Star Spangled Conor

Despite the challenges we are all having to manage, Mullingar man, comedian and impressionist Conor Moore is living the dream in America. After his new US show – straightforwardly titled The Conor Moore Show – made its international debut recently, he chatted to Paul Hughes about lockdowns, green screens, the pitfalls of Donald Trump impressions, and his venture into the New York pub trade

In recent weeks, Mullingar’s Conor Moore appeared on Sky Sports to talk about the debut of his new Golfpass show which launched globally on Tuesday April 15. He was wearing a Westmeath GAA zip top.

He hadn’t thought about what to wear. In his apartment in scorching Orlando, Florida, there’s an air conditioner cooling down the entire complex. As it was early morning, the apartment was for brass monkeys, so he threw on the maroon fleece.

“You don’t even know what you’re wearing at times,” he said, “and next thing you have people from Mullingar on to you saying – ‘I saw you on Sky Sports with the Westmeath top, fair play to ya!’ You end up getting praise left, right and centre!”

Yet this is only one of many indications that Conor is exempt from the old adage that fame changes you. His home is now between New York and Florida, and he’s just signed a lucrative contract to provide comedy content for the Golf Channel – but to him, Mullingar and Westmeath are still the centre of the universe.

For instance, he describes New York as a “bigger, shinier version of Mullingar”.

“I like Florida. The weather is nice. But the Golf Channel are moving to New York next year. So hopefully, if things are still going well, I’ll be going as well,” he said.

“Which do I prefer? New York, all day long. It’s like home. My brother Darren is there. He has his own law firm, and he’s married to a Mexican girl. When I lived in New York last year, his home was only a 15-minute walk away.

“Beyond that in Long Island my cousin Gary is there as well, as well as John Hughes and Alan Stenson, who’d be two of my best mates.

“The Irish networks are so small in New York; you get to know everybody. You’re playing football in Gaelic Park. The city has a reputation for being a big place, but it’s really small in other ways.”

Conor (30) is part of a consortium which bought a pub on New York’s 38th Street recently – more on that later. The bar was due to open on St Patrick’s Day, but the Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak threw a big spanner in the works.

Being honest though, he was more worried about his new show with the NBC-owned Golf Channel than the pub venture.

“When the pandemic kicked off, I thought it was getting canned,” he told the Westmeath Examiner. “When I came over here at first, I didn’t know what to expect. Then when I saw the studio with my name on the wall, I was fairly gobsmacked. I was obviously very excited.

“Then when the virus outbreak took over, I assumed I’d just end up going home. Thankfully they’ve gone ahead with it.

“It’s been huge. NBC and the Golf Channel loved it. It gives them an option in the time of quarantine to generate new content.

“It all happened pretty quickly. I came over at the beginning of March, and we were supposed to get up and going by Paddy’s Day – the first episode. But then it got pushed back to March 31. Then April 14.

“A lot of programmes were gone off the air on the Golf Channel, everyday programmes like Golf Central and Morning Drive. They’re gone until the golf comes back.

“At that point I was sure it was going to get canned, because everyone was losing money from it, like any company in the world. I thought that if they were going to make cutbacks, this would definitely get the chop.

“But I was the only one thinking that. The Americans were much more optimistic. They insisted that it was original content, and they needed it.”

And so, the first episode aired on Golfpass – the Golf Channel’s online offering, which Conor describes as “Netflix for golfers” – last Tuesday, and despite his initial fears, The Conor Moore Show looks like it will be around for the long haul.

For the moment, remarkably, Conor is effectively shooting the show himself from within the four walls of his Orlando apartment, and this material is interspersed with other snippets recorded before the Covid-19 shutdown.

“There is some outdoor stuff, but it was recorded before social distancing came in. In the first episode, I’m at the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill having the craic with some fans,” said Conor.

“Everything else is done in the apartment because, basically, you can’t leave the apartment now. Well you can, to get groceries – a bit like in Ireland.

“It would be nice to have someone in here to help me shoot it, which would take a bit of pressure off. You’d spend a couple of hours setting up.

“It’s all done on the same camera that I bought when I started doing Conor Sketches. I saved up and bought one about three and a half years ago, a good one, and it’s still going.

“Any time I move anywhere, whether I’m living in New York or in Florida, I always bring a green screen and lights to make all my videos from it. So I have what’s basically my own mini-studio.”

One of the main reasons Conor has gone from strength to strength since he started doing ‘Conor Sketches’ in 2016 is that he keeps his material fresh and in step with cultural trends. His gift for mimicry is, obviously, also a big part of it. From Joe Brolly to Joe Loughnane, José Mourinho to Donald Trump, Conor is able to adjust to his audience with a huge variety of hilarious material.

Given that it’s on the Golf Channel, The Conor Moore Show obviously has a strong golf focus. Conor’s ability to take off Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods is the stuff of legend, but will other characters – Trump, for instance – be making an appearance?

“I’m trying to convince them [the producers] on that one. But he’s a touchy subject. I’d often hear ‘Maybe we’ll do him next week – maybe not just this week’,” he said.

“It’s so polarised. When I do him in live gigs over here, I never make him political. There’s no point, because half the room would just hate you then. So I kind of have the craic with him on it, and I’ve had good experiences as a result. But sometimes you’d be told, ‘Nah nah nah, don’t do him’.

“I am trying to incorporate different things. Take the first episode for example. I asked myself, ‘What’s everyone doing right now in the lockdown?’. Lots of people are watching Netflix, and a lot of people are watching Tiger King. And everyone’s on Zoom. So I did a Zoom call with the golfers talking about Tiger King!

