D'Unbelievables D'Unofficial Web Site

Irish Times Tuesday, November 24, 1998

Making Waves: D'Unbelievables

Pat Shortt and Jon Kenny in The Lonesome West

D'Unbelievables on another nationwide tour? So what did you expect, Broadway?
Well, yes as it happens. The two comedians are on tour at the moment but this time it is not with their own show. They are starring in the new Druid production of Martin McDonagh's play The Lonesome West. They play viciously bitter brothers locked in a sort of war of attrition.

Well, that doesn't sound like a laugh-a-minute, thigh-slapping night at the theatre. You're missing the point. It's not comedy and Broadway could very well be on the cards. The director, Garry Hynes, has said there is already interest in the show from America where McDonagh's other play, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, is still packing 'em in. And these are the guys who answer to the names Butty Brennan and Roundy Mooney?

Well, it's better than an air kiss at at a luvvie fest - and anyway that was in the Lotto ads, and for the sort of money the Lotto people spend on their advertising, I'm sure most performers would be willing to tap dance on their heads and be called Brenda.
By the way, what exactly are those ads about?

Haven't a clue, but then again only about 12 people in the entire country know the answer to that one. And they're the ones who already fully understand the rules of that 5,4,3,2,1 business.
But why get D'Unbelievables to do the ad? The idea presumably is that if two terminally thick eejits can understand how to play the National Lottery's betting game, then anyone can.
The ads are hilarious though.

And they get funnier every time you see or hear them. A sure sign that D'Unbelievables, played to perfection by Pat Shortt and Jon Kenny, are excellent comedians.
So they're not just professional culchies then?Oh dear. Spoken like a true Dub - the sort that barely suppresses a smirk every time a rural politician refers to one of his colleagues as a fellow ``dippity'' or talks about ``millins'' of pounds. Well, D'Unbelievables are not exactly the usual type you find on the Irish comedy circuit.

True, they don't bang on about a spotty adolescence or ramble on about the Catholic church ruining their lives. No, D'Unbelievables put on hectic shows which take a sharply affectionate look at rural Ireland. They have a huge following and every time they take their shows anywhere - including Dublin - they're packed out. Yes, but wait a minute, isn't audience participation one of the features of their shows?

Yes, but clearly they won't be holding one of their famous sandwich-making competitions on stage in their new venture. Martin McDonagh fans would hardly go for it. - Bernice Harrison

Hot Press Article - March 1999

D'UNBELIEVABLES are probably the most popular comics in Ireland.

As preparations continue for the opening of their new show, Olaf Tyaransen talks to the duo about rural Ireland, negative press, and whether they have yet made their fortune. "Kenny and Shortt have a formidable gift for anarchy - a basic ingredient of great comedy. They are our own Commedie del Arte, our Laurel and Hardy, our Marx Brothers. In their madness is sanity. As musical and comedy artists, they select notes from the scale of their audiences' emotions and combine them into chords that play their listeners like instruments. The result is the laughter we make - music to the ears!" - Gerald Davis, 1999}

He's right you know. The last time I came face to face with Jon Kenny and Pat Shortt, the comedy duo (or should that be D'uo?) better known as D'Unbelievables, was in the Traveller's Friend venue in Castlebar in 1994. At the time, they were touring their hit show One Hell Of A Do - a hilarious spoof ba s ed around a particularly chaotic rural Irish wedding - and the Mayo venue was sold out, just like everywhere else they played that year. I remember not particularly wanting to do the story at the time ("Mayo? I don't want to go to fucking Mayo!") but retu r ning home much richer for having spent the previous night rolling in the aisles in helpless laughter at one of the most original pieces of theatre I had ever seen. Their appeal lay not just in their thespian skills and superb sense of comic timing, but al so in their honest interpretations of the kind of characters we all encounter in our day-to-day existence - the alcoholics in denial, the gossipy spinsters, the overly protective mothers, the drunk uncles, the self-important committee members.

