‘As an Irish person with an English accent in Ireland, you have to sit there and take it'

Irish Times

18-07-2025

I grew up in northwest
London
, the eldest of four. My father was from
Longford
, my mother from
Mayo
, and we lived in a very Jewish area called Hendon in the 1980s. It was a very politically driven time to be Irish.
My parents would have been republican sympathisers; my grandfather on my mother's side was in the
IRA
. They were both teachers. My mother's father was the headmaster of the local technical school, so they were very big into education.
Our house was full of books, and our mother had notions about education and learning. So we had politics stuffed into us from Dad, and the likes of
Yeats
,
Edna O'Brien
and
Samuel Beckett
from my mum. I took all of that on board and very much felt like an Irish person from a very young age.
England is home of the class system. I remember coming home from school one day and hearing from one of my siblings that someone in school said we were poor because we didn't have a colour television. I asked Mum, 'Are we posh, or are we common?' And she said, 'If anyone should ever be rude enough to ask you, tell them we're educated Irish.'
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We were separated from the idea of Englishness, although I'd say my other siblings identify as Londoners. Their affinity is with London. But I never felt that. I always felt that affinity to Mayo. Because Mayo to me was Ireland. That was where I went on my summer holidays. We never went to Dublin, and we had no real awareness of the city. I am very much a Mayo girl.
I always loved writing and drawing and dancing – anything that was creative. I did hairdressing when I left school, and I was sharing a flat with this wild posh English girl in Chelsea. We went out one night, and I just talked all night long, and when we came home, she said, 'You should write some of that stuff down; you're a really good storyteller.' Soon after, a woman, a journalist, came into the salon and mentioned that her husband worked on [the teenage magazine] Just Seventeen. I went in one day with one of my pieces, and he went, 'Yeah, this is great', even though I had no qualifications, nothing. I worked my way up to editor quickly, but it was a different time.
Kate Kerrigan as a child on holidays with her family in Co Mayo
I moved to Ireland in 1991 to begin with Irish Tatler. Dublin was a culture shock; no one knew what to make of me. Gradually, I assimilated, but Irish people tend to be funny about Irish people with English accents. And as an Irish person with an English accent, you kind of just have to sit there and take it.
I began writing books. The first few were comedy, but when I changed styles to historical, my editor recommended I change my name. My real name is Morag Prunty, but I use Kate Kerrigan – Kate is my middle name; Kerrigan is my married name – for my work. During lockdown, I realised that life was too short and I wanted to start writing something with a deeper level of authenticity. I originally wanted to write a nonfiction book about growing up in Thatcher's England as an Irish person, and being deemed a Plastic Paddy. But a friend, who is now my producer, said to book a theatre and perform it.
In October 2022 we ran the show Am I Irish Yet? for the first time in Ballina Arts Centre. At the end everyone went nuts. I knew I had something, so we started booking venues. I did a run in a 60-seater in south London, called the White Bear Theatre. It booked out in 10 minutes, and we came back to do another week, back to back. It began to gain traction, and suddenly we started looking at bigger venues. And now, when I perform, we're more or less selling out venues with 200-300 seats.
Every single show I have people coming up to me telling me I've told their story. I performed it recently in Ireland, for people like me, who identify as Irish, but talk like 'tans'. And they all say the same thing: we can be lampooned for saying we're Irish. You know, Brazilians or French people can say they're Irish and be accepted, but we can't. It is hurtful to love somewhere so much, and to feel so connected to a place, and then have the people that you want to like you so much saying you aren't one of them. Particularly when you get someone like Joe Biden, with distant Irish links, who comes over and is beloved by everyone.But if you're a plumber from Wembley who has been coming here every summer for their whole lives, you're not really Irish.
Being Irish is fashionable now, but it's the second and third-generation Irish who are keeping Ireland's Irishness alive. The reason that Irish people can feel so comfortable in their Irishness here today is because of the people around the world who have been buying tickets for [the late] Big Tom or Philomena Begley, or waving Paddy's Day flags. We have marvellous actors representing Ireland at the moment, but it's the millions of people who identify as Irish all over the world, who don't have the privilege of being here – they are the backbone of that shift.
In conversation with Kate Demolder. This interview, part of a series about well-known people's lives and relationship with Ireland, was edited for clarity and length.
Am I Irish Yet?
by Kate Kerrigan will be performed at the Féile Chill Damhait Festival, Achill on August 4th and Westport Town Hall Theatre on September 4th. See
amiirishyet.com