Vittorio Angelone: ‘People in the South never have to assert their Irishness’

It’s hard to say what it was like growing up Italian-Irish in Belfast because that is my only experience. Often people ask, “Did it feel culturally Italian?” and then I sort of go, “I don’t think so?” I have two brothers, I’m a middle child, and both my parents grew up in Belfast but my dad’s side of the family is Italian.We had pasta semi-regularly, but so did everybody else. There were also weird things; we celebrated La Befana, an Italian tradition about an old witch who’s sort of a replacement for Santa Claus. We would go to a community hall with the Italian Society of Northern Ireland, and there was a bouncy castle, and there were sandwiches chopped into triangles, and we would have fun, and then we would all be told to sit down, and a woman dressed as a witch would come in and give us presents. So, there were Italian elements, but I feel much more culturally Irish. I always find you define yourself by what makes you different. So, I think a lot of people in Ireland know me as the Italian comedian, whereas a lot of people in England would know me as an Irish comedian.READ MOREI moved to London when I was 18 for music college and I think everybody was scared for me. I was an anxious child who wasn’t very good at crowds of people or busy-ness. It was financially frightening. I didn’t want to lean on my parents, so I had a bad events agency-work job lined up before I moved to London. I was like, “How am I going to afford to live here?” My student loan didn’t cover my rent, never mind food. But I got very lucky. The Guildhall School of Music and Drama is a very artistically diverse place. There was lots of theatre and music going on; jazz, classical, pop stuff. There was weird performance art too, which I got involved in. It felt like a real education.A common experience for Irish people is that when we move away, we suddenly become a lot more Irish. Like my mam says, I’ve gotten a stronger accent since moving to London.At Guildhall, there were posh southern English people who would parrot accents. Any time my friend from Glasgow or I spoke, it would get a little titter in the room. I was adamant I would keep speaking out in lectures and keep asking questions. I just did it to the point that people stopped tittering. Vittorio Angelone: 'I think [northerners] have a darker sense of humour' Now, I live in north London, and the number of posh English boys who live here who are desperate to be Irish and are splitting the G [the drinking challenge popular on social media where people take a first gulp of Guinness in the hope of the beer settling across the middle of the logo on the glass] is quite funny. I started comedy in London, and I have always performed for a diverse range of people. I’m very proud that I’m not a comedian who goes around the world and just performs to Irish people.I have endlessly been told that I’m not “proper Irish” by southerners. I talk in my new show about coming to terms with the northern Irish part of my identity, and the fact that that it is a distinct and culturally different thing. I think we have a darker sense of humour, and I think we have a different sensibility, but in the same way that people from Cork are different to people from Dublin, to people from Galway, to people from Kerry. I have been very frustrated in the past of being told I’m not Irish by people who’ve been passively Irish their whole life.People in the South have never had to assert their Irishness. And, listen, I’m a sort of ceasefire baby, a post-Troubles child . I haven’t had to fight for my Irish identity in the way that lots of people have had to fight. But I do find it frustrating. How dare you tell me I’m not Irish? And what benefit is it to [people] to exclude the North from their idea of Irishness?[ ‘Southerners think Northern Ireland is as foreign as Siberia’Opens in new window ]Landing in Cork and driving through the South, I feel much more at home than I do even in parts of the North. There are bits of the North you drive through, and it is Union Jacks and not a very welcoming place for someone who feels Irish. I feel a cultural connection to the South. That means more to me than whatever sort of border has been drawn. I feel culturally connected to Irishness, and at this point, it doesn’t matter what anybody else says. In conversation with Niamh Browne. Vittorio Angelone’s new show You Can’t Say Nothing Anymore will be at the Gaiety Theatre on October 22nd and 23rd