If D'Unbelie vables were surfing a wave at that time then it still hasn't crashed. Since our last meeting, Kenny and Shortt have effortlessly maintained their populist pole position in the touring comedy theatre stakes. In fact, not only have they maintained it, but t h e wave has built into a veritable tsunami over the last half decade. Since 1994, they've toured with another hugely successful show, I Doubt It Says Pauline, performing it everywhere from Dundalk and Dublin to London and New York, and released three of th e most successful Irish videos of all time - One Hell Of A Video, D'Video and D'Telly (all of which sold well over the 100,000 mark). More recently they've made a series of incredibly popular television advertisements for the National Lottery, toured with Martin McDonagh's new play for Druid Theatre and appeared in a number of TV sitcoms and feature films.

Their huge success doesn't seem to have affected them in the slightest. The Kenny and Shortt I meet in the dressing room of Vicar St. (on the eve of the press launch of their latest adult pantomime Dat's Life) are as affable, down to earth and professional as they were the last time we shared air. As with most comedians, they're not particularly funny offstage, but perhaps today they have more than their s hare of reasons for looking so stressed out - they've both just driven from Listowel where they're still in the middle of rehearsals, have a radio ad to record, corporate sponsors to meet and greet and Pat has to drive to Donegal after tonight's launch to shoot the final scenes of a movie. You might say they're d'unbelievably busy at the moment. Still, it's probably all worth it. Presumably the duo have made a hell of a lot of d'ough over the last few years?

"Well, we wouldn't be up to the standard of rock and roll people now," Jon laughs. "The album sales is a big thing with records. Comedy isn't a big market in this country. So while our video got into the charts this year and was the biggest-selling video ever in this country, it's still a bloody small m arket. It's a market that's been good to us, but you're not going to make a million or anything. The people in the record industry who make money, as you know, make it through royalties and massive sales in America. That's why the likes of The Cranberries and U2 are millionaires. Not through their performances but through the promotion of their records. But we're actually making a very good living and we're very comfortable and we're able to take a month or two off during the year to write a show or to do other things."

"We're happy, you might say," Pat adds in his unreconstructed Tipperary accent, with a contented smile. And why wouldn't they be? D'Unbelievables are now the most popular comedy duo in the country and are certainly amongst the most well-est ablished in England, a kind of rural Irish alternative to alternative comedians - cute rather than clever, more satirical than sarcastic, funny because their comic creations are familiar to us all. Although they both laughingly admit that they're still somewhat under-rehearsed and not quite sure at this stage exactly how Dat's Life is going to turn out, the new show will, unsurprisingly, be in a similar vein to their previous efforts. "We're still in the process of finishing it actually and we're always v ery reluctant to say exactly what it's about, because we don't want people to say 'oh we thought it was about x, y and z and in actual fact it's all about something else," Pat explains. "You see what we do is very kind of organic in the way we work and th ings evolve up to the last minute. In fact, even when the show is up and running it can still change. But once we get a show on the road it tends to more or less stay like that.

"To give you a very bland version of what it's about, it's based on a small ru ral village in Ireland called Kildicken. Basically you meet the occupants of this village where not much happens. But the one thing they do like that gives them an occasion is a funeral or a birth or a wedding (smiles). And on this occasion I suppose a fu neral is the strong theme running throughout - the funeral of a certain individual. And after that it's just general mayhem with all the different characters we've come up with."\line \line And will there be the usual amount of recruiting unsuspecting victims from the audience?

"Yes, there's an element of audience participation in it," he smiles. "That's what we do and that's what we are probably known for. We don't just set out to do it for the sake of it. If the character can work with the audience, we'll certainly look at it, but we don't just say, 'right, we've got to have six audience reaction pieces in the show'. Some of the characters will not go near the audience at all or will not work with the audience. It's not so much that we work the audience, it's more s o that the whole show . . .(pauses). Em, there's no fourth wall in our show as in a theatre show - you know, where we're on stage and the audience doesn't exist. Our shows tend to work in around the audience. Some of the characters might come down and tal k to the audience, but they won't drag them out. They may kind of talk to them as if they're a local person or something like that. But nothing too bad."

