Ireland

Ireland: Osborne; Baloucoune, Ringrose, McCloskey, O’Brien; Crowley, Gibson-Park; O’Toole, Sheehan, Furlong, McCarthy, Beirne, Conan, Van der Flier, Doris (capt).

Replacements: Kelleher, Milne, Bealham, Murray, Timoney, Casey, Frawley, Aki.

Scotland: Kinghorn; Graham, Jones, Tuipulotu (capt), Steyn; Russell, White; Schoeman, Turner, Z Fagerson, Williamson, Gilchrist, M Fagerson, Darge, Dempsey.

Replacements: Ashman, Sutherland, Rae, Craig, Bradbury, Horne, Rowe, Jordan.

Kelly: Let’s try and get to know you a little bit more away from the pitch. Firstly, I always like asking: what were you like as a youngster?

Nathan: If you asked my mam or dad, they’d say I was a headcase! I was just a bit itchy, I always had to move. I could never sit still and relax. I always had to do something. So they had to burn me out. I always wanted to be in the grass or playing football, just running around to drain my energy. I think I was hard work for my parents, I’d say it like that!

Kelly: It sounds like maybe it was quite a chaotic household. How many siblings have you got?

Nathan: I’ve got an older brother, a younger sister and a younger brother. I think it was just a constant battle of me trying to beat my older brother. It was just so hard because the age difference. We all had training at different times and they’d be running out of the house and you’d forget your boots or they’d be taking two cars in different directions. It was a bit of a carnage, but you wouldn’t have it any other way.

Kelly: Are you still close now?

Nathan: Ah yeah, of course. I talk to them more or less every day on the phone. Every chance I get to go home I will. My mam goes to every game – home and away. She watches them all.

Kelly: So she flies over? Are they still in Ireland?

Nathan: Yeah, they live in Ireland, so she flies over and she goes everywhere to be fair.

Kelly: Home and away?

Nathan: Yeah.

Kelly: That is some commitment!

Nathan: I know, I tell her, ‘listen, you don’t have to’ and she’s like, ‘no, I want to’.

Kelly: Not everyone’s got a son that’s a Premier League footballer though… I kind of get the appeal!

Nathan: Yeah, I don’t think that she watches the matches. I think that she just looks at me the whole game and sees what I’m doing. She’ll come after, ‘Why were you scratching your leg so much in the match?’ … ‘I don’t know. How do you know that?’

Kelly: Aw, bless her, that’s really sweet. How would your best friend describe you?

Nathan: I’d like to think that they’d describe me as the same lad I was growing up. The first thing that would pop in their head… they wouldn’t say I’m a footballer. I think they’d just say, ‘ah Nathan, he’s just a good lad like… he’s a bit of craic and he comes out when he can’ … but I don’t think that they’d look at me as a footballer, which I really enjoy. And it just means when I’m with them, I can just be myself and just enjoy being one of the lads.

Kelly: So if the manager gives you a day off, what would you do?

Nathan: It depends. If it’s a weekday and it’s good weather, I’ll play golf with a few of the lads here and we’ll get out in the sun.

Kelly: Are you any good?

Nathan: I’m all right. Listen, I can play. I’m not the greatest, but I’m not the worst.

Kelly: Who do you play with here?

Nathan: The group right now is me, Keane Lewis-Potter, Kris Ajer, Hakon Valdimarsson. It’s a good crew because we have a lot of players and we do a little Ryder Cup-style.

Kelly: Oh nice!

Nathan: So it’s staff v players.

Kelly: Wow!

Nathan: Yeah, because there’s a lot of players. We did that last year. We did 18 holes in the morning, we went for some lunch, and then we did 18 holes in the afternoon and it was really good fun. Players won, so thank God!

Kelly: Oh, that was my next question. Have you got any secret hobbies?

Nathan: I like cooking, so that’s something. When I cook, I think I just forget about everything. I’m just in my own little zone and my head kind of goes quiet, which is nice.

Kelly: Are you a good cook?

Nathan: It depends who you ask…

Kelly: If I was asking your girlfriend…

Nathan: Yeah, she’s actually saying: ‘Ah, you’re getting better at cooking!’

