Katie Byrne

So it's certainly not nothing.

So they were friends for years before they really entered the kind of live performing and podcasting space that they're in now.

Johnny O'Brien was working as a hurl maker and he was working as a singer in a covers band from Cahir in County Tipperary.

And a short while away in Roscrae, Johnny McMahon was working as a butcher in the local Super Value.

Johnny Smacks, as he's better known, moved to Cahir and rather appropriately, the two of them met training at their local GAA club.

They moved in together, they became very good friends as they were for years and that's where it all started.

It was really the kind of humble rural beginnings that they claim to have are very much legitimate.

Yeah, there you go.

And there they are now, a million euro industry unto themselves.

So it started, as I'm sure many things do in rural Ireland, at the local panto.

They took up gig performing at the local panto and it went down a storm and people in the local area were like, these guys are pretty good at what they do.

John O'Connor, who was the chairman of Care GAA at the time, came to them and said, lads, we'd like you to do a club fundraiser.

And they emceed a kind of Strictly Come Dancing style event, raising money for the local GAA club fund.

And they were successful in doing that.

And a couple of years later, they decided, let's do a podcast.

I suppose the podcast really built up their profile over time.

And my memory of it as well is from the live gigs when they were a little bit of a smaller act.

I would have been in college at the time.

They would have kind of been common enough on that kind of scene of playing in smaller venues, appealing to the college student type scene.

And I think a mixture of having that kind of live performing platform and having their podcast and being able to promote one off the other.