Of course, it's fairly unsurprising that their show is set in smalltown Ireland. Although there's a de cade between Kenny and the 31-year-old Shortt, both men grew up and still continue to live in rural Ireland. From their first ever appearance together, the couple have always adopted a 'take the piss out of what you know' approach to their theatrical ende avours. Despite this, however, they still maintain that their characters have a universal appeal and that the idiosyncrasies of, say, Westmeath or Mayo have their echoes in Dublin, Sydney and New York.

"I think it's the same everywhere and people are the same everywhere," says Jon. "I mean there's parochialism in Dublin as well, you know. Vastly different people who might live beside each other still don't necessarily mix in the same group. Just because you live in an area that's so cosmopolitan and that h a s a vast amount of different groups, doesn't mean to say you go around meeting everyone else. People can be quite insular in the most cosmopolitan of places. The parochialism exists everywhere. That's where we come from and I think most of the characters that we do exist everywhere. They may speak a different language or have a different accent but that doesn't mean to say that the same gobshite doesn't exist in Dublin 4, you know."

"I think we use rural characters because we are close to that and we still live in the country, but the situations that the characters are in, or the situations they have between them are universal in the sense that they can happen to anybody," adds Pat. "A lot of our characters don't necessarily talk about rural things. They m a y talk in ruralisms, but not about rural things going on. For instance, in our last show I Doubt It Says Pauline there was this relationship between the mother and the son. And even though it was set in a hall in rural Ireland and there was a local concer t going on, the sub-plot was between a mother and son. And the story between them could have happened in any city, anywhere in the world. It just so happened that these characters were from rural Ireland, but the drama between the two of them is universal - all about mothers dominating the son and not letting them out of their sight or whatever."

Familiar or not, however, their comedic country characters still require a certain amount of R&D work and each one is fully work-shopped in rehearsals before being exposed on the stage.\line \line "I mean they're all caricatures to some extent," says Jon, "but there's a realism we're speaking about, and no matter how exaggerated or how caricatured they come across they still have to have some truth in them. You know, where th ey're coming from is from a real emotion, a real sadness or whatever it is that makes the character work. It has to be real. The person has to have a background. Each character has to have a story, although these things might never even come out during a show. We have to know things like are they married or single, which can be totally irrelevant to the audience. But we have to know that about the character ourselves to make them work."

The duo admit to spending a lot of their time people-watching for rese arch. "We observe people all the time," Pat explains. "There's an awful lot you can learn by looking at people. How that person thinks. And when you're working on a certain character, there's no doubt that when you're in a pub or in a restaurant or somewh ere and you are observing, you're looking out for that type of character in a sense, even in a subconscious way. If you go into a filling station and you're doing a character that's whatever, you'll see someone that fits the bill. Always!"

Do you see what you do as art?\line \line "You describe art to me and I'll tell you if we see it that way or not," he laughs. "What is art? I went to art college and that was a big debate among all the students in first year. We still hadn't figured it out when we left! What is art ? I don't see it as art. I just see it as what we do, and if you want to put a label on it, by all means go ahead. I won't necessarily say you're right or wrong. Everyone can put their own labels on things."

For his own part, Jon has no problem labelling D'Unbelievables himself, seeing what they do as being completely different from the stand-up work of the likes of Tommy Tiernan or Dylan Moran (both of whom he admires greatly). "I remember somebody describing different types of comedians," he says. "Ther e 's what you call a stand-up comedian. There's story-telling stuff and there's character stuff, the comedy actor as such. We'd probably come more into the bracket of the comedy actor. Our show is going to be stand-up and goes from one stand-up routine to a nother. There tends to be a story running through what we do and an array of characters in costume, you know. And like we said, it's a kind of universal comedy."

