Actress and comedian Aisling Bea has revealed she was left in tears after the host of a panel show once told her *shut the f*** up” for interrupting him.
The Kildare native, who didn’t reveal the panel show she was on, explained how the unnamed host told her that a panel show was like having a “daddy and everyone was the little brothers.”
The anonymous panel show host then told her that when daddy was talking, “little girls should shut the f*** up.”
She said: “I was doing a job and it was early enough in my career and it was a sort of panel show environment and I thought I had a good time but I hadn’t totally learned the hows and ways of it but there was also still no real version of it at the time.
"I was one of the few girls who was ever on these shows and like it wasn’t a big one or anything like that, but I was on one and it was a sort of difficult record. It didn’t sort of flow or play but we were all doing our job and it was grand enough.
“But I remember I went to speak at the same time as this guy and I didn’t know that I was supposed to and still don’t know this fact because I refuse to learn it that when a man goes to speak and I go to speak at the same time that he would get, like, first dibs.
“Because I didn’t grow up with any men, the sound of a man speaking does not say ‘be quiet’ to me.
“It does nothing to me, to my body, I’m like 'Oh you’re still here’.
“But anyways in the bar afterward I was still kind of being like ‘Oh I hope I did a good enough job’ and I could see he was sort of annoyed and I wanted to fix the situation and I was like ‘Oh, hope I did ok’.
“And maybe he was just having a bad day or whatever and I was like ‘ Oh, you know if you have any tips or anything for next time’ and he was like ‘well, the thing about a panel show is, Aisling, you know, the host is like the dad and you’re sort of like brothers but when daddy or whatever is talking, the little girl should shut the f*** up.
“And remember going, ‘Oh God, sorry, oh God sorry, yeah sorry, sorry, sorry’ and I just apologised, apologised, apologised and I went up to my hotel room and I bawled my eyes out,” she told Doireann Garrihy on her Laughs Of Her Life podcast, which returns on Monday with a new season.
The 37-year-old said the next day after the incident she felt like giving up her TV career over the blunder.
“I felt so whacked,” she said.
But she added that “now the little girl earns so much more money than daddy”, adding: “I’d say my tax bill alone is probably what they earn in a year.”
She added that she’s left “laughing” when she looks at her bank balance nowadays.
