IT’S been 15 years since the release of The Rubberbandits’ iconic number one hit single Horse Outside and, as 2025 begins to draw to a close, one half of the duo, Blindboy Boatclub is showing no signs of slowing down after winning a major international documentary award.
This year has seen the author and documentarian perform to sold-out gigs in Edinburgh and Melbourne with The Blindboy Podcast, while describing his sell out appearance at Limerick’s University Concert Hall as “a massive honour”.
Earlier this month, Blindboy was named Best Documentary Presenter at the Grierson Awards for his RTÉ One Programme, Blind: The Land of Slaves & Scholars, proving to be the cherry on top of an impressive year.
Speaking to the Limerick Post following the win, Blindboy said receiving the accolade was a huge honour.
“Knowing it’s the first RTÉ documentary in over 20 years to do so makes it all the more meaningful. The old post-colonial wounds open up when you get a pat on the head from the Brits,” he quipped.
However despite the prestige attached to such a victory, he says the win “isn’t so much about the external accolade” but instead a sign of encouragement for him to keep doing work he loves.
“What matters most to me is the process: the act of making the work, of exploring questions, of engaging deeply with the subject. I try not to tether my sense of worth to the award itself”, he shared.
“This award doesn’t mean that my work is any better or worse than anyone else’s, art isn’t a competition. I compete with myself, I can only be the best version of me. In that way, the honour becomes less a destination and more a notch on an ongoing journey of creative self-actualisation.”
The documentary has been described as offering a fresh perspective on the legacy of early Irish Christianity, which, according to Blindboy, “already had a highly developed oral culture”, but ultimately questions the arrival of writing as a technology.
“I was interested in how early Irish monastic scholars didn’t simply import Latin literacy, but refashioned it to fit an indigenous, highly formalised oral narrative and poetic tradition: from early experiments with systematic word-separation and distinctive punctuation in Insular manuscripts, to written texts that begin to mimic the rhythms and structures of oral narrative,” he explained
As for future documentaries potentially in the pipeline, Blindboy neither confirms nor denies any new content, saying that while he always has “several pots on the hob, some of them might get turned into dinner, while others will burn and get f**ked in the bin”.
Even a cursory glance on Blindboy’s website would suggest 2026 is set to be just as busy for the Limerick icon, with a number of gigs already lined up at the University Concert Hall, Vicar Street, the Opera House in Cork, and the Waterfront in Belfast.
He will also begin work on his next book and commence a tour of Germany and Spain, before rounding off the year with “a big tour of England, Scotland, and Wales”.
‘You could hear the bang as far as Parteen’
As the beginning of December and all the festivities attached to the month approaches, I’m curious to find out whether or not Blindboy considers himself a Christmas person.
He reflects on Christmases gone by, in particular the rise and fall of Ireland’s tallest Christmas tree, erected in Limerick City in 2009.
The 100ft ‘green tree’ made from recycled steel became subject to a major rescue operation after it was tugged into place in the middle of the River Shannon.
Blindboy believes the rise and fall of the infamous Christmas tree was “a gesture of municipal optimism in the face of accelerating economic collapse” at the time.
“We were all miserable and terrified of what was to come. All the lads were emigrating. Shutters up and down O’Connell Street. Cash for Gold Shops. That tree, with its lights in the Shannon, was to be our one bit of hope. And then it broke free of its moorings and crashed into the Shannon Bridge.”
“You could hear the bang as far as Parteen. It crumpled and leaned against the whistling railings like the bones of an elderly swan. The image of it comes to me at night with the Leaving Cert dreams. Nothing can top it, pure Curse of St Munchin stuff,” the author shared.
As for the festive season itself, it is the simple things that Blindboy garners the most enjoyment from, including what he describes as the “pleasure in the violence of the Christmas cracker”.
“I purchase not one but three boxes. The inexpensive, the sensibly priced, and the faintly aspirational. Then, seated and inwardly reverent, I progress through them in a single sitting, each crack a tiny thunderclap in the quiet parlour, each paper crown a fleeting coronation.”