Kelly: That’s a bit patronising!

Nathan: Yeah, and I was like… ‘Does that mean I was bad?’

Kelly: Fair enough. What do people get wrong about you the most?

Nathan: Maybe I get a bit of stereotypical: ‘Ah, he’s just a footballer.’ Maybe they get that and then think, ‘oh, he’s actually pretty nice to talk to… he’s all right… he’s kind of relaxed… he’s chill’.

I always want to be just a good person as well. That’s important for me, just to be a nice person, a good person, a caring person. As much as I want to be the best footballer I can ever be, I also want to be the best person I can be and I think that’s something that I always strive towards as well.

Kelly: What’s the toughest moment of your career been? Has there been a tough moment?

Nathan: I had one game for Brentford against Wolves and I had two mistakes in the game. I gave away two goals, we lost 3-1 or something like that and I got battered off the Wolves fans because I’d just left Wolves and the fans had so much to go against me, so much stick. I was like, ‘oh my God, this couldn’t have got any worse’.

To be fair, that night Thomas Frank rang me and he was like, ‘listen Nathan, that’s probably the worst game you’ll ever have in your career’, and he’s like, ‘so it’s only up from here’.

Whether you’re Irish by blood or Irish just for the day — you want to head to the best spots in the UK to ring in the festivities — and that’s where we come in.

St Patrick’s Day is just around the corner and it’s the one day of the year people really like to let loose and celebrate.

Every year on March 17, people all over the world outside of Ireland — but especially the UK — come out in hordes to celebrate St Paddy’s Day. We’re talking lively parades, a sea of endless green, and booze. Lots and lots of booze.

Whether you’re Irish by blood or Irish just for the day — you want to head to the best spots in the UK to ring in the festivities. And that’s where we come in.

It goes without saying that the capital cities of Belfast in Northern Ireland and Dublin in the Republic of Ireland are must-visits if you’re looking for the ultimate St Paddy’s celebrations, but for those of you who can’t make it all the way to Ireland — don’t worry, we got you.

We’ve compiled a list of the best cities in Britain where you can celebrate St Patrick’s Day this year, so whether you’re planning to head out with a group of mates or go on a solo adventure, make sure to give these spots a whirl.

Let the Guinness and the good times roll.

London

It’s no surprise London is on this list. The UK’s capital city hosts a massive St Paddy’s Parade every year, and this year it’s going to be bigger and better than ever.

March 15 will see the official parade weave its way from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square, with Irish music, pageantry, dance troupes, floats, and marching bands on display, along with a free-for-all party in Trafalgar Square for the public to enjoy featuring live music, comedy, food and drink.

It’s not just the parade that’s a draw — the weekend closest to March 17 always sees a flurry of activity as London’s thriving Irish community comes out in full force — along with just about every other person looking for a fun time. The Guinness Open Gate Brewery has also recently arrived in the city, hosting a line-up of craic, comedy, and electric music.

Look no further than London for a truly epic time.

Birmingham

The UK’s second largest city is undoubtedly one of the best to celebrate St Patrick’s Day in. In fact, it was one of the first cities in the country to begin hosting St Patrick’s Day celebrations, with a dedicated parade for the day since 1952.

With endless welcoming pubs, restaurants and clubs, there’s no dearth of exciting ways to celebrate the Irish holiday in Birmingham.

While the city’s annual St Patrick’s Day Parade has unfortunately been cancelled once again this year, there’s still more than enough to do in Brummy to get the celebrations going.

Revellers can instead head to St Patrick’s Family Fun Day at the Irish Centre on March 15 which will see a host of activities and entertainment including live bands, music and plenty of food and drink.

Or you can just head down to one of the local pubs — because parade or no parade, St Paddy’s Day is always a rip-roaringly fun time in Birmingham.

Manchester

There’s no way Manchester wasn’t going to be on this list. The city is all set to host its Irish parade for Paddy’s Day on March 15 and revellers can enjoy foot-tapping live Irish music, mouthwatering food, drinks and much more.

Expect to see “plenty of bright costumes, lively parades, and fun events happening across the city”.

In fact, the 10-day Manchester Irish Festival has been running since March 7 and will go on till March 17, with the parade on Sunday being the event’s highlight.

