Mammies, Mary McAleese and making Prestige Drama: The writing life of Séamas O'Reilly

Séamas O'Reilly is thinking he should quit while he's ahead.

His fiction debut Prestige Drama came out a week ago and it's been manic, surreal and so "insanely positive" he's waiting for the other shoe to drop.

That anxiety is, as he sees it, all part of the "mortal flaw of a writer's mentality".

"You're arrogant enough to think the world wants to hear your precious, beautiful opinion. But you're also so insecure that you, at all times, think someone's going to say this is the worst thing ever written."

Fortunately no-one has confiscated the Irish writer's pens and laptop.

Critical praise from the likes of the New York Times and Literary Review has been accompanied by some unlikely shoutouts, such as that from British acting royalty Kathy Burke who posted about her love for the book on social media.

That's no small deal for a comedy obsessive who grew up on the Irish border near Londonderry in the 1990s and whose childhood memoir Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? was an award-winning bestseller.

Having said that, he admits these are not the reviews that keep him up at night. It's keeping the people from his home town onside that really matters.

"Obviously the book is so specific to Derry. The plot of the book is all Derry. It's all Derry people," he says, very much giving the sense that getting the city right was as important to him as the character and plot.

He even hired some geography-specific backup.

"I got my sister Caoimhe to go through the book with a fine toothcomb for any mistakes and errors that will get me absolutely killed," he says.

So, spreadsheets, praise and Kathy Burke – as O'Reilly says, it's all been pretty weird.

But that's typical coming from a writer whose career has been anything but usual.

Even if you haven't heard of Séamas O'Reilly there's a very good chance you've seen his work.

There's the aforementioned memoir, which recalled, in vivid, comic detail, growing up in the wake of his mother's death and the work of his father in raising 11 children.

There's also former Irish international Tommy Bowe's incredulous TV reaction to O'Reilly's family size ("10 siblings!").

There's the national newspaper columns over the years on internet culture and parenting; his role as an editor with quarterly magazine The Fence; his viral reviews football manager Steve Bruce's trilogy of crime novels.

And then the online comedy bits: the fake Rush Hour Crushes; the Selfridge Nutella pranks; and maybe the best pun tweet featuring a cast member from The Mighty Ducks.

And if none of that rings a bell, there's a strong chance you once read a story featuring an Irish barman, drugs and Irish president Mary McAleese - that was him too.

That story broke open O'Reilly's career, securing the book deal that would lead to his memoir and now Prestige Drama.

"For about two days I was the main character of the internet," he says, recalling when the story blew up.

"Even at every book event I did for Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?, the presenter would sheepishly say: 'Well we have to mention…" – and about 40% of the audience would go: 'Oh wait, that's you?'

The story has even been adapted into an animated short film, Me, Myself and Mary, featuring Chris O'Dowd and Aisling Bea, that's been selected for New York's Tribeca Film Festival.

Again, he laughs, it was another strange occurrence as he "old university pal" and animator John Michell approached him to option the rights of a Twitter thread although, he adds "I didn't do any of it, I feel like I'm a total fan".

So back to the praise for something he did do, Prestige Drama.

The story, "melted down" and reformed from a BBC radio series, focuses on a Hollywood production that descends on Derry to make a Troubles trauma drama only for the lead actress to go missing.

Given the pressure he felt to get the place right, would it not have been better to set it somewhere fictional?

"That was a thought I had, because I'd be able to have a bit more fun with being completely untethered," he says.

"But I was writing a funny book as well and I had the kind of thought that if I'm setting a funny book in a fictional place does it remove some of that bite?"

O'Reilly also chose to tell the story from the view of more than a dozen narrators, with chapters alternating between them.

Getting into these characters' heads was its own kind of drama - some came easy, he says, like Dymphna a well-meaning amalgam of "like every mammy I've ever met".

Others involved attempts to disappear into the character "and hope what comes out at the end is usable – and very often it wasn't".

He recalls wishing he could just make stuff up when writing the memoir.

"And as soon as I started writing fiction, I was like oh, no, no, no, no – writing memoirs and all that stuff, that's stealing a living. I was just remembering things and adding jokes."

You could say taking heavy themes - like the loss of a parent or the Troubles - "and adding jokes" is O'Reilly's modus operandi.

In that vein, he has some key inspirations such as Paul Murray ("I loved the Bee Sting"), Marian Keyes ("criminally underrated") and Arthur Matthews, perhaps best known for TV hits like Father Ted and Toast of London.

And then there's Flann O'Brien, born Brian O'Nolan in Strabane, County Tyrone, just down the River Foyle from where O'Reilly grew up.

His novels The Three Policeman and At Swim-Two-Birds, as well as his writing under the pen name Myles na gCopaleen, set his legacy as one of Ireland's greatest absurdist writers and satirists.

What then would O'Brien think of O'Reilly, who has used his own absurd stories to chart a very 21st Century writing path?

Well, he'd likely agree with O'Reilly's view that comedy writing doesn't necessarily have to exist "to be in service of something else" - it can just be funny.

And O'Brien may also appreciate the strangeness of O'Reilly's very online route to novel writing - the "lightning in a bottle that came" of the Mary McAleese Twitter tale, which was so unlikely it's helped keep his feet on the ground.

"I'm extraordinarily grateful for some of the very silly things that have happened."