Foil, Arms and Hog are one of YouTube’s most famed sketch groups, but their stage work creates their most meaningful – and surreal – moments.
One moment stands out as their most memorable, when a drug-addled man got on stage with them armed with a £10 note. But what happened next was truly unexpected.
Comprised of Irish lads Sean Finegan (Foil), Conor McKenna (Arms) and Sean Flanagan (Hog) who met at University College Dublin, the trio have long been an Edinburgh Fringe highlight, packing our the festival’s biggest venues.
I saw them 10 years ago in a dingy 100-person Edinburgh bar venue when they were climbing the Fringe’s reputation ladder, and now they’re performing at the London Palladium.
Expect mega amounts of silliness, incredibly on-point characters, and lots of food-throwing. Yep, really. Audience interaction is a given, as my boyfriend found last night when he found himself on stage in front of 2,000 people. Be warned.
‘We think what we do on stage is far better than what we do on the internet,’ said Foil – who got his moniker from being the group’s ‘comedy foil’ – in a chat with Metro.co.uk.
On stage, the trio don’t deliver the same sketches you might have seen on YouTube. (Their video skits are so far-reaching, locals in places like Mumbai and Vietnam sometimes stop them on the street.)
‘We handed out flyers in the rain for decades, until our YouTube videos eventually took off,’ explained Hog – so named for his tendency to ‘hog’ the limelight.
‘You can be extremely famous on the internet and you wouldn’t even know it.’
But it’s live performances that the trio hold their best memories. One particularly disturbing fan interaction lingers in their memories; a years-long mystery that was only solved for poor Hog during our chat.
‘Well, I had a man come up to me on stage,’ began Hog. ‘Some narcotics were probably involved in his behavior.’
‘He like ceremoniously slowly walked on the stage from the far side – really slowly, very purposefully – stood in front of me, and did a sort of military about turn to face me.’ Naturally, Hog was just a little bit terrified.
‘I was like, “Oh, my God, where’s this going?” It was also weird that I just didn’t react, I was just staring.
‘And then he took out a tenner, and he popped it into my breast pocket, did another about turn and then left the venue.’
Wild – but it gets even wilder. While Hog has been sitting in his terrifying memory for all these years, it appears Foil and Arms had known the reason behind this unsettling interaction all along.
‘But a year later what happened?’ nudged Foil, who explained: ‘We met his friends a year later when they came to see our show, and they were like, “Do you remember our friend who did this?”‘
The fans explained how their memorable friend was indeed on drugs – and having a ‘really bad trip.’
‘He knew he had to leave the audience and knew he had to get out,’ explained Foil. ‘But then he thought, “I don’t want to insult the performers, because I was enjoying it. I liked them. I don’t want them to think I don’t like the show.
‘Giving [Hog] the tenner was him trying to show that he was enjoying it, and was sorry he was leaving. He was mortified [after].’
Hog reflected with a cackle: ‘I didn’t know that bit. That explains it, that makes sense now.’
Despite their clearly dedicated theatre fanbase, sketch comedy is somewhat out of the mainstream world of TV. Why?
Hog reckons it’s because while a sitcom can carry characters through multiple episodes, the ones in sketch comedy tend to disappear. It’s a pretty ‘inefficient’ way of making comedy, he admits.
Foil thinks it’s because it’s hard to keep sketch comedy groups together. With 16 years under their belt, these three have some sort of record, I’m told.
‘Sticking your emotions deep down, and just funneling it all,’ is the secret, Foil quipped.
‘Bottling up your rage and resentment,’ added Hog, with a smile in his eyes.
Foil, Arms and Hog have two more London Palladium shows – tonight, and tomorrow – before the rest of their UK and European tour. Get tickets here.
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