Liverpool

Liverpool is another UK city that’s always a good time on St Patrick’s Day. Irish pubs, karaoke bars and top-class entertainment means if you’re in Liverpool, it’s going to be a hell of a time.

Those hoping for a more peaceful and religious St Paddy’s Day can make their way to Liverpool Cathedral which is Britain’s biggest.

The 10th Annual Liverpool St Patrick’s Day Parade will take place at the Old Irish Centre on March 17, Tuesday. The anniversary parade promises to be “the biggest and best yet — with music, dance, colour, and Irish pride filling the streets. Bands, floats, and community groups are all welcome, and the whole city is invited to join in the festivities”, as per the official website.

If David Nihill was a philosopher, his credo might be “I digress, therefore I am.”

Instead, Nihill is a comedian. Kind of. “I don’t know if I think of myself in those terms,” says Nihill, whose “Cultural Appreciation” special has 2.5 million views on YouTube. “I wouldn’t even call mine comedy specials.”

Nihill is a conversational storyteller who rarely even moves on stage. “I don’t know how to do performance,” he says, “but I do know how to talk.”

His current show, “Taking Tangents,” 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’ll come back to it, but first, a few tangents.

Growing up in Ireland, Nihill, 47, struggled to learn, hampered by dyslexia — “I came in the lowest five percentile in the whole country of Ireland for spelling, and I didn’t even spell my name right on the test” — and an aversion to math. He was made to feel inferior because of his difficulties. “I was 100% in the ‘I am a moron’ category,” he says.

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, “but I sold it and bought myself a motorcycle even though I was 15 and not legally old enough to drive.”

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, “Shelf Life,” wove in dozens of book recommendations.

During our conversation via video after a New York show, I’d 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 — a part of “Tangents” — then going to Australia, before he stumbled into a master’s degree studying business back in Ireland (despite botching his application). A new friend there took him to his first-ever comedy show in Glasgow — there are even tangents within his digressions — before getting him a job with Enterprise Ireland, the government’s investment fund to boost Irish business overseas. That landed him in San Francisco, part of the “Cultural Appreciation” 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.

Nihill is a conversational storyteller who rarely even moves on stage. “I don’t know how to do performance,” he says, “but I do know how to talk.”

(Jim McCambridge)

Eventually, Nihill’s story works its way to his current career, which began by accident. “It was never a dream or a goal,” he says. A friend in San Francisco had suffered a spinal cord injury and Nihill wanted to run a fundraiser, but dreaded public speaking.

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 “as an exchange student from Southern Yemen.”

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 “As Seen on TV,” how to use humor to communicate. The business bankrolled Nihill’s early days in comedy.

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

In Ireland, “your nature is to just default to funny stories.”

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, “This thing happened to me and I think that’s funny. Let me just repeat it.”

The new show is named after “tangents” so that Nihill can go down different rabbit holes each night if he wants. “My head is always doing 60 different things,” he says, and he loves keeping his storytelling “free form and unfiltered,” whether he’s in a pub or on stage (or, apparently, in an interview).

The new show’s subjects will be familiar to Nihill’s 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. “There are few countries that punch above their weight in social justice and social impact,” he says, and he always looks to draw connections with other cultures around the world. But the observations and connections he draws are new.

In New York, he added a bit about how 35% of Jamaicans have some Irish roots, quipping “imagine how fast they’d be without that” (in a nod to legendary sprinters like Usain Bolt). But for Nihill, that joke only works if it’s 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.

“There has to be some social value to doing it,” he says, although he’s quick to add his comedy isn’t overtly political. “My dad’s 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.”

Nihill on stage at Hollywood Improv.

(Jim McCambridge)

That “feel good” part is central: While he discusses his mother’s death from cancer last year, he leaves out a beautiful but poignant part of their final days together. “I’m deliberately avoiding that,” he says, because he wants to maintain an upbeat mood.

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

Nihill loves sharing the stories that come from observing and listening to people but says he doesn’t love the spotlight, which, he admits, makes comedy an odd career choice. He says he prefers telling stories to just a few people.

“With 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,” he says. “After the show, I get to finish it. That’s true happiness.”