The 2 Johnnies Appreciation Thread

Culture
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Sometimes one of them does a d’unbelievables impression

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Townies v Culchies, a tale as old as time.

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No wonder Gil loves the today fm show.

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I’d definitely prefer to go for a pint with the two lads

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I can’t imagine them being the slightest bit entertaining to listen to, or pay, on podcast.

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I rather not go with any of them but yeah if you had to you’d go with the roasters

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On the leaving cert English paper no less.
Hitting the big time as they might say.

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please tell me it wasnt higher level

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630

Applied

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I remember in my Ordinary Level Irish Aural test, a question being ‘What did John do yesterday evening’

The answer in the aural, literally being ‘Chuaigh mĂ© go dti Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban’

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That’s the way it’s gone now

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They don’t even speak English

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I have learned to speak Chipp and can understand them

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Hardly Chuaigh mé if it was John

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Twas - because it was him talking in the Aural if you get me

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Stephen from Laois with 82 acres is on now. cc @myboyblue

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Surname?

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Haven’t a clue.

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Informative. Keep up the good work

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The 2 Johnnies’ Late Night Lock In review: A hellish experience – never have the words ‘supported by your licence fee’ felt more like a taunt

The 2 Johnnies with their guests — Marty Morrissey, Una Healy and Seann Walsh — on the first show last week. Photo: RTÉ

Pat Stacey

Yesterday at 01:31

An old friend of mine who, among the many other strings to his bow, is a comedy historian whose ancestors were performers in the British music halls, recently told me a depressing little story.

Another friend of his was in company when the conversation turned to the subject of comedy. This other friend happened to mention the classic ‘Four Candles’ sketch by the Two Ronnies, at which point someone present interrupted with: “Sorry, don’t you mean the 2 Johnnies?”​

​Now, if that doesn’t make you want to throw your head back and howl at the heavens in despair, I don’t know anything that will. On second thoughts, I think I do.

Just try sitting through an hour of RTÉ’s new Thursday night pub-set show The 2 Johnnies’ Late Night Lock In, the latest stage in the meteoric rise of Tipperary titterers Johnny McMahon, who calls himself Johnny Smacks, and Johnny O’Brien (Johnny B) to media dominance.

You might not even need the full hour; 10 minutes should be more than enough to cause the will to live to drain out of your arse and pool around your feet.

I didn’t see last week’s first show in advance because no previews were available. Apparently, it was still being edited right up to the day of transmission.

When I finally got around to watching it — or enduring it — on the RTÉ Player, I found myself wishing they’d spent a bit longer on the job and edited the entire thing out of existence.

RTÉ seems to settle every now and then on someone it decides is worthy of elevation to television stardom and duly rams them down viewers’ throats every chance it gets for the next couple of years.

One time it was PJ Gallagher. Another time it was Amy Huberman. Another time it was Katherine Lynch. When they weren’t appearing in their own shows, they were appearing on The Late Late Show to plug those shows.

But at least those three have discernible talents, even if RTÉ’s historically lax attitude to quality control in comedy let them get away with making some awful rubbish.

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The blood still runs cold at the memory of the grim laugh-famine that was Gallagher’s one-man sketch show Meet the Neighbours or the slapdash self-indulgence of Huberman’s self-penned sitcom Finding Joy.

McMahon and O’Brien, however, are by far the most perplexing recipients of a tap on the head from the Montrose magic stick.

Somehow or another, the Tipperary titterers, who started out doing skits and “funny” songs on YouTube, have managed to parlay their brand of parochial smalltown Ireland shtick — the pints, the GAA jerseys, the slaggin’, the gettin’ the shift and the havin’ the craic (ugh!) — into live events, an enormously popular podcast, a radio show, TV travelogues like The 2 Johnnies Do America and now this early Christmas turkey.

You can say one thing about Late Night Lock In: it’s certainly not short of laughter. It’s a veritable Vesuvius of the stuff. Eruptions of guffaws and hollers arrive roughly every 20 seconds.

Unfortunately, most of the laughter is emitted by the Johnnies themselves, who can’t seem to get over how funny they are.

Unfortunately, most of the laughter is emitted by the Johnnies themselves, who can’t seem to get over how funny they are.

All one of them has to do is open his mouth for the other one to collapse into paroxysms of laughter. They don’t even need jokes — which is just as well, because there aren’t any.

The pair get a “written and presented by” credit at the end, but it’s hard to see where the “written” part comes in, unless it refers to the feeble recurring bit with Marty Morrissey reporting from the toilet (which is where the whole show belongs).

The roving handheld camera and performatively raucous audience of mostly twenty-somethings, who appear to have sucked on a tank of nitrous oxide on the way in, comes across as a lame attempt to marry the outdated style of laddish 90s shows like TFI Friday with the pair’s exaggerated culchie codology.

There’s some audience participation, including a young woman with a laugh even more annoying than the hosts’, a parish quiz, and a few silly little games with guest Una Healy and stand-up comic Seann Walsh. Spread across an hour, the thinness of the pair’s act is painfully obvious.

Never have the words “supported by your licence fee” at the end felt more like a taunt.

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