Comedian Tadhg Hickey: ‘Even when it’s a problem, drink and drugs are so much fun. Why else would you do them?’

The former presenter talks frankly about the highs and lows of addiction, and his rocky road to recovery

Tadhg Hickey. Photo: Steve Humphreys

Dónal Lynch

The hardest part of writing a memoir, Tadhg Hickey observes, is that in looking back on your life, you have to “feel the feelings all over again”.

Amid all the carnage and trauma of his new book, A Portrait of the Piss Artist as a Young Man, perhaps the most difficult part to write (and to read) deals with a Christmas Eve, a few years before his drinking came to an end.