Ardal O'Hanlon Quotes

There's some anxiety the 30 minutes before the show starts. But once you step on stage and face the people, everything goes away, and you have fun and enjoy the audience.

Once I'm on stage, the energy of the crowd wipes my nerves away.

People don't know what it's like standing up there onstage, when you have a wall of people smiling at you.

There's such an adrenaline rush for me on stage and having all these people look at you. There's an adrenaline rush from not having things written down, too.

Everyone will clearly be a bit nervous and scared before going onstage. But what I do is just remember that this is my passion. Once I get on the stage and see everyone smiling and looking at me, the joy that it brings to me makes me forget all about my nerves.

I'm actually sometimes nervous right before a performance, but as soon as I'm on the stage I'm like, 'okay, we're gonna rock this baby.'

I don't feel nervous or fearful when I'm on stage.

I'm nervous the first few songs, and then I'm like, 'I got this audience. I'm ready!'

Performing live in front of an audience is such a matter of will - all of those things you can do just fine in your basement, suddenly you have to do them in front of hundreds or thousands of people, and it becomes a different matter entirely.

I can sing in front of people. I can go on a TV show, live, and not feel like I'm going to throw up.

I think I've always been fine on stage - though I get nervous beforehand. But once I'm on stage, all of that goes out of the window.

When I was five or six, I asked to sing at a big family party, and ever since I got up there in front of everyone in my suit - it had a blue collar, like in 'Scarface' - I had the bug.

Playing in front of a crowd is something you learn. You accept it and then you start to relish it.

Very few people know what it's like being onstage looking out at a sea of bodies.

I don't feel like I'm the type of performer who's going to knock your socks off. I'm trying to get over my nerves.

Usually in the first performances I'm completely panicked. And I pull myself together. By the time you get to the end of the play, you really start to have fun.

My first-night jitters are so bad, I can't even hold a tea cup, but once I am over that, I get really into it.

When you're on stage, you're in control. No one can get to you.

It feels like the more I'm out there in the public eye, the more criticism I get. You need to have confidence - that's what it takes to walk out there and sing a song in front of a huge group of people.

Nobody was listening when I learned how to play music. But there's something about being on stage, talking to the audience, looking at them and smiling, that's always been difficult for me. I'm a lot more comfortable now, but there are still moments of awkwardness.

Backstage, I get sleepy, and want to curl up and snooze. I never get nervous, whatever the event. I feel quite detached until I walk on stage, and then some gear inside me clicks and off I go like a wind up doll.

And when I perform on my own tour, I have to talk myself into going out on that stage every single night.

People think I look odd onstage. But the way I deal with being incredibly nervous is by concentrating really hard.

I don't get stage fright, I actually love the energy, I love the spontaneity, I love the adrenaline you get in front of a live audience, it actually really works for me.

As soon as I got up on that stage, and I remembered how welcoming and warming the judges, their presence is, and it was just all uphill from there.