{"id":2326236,"date":"2026-03-13T10:20:21","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T10:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2326236"},"modified":"2026-03-13T10:20:21","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T10:20:21","slug":"irish-comic-david-nihill-used-storytelling-to-overcome-stage-fright","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/irish-comic-david-nihill-used-storytelling-to-overcome-stage-fright\/","title":{"rendered":"Irish comic David Nihill used storytelling to overcome stage fright"},"content":{"rendered":"

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If David Nihill was a philosopher, his credo might be \u201cI digress, therefore I am.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, Nihill is a comedian. Kind of. \u201cI don\u2019t know if I think of myself in those terms,\u201d says Nihill, whose \u201cCultural Appreciation\u201d<\/a> special has 2.5 million views on YouTube. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t even call mine comedy specials.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nihill is a conversational storyteller who rarely even moves on stage. \u201cI don\u2019t know how to do performance,\u201d he says, \u201cbut I do know how to talk.\u201d<\/p>\n

His current show, \u201cTaking Tangents,\u201d which takes him to Irvine, Pasadena and Los Angeles from March 13 to 17, is a wide-ranging collection of tales, with some material shifting from show to show. We\u2019ll come back to it, but first, a few tangents.<\/p>\n

Growing up in Ireland, Nihill, 47, struggled to learn, hampered by dyslexia \u2014 \u201cI came in the lowest five percentile in the whole country of Ireland for spelling, and I didn\u2019t even spell my name right on the test\u201d \u2014 and an aversion to math. He was made to feel inferior because of his difficulties. \u201cI was 100% in the \u2018I am a moron\u2019 category,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Nihill was shoved into a vocational program and most of his friends dropped out of school. He stayed in, but even when his father offered to buy him a Super Nintendo for certain math scores, Nihill fell short. His father bought it for him anyway, he says, \u201cbut I sold it and bought myself a motorcycle even though I was 15 and not legally old enough to drive.\u201d<\/p>\n

He finished high school and became a poorly paid, overworked apprentice electrician. That was enough to motivate him to go to college; there, he figured out how his brain worked and how to learn. He even developed a passion for reading: His last show, \u201cShelf Life,\u201d wove in dozens of book recommendations.<\/p>\n

During our conversation via video after a New York show, I\u2019d ask one question, then follow Nihill as he ambled through his personal history. He started with a story about jumping off a cliff in Greece and shattering his leg \u2014 a part of \u201cTangents\u201d \u2014 then going to Australia, before he stumbled into a master\u2019s degree studying business back in Ireland (despite botching his application). A new friend there took him to his first-ever comedy show in Glasgow \u2014 there are even tangents within his digressions \u2014 before getting him a job with Enterprise Ireland, the government\u2019s investment fund to boost Irish business overseas. That landed him in San Francisco, part of the \u201cCultural Appreciation\u201d special. He left to pursue business opportunities in Mexico but, due to a hurricane, somehow ended up in Chile, spent a year wandering north toward America, and then scored an internship in Colombia.<\/p>\n

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Nihill is a conversational storyteller who rarely even moves on stage. \u201cI don\u2019t know how to do performance,\u201d he says, \u201cbut I do know how to talk.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Jim McCambridge)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

Eventually, Nihill\u2019s story works its way to his current career, which began by accident. \u201cIt was never a dream or a goal,\u201d he says. A friend in San Francisco had suffered a spinal cord injury and Nihill wanted to run a fundraiser, but dreaded public speaking.<\/p>\n

That leads to a minor diversion, back to a college public speaking course in which Nihill was so terrified that he got drunk before his presentation and introduced himself \u201cas an exchange student from Southern Yemen.\u201d<\/p>\n

In San Francisco, he started doing live comedy to overcome that fear. Meanwhile, his business background led him to see an opportunity and he created FunnyBizz, a company and conference where comedians help teach business leaders, like Kevin Harrington of \u201cAs Seen on TV,\u201d how to use humor to communicate. The business bankrolled Nihill\u2019s early days in comedy.<\/p>\n

