Limerick artist Blindboy Boatclub was born David Chambers and is the author of three bestselling short story collections as well as host of the hugely popular The Blindboy Podcast. Hiding his identity behind a plastic mask, he has made a career of following his curiosity down rabbit holes, venturing into podcasting in 2017 to promote his book The Gospel According to Blindboy. What started as a means of getting his stories more widely heard has become a podcasting phenomenon; his freewheeling shows now draw in millions of listeners worldwide.
He addresses his scattered congregation with often gloriously inexplicable turns of phrase, including references to “paltry salty garibaldis” and “wincing princes”, “tertiary perfumed fundaments” and “scuttery bin gimlets” (with many “God bless yous” along the way). These are all offered in a soothing monotone, as are his meandering reflections on mental health, cultural criticism and politics, during which a digression often leads to a revelation.
Blindboy live onstage. Photo: Danny Khan
Currently on tour, with dates that include the Barbican in London and Glasgow’s Pavilion theatre, he brings that same restless energy to the stage.
How does it feel to be doing such a massive tour?
I'm going to be all over the gaff, and I've got incredible guests. In Gateshead, I'm going to have Darren McGarvey [author of the Orwell prize-winning book Poverty Safari]. He's a working-class Glasgow farmer-rapper and one of the most erudite political speakers that I know.
I've got Professor Ronald Hutton in Brighton, who is an expert on, I suppose you'd call it the Anglo-Saxons. In Ireland, we've got a really rich history… our own mythology and stories. They are very well preserved. You don't have [such a] rich trove of English folklore, but Professor Ronald Hutton is an expert in that area.
It seems to be difficult for the English to engage with their own folklore without it tending towards nationalism. Why do you think that is?
In countries with a history of colonisation, folklore can be co-opted by nationalists. Germany, for instance, couldn’t engage with its own folklore for years because Hitler had claimed it. Expressing an interest in German folklore and mythology became a potental dog-whistle for racism. The English face a similar issue. You can’t always tell whether someone’s interest in English mythology and folklore is [because] they’re a fervent nationalist. And that’s really sad. In Ireland, we can explore our own mythology freely because we never tried to colonise anyone.
I am astounded by the number of listeners you have.
Yes it’s about 90 million [listens] now. I only know that because they keep telling me! Jesus, I started off the podcast just speaking into a sock. I had a crappy microphone with a sock over it. That was nine years ago this week. I show up each week with curiosity. That's the rule. I never think to myself: "Will this be popular? Will people like it?" I ask myself: "Am I curious about this?"
What works of art or literature have inspired you recently?
There's an excellent writer from Belfast called Wendy Erskine. She recently published a book called The Benefactors, and also a collection of short stories [Dance Move]. Her writing feels very “now”. For me, good writing is anything that makes me want to write. I love [US author] Ottessa Moshfegh. She's amazing, just so surreal and weird, and her characters are awful. She reminds me a bit of a writer from the 1980s, Mary Gaitskill, who’s fantastic. I also love Mariana Enríquez. She's Argentinian and writes short stories. South American art is great; they have the magical realism tradition.
I notice these are all women.
Years ago, I actively made a point of reading women writers because men tend not to read women. I did it so that I could become a better writer, because there's so much to learn. I suppose it's about always being mindful. There's no way for me to avoid misogyny – at the end of the day I'm a man, and I was raised that way, with all the benefits. So there are blind spots all over the place and I have to consistently catch and work on them.
‘I really badly failed school. I was expelled. It was a terrible time and, looking back now, every single bit of that was my autism’
With anything – racism and ableism too – you can't challenge them unless you're willing to actually look at them. [With regard to] ableism, I only found out that I was autistic about three years ago. I spent most of my life not knowing. So I'm relearning all sorts of things about myself.
Do you wish you'd known you were autistic when you were younger?
It's hard to know, because the thing with being autistic is that you get to the same finish line as everybody else, just in a very different way. Learning that I'm autistic means I have to take my childhood self by the hand and go back through that whole process and realise, fuck, I was very severely failed by a system that wasn't aware of, or didn't accommodate, neurodivergent people in any way, you know?
I really badly failed school. I was expelled. It was a terrible time and, looking back now, every single bit of that was my autism. I didn't have that awareness. So I became the student who couldn't concentrate, and then I became the student who was disruptive. So eventually, all of these things mean you end up getting labelled as bad, and then you identify as bad, and you become a terrible student who gets expelled.
