NEARLY a decade after being cancelled by the BBC, The Hole In The Wall Gang's satirical sitcom Give My Head Peace lives on as an incredibly popular live show. Ulster's most dysfunctional family, Ma (Olivia Nash), Da (Tim McGarry), Cal (Damon Quinn), Uncle Andy (Marty Reid), Billy (Michael McDowell) and Dympna (Alexandra Ford), will return to the stage next week for their annual tour of the north - a now traditional route which begins in Lisburn at the Island Hall on Tuesday February 17 and culminates with a six-night stand at Belfast's Grand Opera House from March 9 to March 14.
This year, the Gang will be poking fun at 'on the runs', expensesfiddling MLAs, local elections, Royal orders for reformed Republicans and other headline-inspired items.
Audiences will be chilled to the bone by the politically ambitious Uncle Andy's aspirations to become "Jim Allister with sex appeal" and his fierce lust for Arlene Foster, while hard man turned man of God, Pastor Begbie (Paddy Jenkins), will be welcoming one and all of the correct political persuasion to his Loyalist Advice Centre, a 'one stop shop' for all flag protest-related enquiries.
While there's already a basic storyline in place, the topical Give My Head Peace live show is still being tweaked by core writing trio Tim McGarry, Damon Quinn and Michael McDowell as the highly productive golden goose that is Northern Ireland's political machine keeps laying eggs of comic potential.
Rehearsals double up as an annual reunion for The Hole In The Wall Gang players, some of whom have somehow managed to attain dangerous levels of respectability in other areas of life - as McGarry (50) explains. "It's always great fun to get the old Gang back together again," enthuses the north Belfast funnyman, who also performs a stand-up set during the show's intermission. "We hardly see Marty because he has a proper job at Queen's as a systems analyst. He comes out of work once a year to slick his hair down and put on a greasy moustache and sideburns." Indeed, Uncle Andy's mischievous Elvis-loving 'true blue' has long been one of Give My Head Peace's most popular and instantly recognisable characters, thanks to his ridiculous voice, indestructible ego and penchant for shameless stupidity. "Marty's very lucky, because nobody recognises him when he's not in character," reveals McGarry. "I've had people shouting 'here Da, where's Uncle Andy?' at me when he's actually been standing right beside me.
"On the other hand, all I have to do is dander in and put a flat cap on my head while poor Marty's sat getting make-up put on and his hair dyed."
The inspiration for Uncle Andy's entertainingly cartoonish loyalist caricature goes right back to the show's early days as Perforated Ulster, a BBC Radio Ulster-based sketch show which set out to parody 'Troubles-themed' drama and its tropes - an ideology neatly summed up by early skit title Too Late To Talk To Billy and Paddy About Love Across The Barricades and The Terror Triangle. "It was partly an impersonation of the Mark Mulholland's character in Graham Reid's 'Billy Plays'," reveals McGarry, who co-founded the Hole In The Wall Theatre Co with Quinn and McDowell while the trio were studying law at Queen's University. "But Marty also added a wee bit of a twang, a swagger and the love of Elvis. As soon as he starts to speak you kind of instantly know everything about the character. "At the moment Andy wants to be a 'Unionist unity' candidate but he's also very excited about the new Fifty Shades of Grey movie. He thinks he's Jamie Dornan, so he might well turn up topless and ask for volunteers to be his Ana Steele."
Perforated Ulster made the leap to TV with a 1995 pilot episode called Two Ceasefires and A Wedding before being commissioned as a weekly sitcom with the new title Give My Head Peace.
The BBC finally dropped the show 12 years and 72 episodes later, but the public's enduring affection for Da and co quickly led to the live version of the show.
Now one of the most bankable theatre tours of the year, it's a triumph of popular appeal over critical acclaim.
"We never had one good review the whole time we were on TV," McGarry chuckles. "But we all still get stopped in the street daily by people asking after those characters. There's a truth to them that people respond to. "For example, the PSNI keep stopping Michael McDowell to tell him Billy The Peeler is doing a great job."
When not treading the boards as Da, the former St Malachy's pupil has enjoyed success with his semi-educational live comedy show Tim McGarry's Irish History Lesson and the popular documentary series Tim McGarry's Ulster Scots Journey (a new language-focused series is currently in the works).
Having produced acclaimed docu-dramas like Betrayal of Trust and SOS Titanic, McGarry has also kept his hand in comedy via stand-up gigs, a revival of the Perforated Ulster radio series, regular appearances on topical BBC NI panel show The Blame Game and his role co-writing BBC NI's farcical civil service satire The Number 2s with McDowell and Quinn.
However, McGarry hasn't ruled out the possibility that the Gang might reprise their most iconic roles on the small screen. "The BBC were great to us and I've always thought they could easily bring the show back as a yearly special," he says. "There would be a huge audience for that, as the success of the live show proves."
With a certain Republican centenary looming, 2016 could be the ideal year for a TV-based revival for Give My Head Peace, even if Da's hapless patriarch is currently questioning his loyalty to his beloved Gerry. "Da thinks Sinn Fein have sold out," reveals McGarry. "In fact he's worried that Martin McGuinness will soon get a knighthood and become 'Sir Marty Sell-Out of Bogside' or 'Lord Lickspittle of Londonderry'."
Never say never, never, never.