Donal Coonan
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Donal Clifford Coonan (born December 15, 1981 in London, England) is the presenter of Channel 4's web show thisisaknife.
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[edit] Presenting
Donal often appears in peculiar places, often outdoors, when presenting the show. He is often found halfway up a tree, or in an odd location using a telephone (which is a pale green corded dial phone, circa. 1960) such as in a milk float, in a public bathroom, a rooftop and beside a railway line (the auditory problems caused by which were the focus of a gag in an episode dated 24 August 2006).
Donal has performed many pointless experiments on the show, such as attempting to drink a pint glass of his own tears, trying to get farmyard animals to imitate his body movements and making earmuffs out of dead bumblebees. Donal has also submitted an entry to Pants Off Dance Off, a US TV show made by television company Fuse TV, which featured him dressed in an outfit made entirely of newspapers - but stopped short of removing his own - obviously newspaper-ball-padded - underwear.
He has also pioneered the game of Stare Assault - a game in which the two players have a staring contest while listening to a surreal monologue, specially pre-recorded onto an MP3 player by their opponents. His first opponent was Matt Edmonds. Donal won. In another episode of knife, Donal won against Bob "The Rock" Cooper, the world rock paper scissors champion.
[edit] Advertising work
In December 2006, Donal starred in an advert for the board game Taboo as a man in a sauna.
It is suggested that he also appeared in an Argos advertisement for Christmas 2006 as a child with long hair, but a post on the knifewriter blog claims he does not star in it. [1]
[edit] Younger life
Viewers of thisisaknife haven't been told much about Donal's past, but in the episode dated 5 October 2006, we see footage of Donal aged 15, dancing dressed as his depiction of God. He wears a black sports jacket, with a Brylcreem type product in his hair, with the word 'God' written in sequins on his back. The clip is compiled with music from Xillion The Rock Opera.
Also, in an episode dated 2 November 2006, we see Donal at his fifth birthday party playing musical statues, where he is jokingly told he was an adopted child.
[edit] Own work
Donal has starred in some of his own work on the internet. Getting Away From It [2] is a video made by him and Matt Edmonds, in which Donal, the depressed man, discovers what life really thinks about him.
Donal produced Different Lives[3], in which a mystery interviewer named Jonah Joseph meets different people up and down the country. All the characters are played by none other than Matt Edmonds.
Donal's own YouTube account is superdonal.
[edit] Projects
[edit] Bee Earmuffs
Coonan held an event in Trafalgar Square, London - in which he asked hundreds of members of the public passing Nelson's Column to search for Tupperware boxes containing dead bumblebees, or collect any bee, so he could fuse them together to create a pair of "beemuffs".
[edit] Improv Everywhere
Donal, being influenced by projects performed by Improv Everywhere, organized a stunt in Greenwich on 12th November 2006. This involved following unsuspecting members of the public in a line around Greenwich Park. This was filmed and was shown on the thisisaknife show on 16th November 2006. In all around 30 people turned up to help with the stunt and a party was held at the Gate Clock Pub in Greenwich after the stunt.
[edit] Extreme Bed
While being pushed around in a hospital bed, dressed fully in pajamas, Donal asks members of the public if they would sleep next to him. On his first outing, Donal did get a few people to sleep with him. Sadly they were either male or in a hurry. Donal got the idea for this project when he was influenced by extreme sports - but the main influence was Extreme Hammock, in which the "athlete" involved sets up their hammock in a dangerous place, like over a motorway, and rest there.
[edit] Painting the clown red
To see how easy it was to do two things at once, Donal proclaimed that he would present the rest of the show dated 19th October 2006 while painting a clown red. The clown (Matt Edmonds) left at the end scene of the show with the word "Nob" written on his back in bright red paint.
[edit] Jonah Joseph
The unseen character Jonah Joseph has cropped up around Coonan's work regularly. Coonan usually uses the name Jonah Joseph as an online disguise. Some references to Jonah Joseph include:
- when Coonan posted a letter to Jonah Joseph on an episode of thisisaknife. After postage he said he had posted personal details to local thieves and is expecting to be the victim of identity theft shortly.
- as an admin member on Knife Writer.
- as the interviewer and producer of Different Lives.
[edit] Blum
Donal has a love/hate relationship with film director Ed Blum, the director of the movie Scenes of a Sexual Nature. In the episode which featured a plug to Blum's movie, Donal asked two Swedish competition winners from Blum's website to ride Donal like a horse, using the Daddle, a saddle which recent fathers can wear on their backs so their children can ride them. Ed has a video blog, so he recorded his response to the episode, in which he (jokingly) said "Dirty little man, getting them to ride you!". Donal responded in a bout of explicit words. And in his own words, in a statement to Blum himself, Donal "awaits your response to my response to your response to our initial free publicity campaign to your film!" Blum's rather soggy reply to all this can be seen here, here or here in which he says he will take Donal to court for traumatizing Tove, the girl he asked to ride him, who is apparently in hospital and is starting to speak again. He also asks Donal to "call it a day and leave it at that". Donal then responded in an episode of thisisaknife by denying the claims of traumatizing Tove and agrees to Blum's treaty, but first performed the last attack - The Sugar Blum Fairy.
[edit] WebCameron
Donal's work of Blind Dave, based on Conservative Party leader David Cameron has been featured on the WebCameron site - Cameron's vlog - despite Donal attacking Cameron by stating he's "a dick" and that he can't understand that his Blind Dave doesn't love him. Dirtyshoe on knifewriter claims that "it's as if they don't watch this stuff". In December 2006, Donal submitted a question to Cameron's blog, and asked all his MySpace friends and blog-readers to vote for it. [4] Because of this, it was voted as one of the top 5, and David read it out on his vlog a week later.[5]
[edit] Trivia
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- Donal drives a first edition black Toyota Yaris, which in one episode he broke the right rear window, hotwired the car and pretended to torch it. All this happened whilst he was dressed as a priest.
- Donal presents thisisaknife in Kentish Town.
