Black Paddy

Nigeria to Dublin, by way of the street

Fabu D was born in Nigeria and has lived in Ireland for more than two decades, a span he put on the record in an Irish Times interview published on 20 August 2024. Local press in Tyrone has given his name as Fabio David; he worked online as Fabu-D for years before the Black Paddy handle overtook it, and both names still appear in Irish coverage.

He finished university before turning to comedy, and by the summer of 2023 had hosted more than 150 events — the MC and host work that pays an act's rent while the act is being built. His own account of the start is plainer than that: he began performing on Dublin streets, without a stage or a booker, and let the footage travel. The arithmetic worked quickly. By late July 2023 his Facebook page carried over 500,000 followers, and clips of his encounters had been reposted by LadBible, Unilad and WorldstarHipHop — an audience assembled outside the comedy industry rather than through it. That sequence shapes the current tour: the ticketed stand-up arrived after the following, not before it.

The part of the story he keeps in

The August 2024 Irish Times piece is the most direct account of what preceded the videos. In it he describes three years of homelessness in Ireland, heavy cocaine use and a period of suicidal thinking. He credits the arrival of his children with ending the drug use and the nightlife that went with it — 'she stopped that for me', he said of his daughter.

He returned to the same ground on the Irish Times podcast Conversations with Parents, published on 19 November 2024, where he spoke to Jen Hogan about losing his father at fourteen and calling the result a complicated grief. At that point his son was five and his daughter three; he and their mother were co-parenting while still sharing a house, an arrangement he said had been hard. He keeps both children off his social media deliberately, on the grounds that they should choose whether to appear in it when they are old enough to decide.

He has also been explicit that the racism aimed at him grew sharper after he started working as Black Paddy rather than Fabu D. In September 2026 he called out a racist comment left under one of his Donegal rally videos as disheartening, and his stated aim as a father is to teach his children self-acceptance and to love the colour of their skin. None of this is kept separate from the comedy; the show currently on sale is built out of it.

The work is a map, not a record

There is no album and no filmed special. The body of work is video: street interviews, cultural commentary, travel vlogs and Guinness reviews across YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook, with the touring series Black Paddy Visits… as the spine. The method is repeatable and almost entirely unscripted — arrive in a town, walk into the pubs and shops, open with 'what's the story?' or 'what's the craic?', and let whoever answers carry the scene.

Two 2023 instalments show how it runs. He reached Strabane on Wednesday 5 July 2023 as part of an Up North run, having picked the town from the volume of emails demanding it; he said it looked friendly and known for its music, set himself the twin objectives of local fish and chips and a traditional pub, was shown around by the Strabane comedian Eamon McElwee, and photographed himself with the town's statue of Flann O'Brien. Three weeks later he was in Ardoyne in north Belfast, doing Crumlin Star, the Shamrock, the Ardoyne shops and the Ardoyne youth club, and calling it his new favourite place and the source of the cheapest Guinness in Ireland.

The pattern explains the appeal and the risk in equal measure. The videos are warm by construction and the welcome is the content, which makes the series a fairly accurate running survey of how a Nigerian-born man is received in small-town Ireland — including the times the reception is the story for the wrong reasons. He was removed from a pub during one such visit, an incident that circulated widely in Nigerian media.

Where things stand, late 2026

He is represented by Bold Management, which puts his combined following above 1.5 million and files him as a digital creator for the UK and Ireland market rather than as a touring comedian. Alongside the videos he takes paid bookings for weddings and corporate events, and releases limited merchandise runs timed to St Patrick's Day.

The live career is newer and deliberately small-step. On Saturday 1 November 2025 he headlined an autumn comedy takeover at the Liverpool Irish Centre on Boundary Lane, on a bill with Oliver Bowler opening and Eddy Midgley and Jamie Sillifant also on, with tickets through Skiddle. The hour-long solo show How Did I End Up Here? then had its Dublin outing at the Laughter Lounge on Eden Quay on Thursday 12 March 2026, billed as one night only, and sold out.

That sell-out is what the current date rests on. The Belfast show at Limelight 2 on Ormeau Avenue, on Friday 22 May 2026 at 7pm, is listed as the show heading north after Dublin, and is at present the only Black Paddy date on sale through Ticketmaster Ireland — filed, as stand-up on that platform often is, under the Arts and Theatre heading. His own shows page carries no further dates and points visitors at a newsletter; his glistrr profile is empty. In July 2026 he gave a long interview to the Digg Podcast on Irish humour, racism, fatherhood, faith and what sits behind the viral videos, which remains the fullest recent account of his thinking in his own words.

What the stand-up actually is

How Did I End Up Here? is sold on autobiography rather than on the video catalogue: life, love, family, arguments about nothing, cultural confusion, and the business of doing one's best in a country that laughs along and occasionally laughs at. The framing used on the listings — questionable decisions turned into laughs, therapy at a lower price — sets expectations closer to confessional club stand-up than to the roaming, crowd-led format of the videos.

One caveat is worth stating plainly: no professional review of the solo show has been published. The evidence for how it plays is the Dublin sell-out, the Liverpool headline slot and the decision to add Belfast rather than a broader tour. Anyone judging it on the videos should expect a different discipline — one man, a microphone and his own material, in front of an audience that already knows his face.