Wine O’Clock: tales of Tinder, teenagers and turning 50

Cork-born actress and comedian Norma Sheahan is no stranger to Mullingar Arts Centre – in fact, she jokes that the town may know more about her love life than her own teenagers do.

Norma, who has an impressive CV, having appeared in many of Ireland’s best loved films and TV show – Kneecap, The Young Offenders, Moon Boy and Bridget and Eamon – to name but a selection, returns to Mullingar this Saturday, October 11, with her hit comedy show Wine O’Clock. The two-hour stand-up set explores life after her amicable divorce, parenting teenagers, the perils of Tinder when you last dated in the 1990s, and why hitting 50 (as she is set to do next year) feels more like hitting the reset button.

“It’s about my journey of brushing out the cobwebs after a 24-year marriage,” says Norma, who grew up on a farm in Cork, trained with RADA in London and who now lives in Dun Laoghaire.

“I was useless with technology – the last time I dated there were no mobile phones. Getting on Tinder in your late 40s is like dating for dinosaurs!” The show, which sold out in Mullingar last year, blends frank autobiography with improvisation. “It changes depending on the crowd,” she admits.

“Sometimes there’s audience interaction. We had a ball in Mullingar last year and it was very lively. In other places, they’d be quieter and you’d just plough on and do something slightly different, but Mullingar tends to look for the craic!”

In general, Norma’s Tinder experiences were not as awful as some of the stories we hear: “Luckily for me I was just looking for a bit of craic and for the company and it worked perfectly and I wrote a show out of it. I could have written 10 shows out of it to be honest: I could have written a show out of everyone I met.

“Some of them were quiet enough and some fellas would be lunatics.

“It was an eye-opener for me really, to be honest, because I suppose when you’re in a relationship for 24 years and before that there was no mobile phones and you’re from a farm in the middle of nowhere in Cork, you’re a bit backwards going into it all, so there was a lot of them you wouldn’t even meet because they’d be lunatics and they’d be coming up with ideas I couldn’t even tell you about.

But most of them were lovely people. So yeah, it was interesting.”

Norma’s ‘Wine O’Clock’ is at 8pm this Saturday, October 11; tickets at €25 from 044 9347777 – and as the poster suggests: “Pull on your sparkly Spanx, gather the glitzy gals and pop your cork!”