Even more universal than you might think. Curiously for an Irish act who specialise in rural caricatures, their most understanding critics have been the foreign press. For the most part anyway.\line \line "We've had generally good reviews in Ireland and abroad," says Pat. "Interestingly enough I think the reviewers that put the finger on what we were doing m ore than anyone else were London reviewers. And we got rave reviews in Minneapolis. It's amazing how different people react. The last time we were in London some guy said Dylan Thomas would turn in his grave because he was comparing I Doubt It Says Paulin e with Under Milkwood. Like, I've never even read it. Another review said we were the closest thing to the last great vaudevillian characters he had ever seen. Reviewers see different things from it depending on what their bias is, because everyone has one , you know."

Do bad reviews bother you?\line \line "Not really," he avers. "What annoys me is someone coming to review a show, who doesn't actually review the show. We've had one person do this before - they didn't end up reviewing the show - they attacked myself an d Jon personally. Now, I've no problem with someone attacking me personally. I will answer any question in that respect. But don't come along to review a show and then end up attacking us and not commenting on the material. If you didn't like the show, fa i r enough. We're not everyone's cup of tea and that's goes for U2 to BB King or whatever. Some people like something, some people don't. That's the way life is, the way people are. But to come in and slate Jon and myself personally and not even mention the material - that's not a review, that's a joke. A bad one!"

Although Kenny and Shortt usually spend around ten months a year as d'Unbelievables, they've both done a number of separate film and TV projects recently.\line \line "We've both been involved in a lot of fi lms in the last while," Pat explains. "One film that was recently on the screen was This Is My Father with Aidan Quinn, James Caan and Stephen Rea. I was in that with Brendan Gleeson. I did a film two years previously with Brendan as well. And recently I did a film in Donegal - it's an as yet untitled Irish comedy. It's Ian Harte, myself, Sean McGinley, Sean MacDonohue, a Dublin guy, and Niamh Cusack. And it's being produced by Roberta Passolini, who's better known for The Full Monty."

Movie work aside, Shortt was also a big hit with Fr. Ted fans with his irregular appearances in the show as Tom - the psychotic redneck halfwit in the suspiciously stained I Shot JR T-shirt. Unfortunately, Tom wasn't in the third (and unfortunately last) series.\line \line "Yeah, he wa sn't in the last one which was a pity," he smiles. "He was a great character and Graham and Arthur loved him. They said they were trying to write him into the last series and he just didn't fit in to any of their stories. They didn't want to shove him in because they thought that would do the character an injustice. But it was a pity because I loved playing him."

Perhaps the pair's highest profile piece of TV work in recent years is their series of advertisements for the Irish Lotto, which have been hugely successful for all concerned.

"Basically those came about through a radio ad we did," says Jon. "We did one radio ad and we came up with some characters - one's a complete fool and one's a half fool. The complete fool was a total idiot altogether. I thin k the whole idea of the characters when we were given the breakdown originally was that if these two fools can play - the game we were promoting was 5-4-3-2-1 and nobody could understand it originally - anyone can play. It is quite a simple game to play. I t's like anything in life, hit people with figures and they get freaked out. So we wrote the sketches for that and then they decided to televise it. They had the big 10-year-old party and they were raising the price and so people would find it very funny a nd not realise they were being stung for 50p. So they got us in." Obviously the Lotto ads have made D'Unbelievables amongst the most recognisable comedic actors in the country. Despite this, they're both still quite wary of becoming too familiar to TV aud iences and have no intention of making their own show, both infinitely preferring the buzz of live work.

"We tend to stay away from television because doing too much can actually affect your live audience," Jon explains. "If you do Channel 4 or something i n England, you've still got a huge audience because there's 40 million people, plus they pay an awful lot more because they have the 40 million audience. In Ireland on RTE, what is it - 3 or 4 million people, maybe 2 million people actually watching? So t here is no way you'd make a living doing just a TV series. The series would only be on for three months of the year or so and then you'd be unemployed for the rest of the year because you can't get a live gig anywhere - no-one would pay £10 when they can watch you on TV for nothing. That's happened to a lot of entertainers in this country. So we stay well away from television."