While Nihill has lived in America for years, most recently in Los Angeles, he remains passionately Irish, which shapes his shows in several ways.<\/p>\n

In Ireland, \u201cyour nature is to just default to funny stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

He says American stand-up is about taking a topic and making it funny, aspiring for a five-minute joke-filled late night TV spot. Irish comedians say, \u201cThis thing happened to me and I think that\u2019s funny. Let me just repeat it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new show is named after \u201ctangents\u201d so that Nihill can go down different rabbit holes each night if he wants. \u201cMy head is always doing 60 different things,\u201d he says, and he loves keeping his storytelling \u201cfree form and unfiltered,\u201d whether he\u2019s in a pub or on stage (or, apparently, in an interview).<\/p>\n

The new show\u2019s subjects will be familiar to Nihill\u2019s fans: his parents, his foolish behavior (there are drunken college-age antics in a story that somehow eventually weaves in White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt) and Irish culture. \u201cThere are few countries that punch above their weight in social justice and social impact,\u201d he says, and he always looks to draw connections with other cultures around the world. But the observations and connections he draws are new.<\/p>\n

In New York, he added a bit about how 35% of Jamaicans have some Irish roots, quipping \u201cimagine how fast they\u2019d be without that\u201d (in a nod to legendary sprinters like Usain Bolt). But for Nihill, that joke only works if it\u2019s couched within the larger context of the cross-cultural connections, including the fact that Jamaican-born political activist Marcus Garvey drew upon the Irish independence movement for inspiration.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere has to be some social value to doing it,\u201d he says, although he\u2019s quick to add his comedy isn\u2019t overtly political. \u201cMy dad\u2019s a teacher and that lives inside of me. Humor can be the ultimate tool for social activism. I am deliberately getting people to expand their minds in understanding these connections. I want comedy that makes everyone feel good and maybe learn something.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Nihill <\/picture>\n
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Nihill on stage at Hollywood Improv.<\/p>\n

(Jim McCambridge)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

That \u201cfeel good\u201d part is central: While he discusses his mother\u2019s death from cancer last year, he leaves out a beautiful but poignant part of their final days together. \u201cI\u2019m deliberately avoiding that,\u201d he says, because he wants to maintain an upbeat mood.<\/p>\n

He digresses to tell me the story, however, and it\u2019s literally longer than this entire article\u2019s word count. \u201cA very long answer to a very short question,\u201d he admits, before swerving into a tale about back when his father had overstayed his visa in New York \u2014 it involves his dad being interviewed on celebrity.land, getting into a bar fight and avoiding deportation because the immigration officer hailed from County Cork and Nihill\u2019s dad burst into a song from there, earning him a six-month visa extension. The humanity of that scene \u201cin contrast to a 5-year-old being dragged off to a detention center\u201d may end up in a future Nihill show.<\/p>\n

Nihill loves sharing the stories that come from observing and listening to people but says he doesn\u2019t love the spotlight, which, he admits, makes comedy an odd career choice. He says he prefers telling stories to just a few people.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith comedy, the best part for me is that before a show I eat half a chocolate bar and I leave the other half in the hotel room,\u201d he says. \u201cAfter the show, I get to finish it. That\u2019s true happiness.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.latimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If David Nihill was a philosopher, his credo might be \u201cI digress, therefore I am.\u201d Instead, Nihill is a comedian. Kind of. \u201cI don\u2019t know if I think of myself in those terms,\u201d says Nihill, whose \u201cCultural Appreciation\u201d special has 2.5 million views on YouTube. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t even call mine comedy specials.\u201d Nihill is a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2326237,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2326236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Irish-comic-David-Nihill-used-storytelling-to-overcome-stage-fright.com2Ff82F592F9b9d56bc40c2ab68ce665da9.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2326236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2326236"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2326236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2326238,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2326236\/revisions\/2326238"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2326237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2326236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2326236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2326236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}