That's the toughie about finding out, because the thing is, I'm in my 40s now. Who gives a fuck if I find out I'm autistic now? It doesn't matter. I don't need to know this now. But it would have [been good] to know it at school, when it came to defending myself and fighting my corner.
Photo: Danny Khan
What part, if any, do you think it has played in your success?
One thing I would say is that we're seeing a lot of people now emerging as autistic or having ADHD. Just off the top of my head: Tom Hardy said he was autistic recently. Robbie Williams. More and more people are coming forward. People who aren't autistic go "look, all these fucking celebrities, influencers and musicians are autistic now. It looks like an attention-seeking thing." What I would argue is that, no – neurodivergent people are going to find careers that meet their sensory needs. Being an actor, an entertainer or a freelancer, or a person who has a lot of autonomy over their schedule … means that neurodivergent people are going to gravitate towards these types of careers and flourish within them, because we can hyperfocus.
If you became taoiseach (prime minister) tomorrow, what would you do first?
Nationalise essential services and industries. Certain things shouldn’t be run for profit – electricity and water should be publicly owned, with any money generated reinvested.
Neoliberalism is essentially the privatisation of public services, a terrible thing, and people don’t always realise how it works. Take water, for example. [In Ireland], you’re paying for it through your taxes, but instead of [all of] that money going directly into the service, a private company takes a cut [for outsourced services]. It’s as though a billionaire has set up a toll booth between the public and the services they pay for.
Housing is another example. In Ireland, we have the Housing Assistance Payment (HAP), which helps people on low incomes afford rented accommodation. Rather than providing enough publicly owned housing, the government pays private landlords the market rate to house people who need assistance. That’s a good thing in principle, but much of the money intended to help people secure homes ends up in landlords’ pockets.
Why are so many people losing faith in politics?
[There are] a growing number of people who no longer believe in voting. They ask what the point is when they keep trying, paying their taxes and electing new governments, yet nothing seems to change.
Here in Limerick, where I live, the economy is doing well and there are plenty of jobs, yet for the first time in my life I’m seeing shanty towns: small communities of people living in tents because they have nowhere else to go. It’s infuriating. You look around and wonder how this is possible. If everything appears to be functioning, why are people still homeless?
‘What concerns me about billionaires funding local communities in Ireland is that they can choose where their money goes and use that to build loyalty’
The reason is that the housing market has been fully financialised. There’s a system in which the taxes you expect to help house people are instead flowing into the pockets of landlords and property investors. Meanwhile, the scarcity of housing drives up the value of property, making it even harder for people to find a home. The consequences are plain to see.
This creates an opening for billionaires [who] fund the far right, [to] tell people that immigrants are to blame. The people benefiting from the system are funding far-right networks that spread disinformation. Follow the money and you begin to see the connections. I’d love people to wake up to that.
People like Mark Zuckerberg are now buying property in Ireland…
It’s an interesting one. Zuckerberg has reportedly spent €51m buying a castle in Ireland. His net worth is around $240bn, so I wanted to put that purchase into perspective. If you compare €51m with a fortune of that size, it’s a tiny fraction of his wealth. Using an average Irish salary of around €58,000, the equivalent proportion would be roughly €12. That’s what buying a castle for €51m represents to someone with that kind of wealth.
Meanwhile, most people in Ireland can’t afford a house, even with two incomes. Zuckerberg is also funding local GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) clubs; I suspect there’s a strategy behind that.
And Trump owns a luxury golf resort on the west coast.
What concerns me about billionaires funding local communities in Ireland is that instead of contributing through taxation, they can choose where their money goes and use that to build loyalty.
If you could travel back in time, when would you choose?
Anything before the internet would be good craic. What I deeply miss is cultural scarcity. When I was a child, a song might come on the television and it could be the best song I'd ever heard, but then it would disappear. I might go years without hearing it again, yet I'd worship that song as if it were a religious artefact. Once, a car drove past me playing a song, and I had to memorise the tune and go into HMV to try to find it. I'd embarrass myself humming the tune to the shop assistants. There's real value in cultural scarcity because we worship art almost like a religion when it's difficult to access.
Blindboy is currently touring the UK and Ireland, and will play dates in Australia and New Zealand next year