Television exposure or not, D'Unbelievables have struck a chord with the Irish public which is likely to see the duo packing 'em in long after this year's models have run out of steam. And d'at's the truth! Dat's Life opens at Vicar Street on March 29th.

Irish Times Saturday, March 27, 1999

Back in d'action

D'Unbelievables, Jon Kenny and Pat Shortt, unfold the characters in their new show to Deirdre Falvey

Jon Kenny and Pat Shortt - the wildly exuberant and entertaining D'Unbelievables - are working on their new show. So what is D'ats Life about? Talking to them a month or so ago, the two central characters were brothers who run an undertakers in a small town and who see a career opportunity in the death of a blues singer, and when they commandeer the funeral, events take on a life of their own.

I run into them a few weeks later. How are the brothers going? Actually, now they're a father and son - Kenny the bossy father, Shortt the local politician son. When last we spoke - a week ago - it's back to two brothers, but two different characters; this time they run a pub where the wake and post-funeral get-together take place.

The father, says Shortt, "was real and we were getting a bit of humour out of him but it just wasn't getting us where we wanted to get it. We tried a different character - the brother of the guy, but not the brother that we had originally - a different type of brother, more domineering."

D'Unbelievables work in an organic way, creating characters that are rowdy or poignant or over-thetop, but always with a grain of truth, both of them playing each role, working out what happens next, who would be a good person to bring on stage, changing things as they go along. "We really have the first half tied down at the moment," said Shortt. "The second half is nearly there. The big thing is the relationship between those two brothers (Ned and Maurice Hickey), and they determine the story at the end of the day, and all the other characters fall into place. We haven't quite tied that down and locked it into concrete but we're close to it now."

Shortt plays Maurice Hickey, who is "very confident and a great man with the people. But in his own house he's completely dominated by his brother Ned. . . it's a tough one to get fixed up because the audience can be confused seeing him out, all boisterous and having the crack and chatting to people and give-me-your-vote, and then at home the older brother Ned would kick the shit out of him, nearly, around the house."

The show is still in a state of change, but, "the way it's looking at the moment is that Maurice, who's running for election, decides he'll pull a bit of a scam or a stroke and claim that the singer Wild Willie Wallace, who's died, wanted to be waked in their pub". Maurice gets an old coffin and sets up a fake wake for Wallace, "an American singer, or an English singer - whatever it is, he's a foreign guy anyway" who's supposedly related to the Wallaces in the parish.

Meanwhile, the other brother, Ned (Kenny) has other plans - "he's more sophisticated," grins Shortt. "He spent a year in Athlone in catering college and he has grand notions that they're going to start doing food in the bar. Not a restaurant, but food." But the two things clash on the night, and, well, we'll have to see.

The last time Kenny and Shortt did their own show was nine months ago, when they last performed I Doubt It Says Pauline - the show about a mother and son and the local gala in the village hall, which followed their previous show, One Hell of a Do - in the Circle in the Square Theatre in New York's Bleeker Street. Since then things have been busy for Kenny, from Co Limerick, and Shortt, from Tipperary.

They had straight acting roles in a delicious piece of casting as the demented, hate-filled brothers in Druid's production of Martin McDonagh's The Lonesome West; they did more of the memorably humorous National Lottery ads, featuring Butty Brennan (Shortt) and Roundy Mooney's mother (Kenny); they made another video, D'telly, which sold over 100,000 copies and was a huge Christmas success; Shortt was in a comedy film, as yet untitled, which stars Ian Hart, shot in Donegal last summer. Busy boys.