“The show is golf-focused, but it’s not, as they say over here, ‘Inside Baseball’, where other people wouldn’t understand it. So I’ll be trying to incorporate different characters.”

While prepping for new content, or keeping an eye on the global battle against Covid-19, Conor admits that he has forsaken the news – particularly certain American news networks. “It only annoys you,” he says.

“When all of this started, I’d sit down to watch Fox News and CNN. It’s funny, because they’re both talking about the same things but giving you two vastly different perspectives on it.

“Fox News will tell you that Donald Trump is a brilliant man, and that only for him we’d all be dead from coronavirus. And then you turn on CNN and they’ll nearly tell you that Donald Trump is the man who invented coronavirus and has infected us all!

“There’s just two polar opposites, and no middle. Whereas in Ireland, with RTÉ, if Leo Varadkar has a good day, he had a good day, and if he has a bad day, he had a bad day, and they’ll address it accordingly.

“Over here though, there’s a madder propaganda machine at work.

“No matter what Trump does, CNN will criticise him, even if he has a good day. And on the flip side, Fox News, no matter what he does wrong, they’ll tell you he did everything right. I got some laughs out of it for a few weeks, and then I just got fed up and turned it off!”

Despite being infuriatingly polarised at times, America is, for Conor, still the Land of Opportunity. It has broadened his horizons to the Nth degree. For example, not for one second, even a few years ago, did he think he’d end up as a partner in a New York pub business.

Some months ago, he was part of a consortium which purchased a bar on 38th Street, just off New York’s 5th Avenue, then trading as The Australian. Since then, the bar has had an Irish and largely golf-themed makeover, and has been christened The Westbury, NYC.

It was all set for a grand opening on St Patrick’s Day.

“I had a flight booked for New York on Paddy’s morning, and we were going to organise all the lads and go for a session. RTÉ were over doing a show with the Two Johnnies, and they were going to knock in to us. The bar is on 38th Street, off Fifth Avenue, so it was right off the parade,” Conor said.

“About a week before Paddy’s Day, we were going to do a few dry runs and just open the place up. Then we said we’d leave it for a while, and we assumed things would calm down; it’ll be grand.

“But about three days before Paddy’s Day we made a call that we wouldn’t open it. Then a couple of days after, New York went into lockdown.”

The new bar is in a prime location once the hoped-for bounce comes after Covid-19 has abated.

“It’s only around the corner from Grand Central Station, so you’d be getting that after-work crowd. It’s a good little bar. We put a bit of a golf spin on it. We have a little snug in there called the Claret Snug!” said Conor.

He is in partnership with the owners of The Long Hall bar, which is on nearby 34th Street, under the shadow of the Empire State Building. “They called it The Westbury, and the original bar is The Long Hall, so I think they like to name it after spots in Dublin,” he continued.

“I lived beside The Long Hall when I was in New York last year. I was in an apartment, on my tod, so The Long Hall was like my living room. Everyone’s from Ireland, so it felt like home.

“So the lads told me they were buying a pub up near Grand Central and asked me if I wanted to come in. I was really optimistic in the beginning that the bar was going to start off strong – but who could have foreseen what happened in the space of a couple of weeks? The whole world has changed.

“There’s no panic in it though. If things get back to normal at the end of the year, we’d be happy enough.”

Despite US President Donald Trump’s insistence that America will get back to business and normality as soon as possible, Conor thinks it will take a bit longer.

“It could be next year. You could open the doors at some point this year, but I think everyone’s going to be wearing masks. They’re going to slowly bring the economy back, and I don’t think people gathering in large crowds is going to be done until there’s a vaccine,” the Mullingar man continued.

“I don’t see any championships being played this year. Golf has a chance, because it’s a non-contact sport played in wide, open spaces. It’ll be done without supporters. I don’t believe the Ryder Cup will be played – you can’t really do it without supporters.

“A big source of income in bars in New York, especially where we are, would be corporates coming in doing parties after work. You could have those midweek. But until there’s a vaccine, I can’t see companies doing anything like that.

“Who would have thought something like this could happen? It’s like stuff you see in a movie. My brother Darren is up in New York, and a few of my mates. They’ve said how weird it is to walk down the streets of Manhattan, and they’re completely empty. It’s like an apocalyptic movie – like ‘I Am Legend’ or something. We’re living in this now.

“Ireland seems to be doing a great job. You’re always going to have a few being disobedient, but generally it looks like the country acted as promptly as it could.”

A popular phrase of Conor’s is that he “hasn’t worked a day in four years”. When you love what you’re doing, it never feels like work.

“Since I started the show though, I haven’t had a day off in four weeks!” he laughed. “So I’m keeping busy.

“I chat to the family every day. My girlfriend is in lockdown in Dublin. She’s from Donegal, and can’t really go home. So I’m FaceTiming her every day.

“The mad thing is you spend half the day on the phone. People ask if I’m lonely over here on my own, but between the show and FaceTiming everyone, you wouldn’t even think about being lonely! Thank God we have a bit of social media. It’s a blessing to have it.”

Conor was delighted to hear from his Golf Channel colleagues that Irish sign-ups to Golfpass hit the roof in the run-up to his new show’s debut on Tuesday last – and he was thrilled by the reaction from home.

“Obviously friends and family are going to tell you it’s brilliant, but it’s heartwarming to see people from home responding to it. Especially people I kind of know or only met once – everyone was writing to me telling me they watched it, and loved it,” he said.

“Without people from home getting behind me from day one, I wouldn’t be where I was. Anytime I do anything, the support I get from them is unbelievable.”