‘The inmates were running the asylum’ - Mike Rice on Kilkenny schooldays, returning home, and the Kieran’s Riot
The Kilkenny native returned to the city for his second appearance at the Cat Laughs festival
Bringing relentless energy and biting wit to the stage, Kilkenny’s Mike Rice is one of the fastest rising stars in Irish comedy today.
A native of Greenridge just outside the city and now living in London, Mike has gained a huge following through both his stand-up shows, and podcast with Vittorio Angelone: Mike and Vittorio’s Guide to Parenting.
Back in town to feature at this year’s Cat Laughs, Mike looks forward to a second appearance at his home festival, and while he has taken the stage all over the world, a gig in Kilkenny throws up unique challenges and opportunities.
“Last year was the first one which was very exciting because I obviously grew up with the Cat Laughs always going on,” he says.
“There’s a phrase, I can’t remember who coined it, but it goes something like ‘you can’t be a prophet in your hometown (he’s paraphrasing some guy called Jesus Christ). You’re known here so there’s an extra little bit of pressure because you’ll have family and friends in and people, even if they don’t know you, they’d know who you come from.”
“But then you also have a bit of an edge over the other acts because you’re from here and you can have inside jokes about the schools or the characters that everyone knows from Kilkenny, so honestly you have a bit of an advantage really,” he adds.
Though he’s lived in the likes of Chicago, Berlin, Barcelona and now London, coming back to the family farm in Greenridge is often a humbling experience for Mike as he’s put back to work by his father.
As anyone who’s travelled and returned home will be aware, any changes to appearance or style are to be scrutinised and discussed also.
“I’ve dyed my hair platinum blonde at the minute and I’ll have a line or two about his (dad’s) reaction, which of course he has received in a good way,” Mike outlines.
“But that’s the thing about coming back as well, everyone is looking out to see if you’ve got notions. Being back in Greenridge where I’m on the farm now and covered the silage pit last night with my father and a few others; it brings you back to earth fairly quickly, being covered in cow sh*t again.”
Mike is one of a long line of successful exports educated on the grounds of Kilkenny’s own St Kieran’s College and while many past pupils laud the top-quality teaching and hurling prowess, one formative experience had a very different atmosphere.
Right alongside the greats of Ireland’s revolutionary pantheon such as the 1916 Easter Rising or 1798 Rebellion, sits the legendary St Kieran’s Riot of 2005.
For one afternoon, law and order broke down, young men ran amok, and all hell broke loose as hundreds of students simply could not be corralled back into their classrooms.
For pupils of a certain era, the event became spoken about with an almost mythical quality and as an impressionable second-year, Mike was greatly impacted by getting swept up in the tide of scholarly revolution.
“I would put it up there with when I won the U16 county final with O’Loughlins,” he recollects. “That and the riot, I would say they’re probably the two best days of my childhood.”
“For want of a better word it was just a complete eff off to the school, the system, the teachers, everyone. Now look, teachers work hard and everything else, but I can just speak from my point of view, it was absolutely exhilarating.”
“Lads had ties wrapped around their heads, there were bodhráns, we were running at teachers like a pack of wild bulls,” he continues.
To some sections of the population, particularly the beleaguered staff members that day, this event may just seem like a group of belligerent teenagers causing mindless trouble.
However, to Mike and many of his contemporaries, the uprising was a microcosm of global class warfare, civil disobedience and collective resistance, as for a brief moment in time, students took control and defied the power structures that usually dictated to them.
“They just couldn’t get us to go back inside and there were so many of us that they were kind of powerless,” he describes.
“It was a perfect example of if people get together, they can overthrow their oppressors, you know? And there’s nothing their oppressors can do if we join together.”
“That can be a lesson to the different political movements all over Ireland and the world which can draw from the success of the Kieran’s riot,” Mike asserts.
To add a disclaimer, we are all aware that teachers are not really domineering overseers and are mostly perfectly kind and supportive to the students they guide, but even so, the taste of rebellion and the glimpse of freedom the day offered still had a lasting impact on Mike and his future path into comedy.
“At that time, Kieran’s was a madhouse. Genuinely, the inmates were running the asylum; it was bedlam,” he reflects. “People were smoking in the jacks, there was mayhem going on in the classrooms.”
“But I think the rebelliousness of that day, the lack of conforming to the rules and the system, probably did inspire me in a way to do that with my life.”
“To basically ignore what everyone was telling me to do, what I was told I should do and just do whatever the hell I want to do. That’s what I did, and luckily it’s paid off.”
God forbid such a loutish and senseless act would bring the good name of any school in Kilkenny into disrepute ever again, but in the awful case that any current students who may be reading decide to incite an insurrection on a local campus, Mike still believes such mischief can hold lessons about society well into later life.
“I think it’s basically the breaking of a spell which you can’t really have for a society to function if everyone does it. But it’s a breaking of the spell of authority and you know it’s all made up, teacher’s authority,” he posits.
“They’re auld fellas in their cars and they’ve had a curry last night and now they’re coming in; and this power they have over you is completely imaginary. In general in life, so many of these systems and different things that we all buy into as being real and important are just completely made up.”
“As long as you’re not hurting any other people, you can basically do what you want. I just think it’s good for people to question authority,” he adds.
The story of the riot, along with segments about other happenings and cult heroes in Kilkenny have become some of Mike’s most popular podcast episodes and jokes, things that have a certain quality of ludicrousness which lends itself to overseas audiences as well as those at home.
As his comedy continues to reach wider and more diverse audiences, some think they’re being expected to suspend their disbelief at the stories of Kilkenny and its characters, but in these cases; it really was just like that.
“I’ve told the riot story on podcasts in the UK and a lot of people think I’m making this stuff up, but that’s exactly what was going on. When you look back at some of the stuff through my own childhood, it’s absolutely comical,” Mike says.
“And growing up on the farm and my father, people think I’m making stuff up about him as well but I’m not. He’s just a completely unique character from a different time. It’s hilarious, but you don’t know it growing up because this is what you think life is.”
“But then you explain these stories to people outside Ireland or outside Kilkenny and it sounds mental.”