Only now do they have the chance to develop a new live show, another piece of rural or smalltown madness, peopled with characters who have more universal resonance, all played by Kenny and Shortt (with occasional help from the audience) in their trademark cartoon-style costumes and headpieces made, as usual, by Des Dillon from Clonmel, who works in soft sculpture.

But it's not just the two brothers who will figure in D'ats Life when it opens on Monday at Dublin's Vicar Street, after some previews there and in Kilmallock, Co Limerick. There's a range of fresh characters, including local DJ Paudie Power, and Nurse Moloney, a nurse in the local clinic. Originally, she was in the story because she was in the father's nursing home. What's she up to in the new scheme of things? Pat laughs. "I don't know. She's a great character - originally she tied in in loads of ways. By next week I'll have a reason for her to be there!" Nurse Moloney is "pure casual", says Kenny. "For her it's just a job - whatever she sees doesn't daunt her, it's just going through the motions. She's not fazed by anything; it's all just routine."

THERE are also the two balladeers, the Napper Tandys, who are booked for the wake night - "there's a few free drinks going and the boys take advantage of that and one becomes very honest about the ballads and says they're all a load of shite and that every ballad sounds the same," says Shortt, while Kenny adds: "They're both from the country - the heart of Limerick or Tipperary or somewhere - but when they sing ballads they sing in Dublin accents and they want to sound like Ronnie Drew. And they put on false beards - that's their band costume - `did you bring your beard Mike?', `I didn't bring my fecking beard!' They work very well visually and their music is just so bad. They've written a tribute to Wild Willie Wallace, and it's just absolutely dreadful."

There's a surreal touch with two horses looking over a wall, describing the antics at the human funeral. "I'm the ass and Jon is the horse", and "a west-of-Ireland man that Jon does. His whole body is distorted and Des made a coat and wig and handkerchief that all goes to one side - it looks like he's being blown in the wind. He's an outsider who lives in the area - he came down from the hill, cause there's no place up there cause all the Germans have the houses bought up."

Kenny and Shortt have earned a reputation in Ireland - and further afield - based on talent, hard work and pure entertainment, and a fresh new show is a tantalising prospect. They've been successful, but "we're not in the rock 'n' roll stakes at all," says Pat. "I can afford to take a few months off, and then I need to get out and make a few pound again!" The return in this show to characters who are brothers owes less to their roles in The Lonesome West than to their own relationship - "myself and Jon are almost like brothers". And do they fight? "Not in ages. We have been known to in the past, but we haven't had an argument in two years, though we argue about the script every day!"

D'ats Life opens for a seven-week run at Vicar Street, Dublin, on Monday before touring around Ireland.

BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME [from www.wow.ie]

The success of D'Unbelievables is all the more unbelievable because it's all been orchestrated from their Limerick base. Paul Byrne talks to the men behind the wires, Pat Shortt and Jon Kenny.They may look like the most primitive pair of gobdaws that Ireland has to offer, but behind the blank stares and toothless grins, it's pretty obvious that D'Unbelievables are no slouches.

Having established themselves as one of this country's biggest comedy draws in recent years, the fact that Jon Kenny and Pat Shortt were able to conquer and destroy box-office records and homegrown video sales whilst hidden away in their Co. Limerick cottage makes their success all the more remarkable.

"Our secret is we use a ferocious amount of technology," offers the chuckle-prone Shortt. "Our studio down in Limerick is an entirely digital studio, and pretty much everything we need to do – from putting together ads, programmes, radio commercials, whatever – we can do at home. The fact that we're comic gods helps too, of course."

Having made the move from Dublin back to their native city ten years ago, Kenny and Shortt have built up their Lough Gur cottage into the nerve centre of their Southern Comedy Theatre Company. There they plot and rehearse, record radio ads, layout their live programmes, and make lots and lots of toast. Probably.

"People are always amazed when you tell them your office is down in the middle of nowhere," states Kenny. "But the technology available now means you don't need to hand anything to anyone anymore. You can just email it directly, and that just saves so much time." "And hassle," Shortt interjects with a nod.

