the show and the current series.

Please show your appreciation to our panel, Colin Murphy...

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

..Andrew Maxwell...

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

..Jake O'Kane...

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

..and Neil Delamere!

AUDIENCE WHOOPS

I'm Tim McGarry - until next year, don't blame yourselves,

blame each other. Goodbye!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

That was a good rehearsal.