Self-confessed workaholics, Kenny and Shortt spend most of their time locked away in their Limerick hideaway when they're not on a stage making people nervous. Having debuted as D'Unbelievables in the early '90s with It's My Shout, it was the hugely successful One Hell Of A Do that truly launched Kenny and Shortt in this country. Their madcap style of creating a multitude of Irish stereotypes struggling to come to grips with reality and randomly chosen audience members struck a chord – and a funny bone – with many a native of the Emerald Isle. And as their third show, I Doubt It, Says Pauline, proved even more successful than its two predecessors, a series of videos – One Hell Of A Do, D'Video and D'Telly – all rocketed to the top of the Irish video charts.

"It's a bit of a cliché to say it, but we've been incredibly lucky," offers Shortt. "You always hope that whatever you do is successful, but neither of us were really prepared for the reaction we got with D'Unbelievables. Of course, we knew we were incredibly funny, gifted and loveable, but we just didn't know we'd be quite so successful." Shortt allows himself another wry chuckle before Kenny takes up his lead.

"I'm pretty sure we wouldn't come up with the sort of material that we do if we were based in Dublin," he states. "The idea of having to rent a flat up here, and commute into the office every day would just be too much for me. I like the idea that we're self-contained down in Limerick. It gives us complete control over what goes on, but it's also conducive to the kind of silliness that comes from being cut off from the rest of the world. If you know what I mean."

The rest of the world seems to be catching up with the kind of silliness D'Unbelievables specialise in though, as Kenny and Shortt take their army of alter-egos to Europe, America and beyond. That London's Time Out has given them their highest seal of approval every time D'Unbelievables have played the West End has obviously been gratifying for the comic duo.

"There's always that sense of, well, maybe this is just a local hero thing," offers Shortt, "but seeing the reaction abroad, and recognising that parochial humour is in fact universal, well, that's great for us. We work hard on our shows, and to see audiences abroad get the same kick out of it as audiences back here in Ireland do, it makes you realise that you've got something special."

That something special is upon us once again in the coming months, as D'Unbelievables take their latest show, Dat's Life, first to Dublin and then around the country. Given the interactive, improvised, seemingly ramshackle nature of their shows, how terrifying are those first nights up on stage?

"You wouldn't wish them on your worst enemy," Shortt states flatly. "We'd have run through parts of the show in smaller venues beforehand, but the opening nights of a new show like Dat's Life are just very shaky. It's good to be nervous though; it means you still care."

Aware too that in this country at least they may be indelibly etched in people's minds as D'Unbelievables, Shortt and Kenny are keen to expand their repertoire. Having played a pair of feuding brothers in the recent Druid Theatre Company production of Martin McDonagh's Lonesome West, the duo are now lined up for their first sitcom. Shooting in March, The Fitz is written by acclaimed Tyrone comedian and writer Owen O'Neill and features a family living on Ireland's north/south borderline.

"Literally," offers Kenny. "One half of the house is in the south and the other is in the north. It's a completely wacky script, absolutely hilarious. It just throws up the whole madness of that division. It's a miniature of how ridiculous the whole thing is."

And if The Fitz is successful, it should help Kenny and Shortt avoid the William Shatner curse of always been known for one role, plus, it'll give their careers a leg-up in the UK. After that, it's back to Limerick to work on best-selling video number four. So, is there an expiry date pencilled in for D'Unbelievables?

"For us, every year takes on a different level," offers Shortt. "Five years ago, we could never have imagined how successful D'Unbelievables would be. It's amazing how popular the shows are every year, and a lot of that obviously has to do with coming up with new material all the time and, well, being funny basically. It's hard to put a lifespan on it, but I think it will always go on as long as we keep creating new shows, new scenarios, new jokes. I can see us being together for quite some time to come. We're really only scratching the surface with these characters, because whilst we're very popular in this country, we haven't had anything like that sort of success abroad."