Camden Fringe: Banker Tailor Teacher Guy: Neil O’Dwyer on Reinvention

The storyteller behind the sewing machine, on banking, Savile Row and teaching maths through fabric

On the way in you’ll clock the sewing machine before anything else. Neil O’Dwyer‘s solo show at Camden Fringe, Banker Tailor Teacher Guy, takes its title from the shape of his own working life: three years in banking, an unplanned switch to tailoring on Savile Row, a long stretch of “fun jobs” (lingerie-making, film extra work, a hundred sets), and now full-time teaching, sewing lessons included. He performs regularly on the Irish, London and Amsterdam storytelling circuit, and is bringing this hour-long version to the Water Rats on the 3rd and 4th of August.

I wasn’t able to get along to Banker Tailor Teacher Guy in person this run, so I asked Neil to talk me through it instead. Neil’s answers are below (edited only for typographical corrections).

You’ve had around 50 different jobs before landing on teaching, what made this particular story, banker to tailor to teacher, the one worth building a whole show around?

When I say I was a tailor that seems to be the one job that takes most people by surprise. And that was the biggest moment of change out of all the jobs I’ve had. And moments of change are what make for a good story. I was always creative as a child but I was also good with numbers so I thought I’d be happy working in a bank forever. But then I moved to London, met up with an old friend who had become a tailor, and within 5 minutes of talking to him I was already thinking of leaving the bank. Giving up on a degree, a masters, and 3 years of banking wasn’t an easy decision though. Especially to become a tailor, something I had no knowledge of or experience in. So, I thought about it for a year and a half before I let myself go for it. But once I made the decision to try and live a creative life through my job, everything opened up. I didn’t hesitate to try something new anymore and somehow landed in fashion, costume, theatre, lingerie making, and in a hundred films and TV shows as an extra. All the fun jobs came after I quit banking. I wasn’t making much money but I was having so many great experiences and every day was different, not in the typical way like people say when you love your job you never work a day in your life, but literally every day was different: I could be an extra on Monday, a barista Tuesday, a tailor on Wednesday, managing a fashion label Thursday, a mystery shopper on my lunch breaks, etc. But none of that was as meaningful as a day working in an underprivileged school in the run up to Christmas. That changes you. So the show is about searching for creative work at first but then needing something more meaningful. And then finally trying to keep being creative while working as a teacher, which isn’t desirable nor is it looked that favourably upon.

Savile Row tailoring and teaching maths seem like opposite worlds. Is there a thread that actually ties your work together, or is the contrast itself the point?

No, there’s not much tying those two worlds together. I was a maths genius as a kid, I’ve worked in so many different industries and generally pick things up quickly and find most jobs easy (except teaching, that was difficult). But I’m nothing compared to the guys who quit school at 16 to go apprentice with a tailor. They are like wizards, everything they do looks effortless. Meanwhile all my book smarts counted for nothing in that industry, I was like a fish riding a bicycle. My brain is fairly evenly split between being good at maths and being creative, so I tried the creative jobs and then I tried the maths job. Funnily enough though, the first proper maths lesson I taught to a year 10 top set group was about how to make a pattern for a skirt, and I threw in angles and ratios and everything they’d worked on recently but it was way too elaborate and only one out of 34 students got the answer. So I’ve stayed away from that type of thing since. You could talk about inches and centimetres and fractions and relate it to a measuring tape but there are easier ways of doing things.

The blurb mentions missed chances in love and work. How much of the show is comic hindsight, and how much is something rawer underneath?

I’ve always aimed to write in a comedic way. There are 7 stories in the show and they are all about interesting life choices and going into industries that most people don’t go into. There’s inspiration there for people who are unsatisfied with their job and would love to try something new, but there’s always funny moments running through all the stories. I feel like I’m wasting people’s time if they aren’t laughing. But there is some raw stuff there behind the laughter too, relationships ending because I wanted to stay in London to become a tailor, plus some potential relationships not happening for different reasons. That’s my speciality in love, missed opportunities. And the final story is about working in special needs schools, and teaching autistic children how to sew, that can pull at the heart strings a little.

You perform storytelling nights across Ireland, London and Amsterdam. How does a full solo show differ from a five-minute story slot, what does the longer form let you do that a shorter set doesn’t?

At the storytelling nights I go to, the time allowance is usually 7 to 10 minutes and my biggest problem is always trying to cut my stories down. 7 minutes is about the bare minimum for me to get a meaningful and funny story told on stage. Now though the challenge is putting all the stories into a one-hour show and not rushing through them. People like gaps between stories to reflect a little bit so I’m trying to pause more but I’m pressured to get everything out in an hour so it’s a balancing act. But the longer form lets me make full circle moments that are satisfying and tie everything together, and to add connections between the stories so you feel like it’s all the one thing. And I get to work with props. Now I’m sewing on stage and I do that mainly in between the stories and people tend to like the sound of the machine. And I can make full circle moments with the props and clothes I made. But my stories feel much more impactful when they are told individually so the challenge is to keep the energy up for me and the engagement up for the audience.

If someone in the audience is themselves mid-reinvention, maybe stuck in a job that isn’t quite them, what do you want them to walk away with?

That experiences are worth more than money. That your job could be incredibly absurd and it’s not rational that you’re doing it every day. When I last worked in the bank I could finish my “duties and responsibilities” by 10 and have to sit there pretending to work until 5pm. That could have been my life for 15 more years and it has been for a lot of my friends. But instead, I’ve done work I’ve wanted to do, learned new skills, met thousands of people, and made so many stories. This next part is especially for creative people: if you are creative and stuck in an office, it is probably slowly killing you, and you owe it to yourself to see what it’s like surrounding yourself with creative people for once. I just spent the last 3 weeks learning how to be a clown in France and felt so incredibly grateful to be in a room with 30 other creative people every day playing, experimenting, standing on a stage and trying to make people laugh while being completely vulnerable. It doesn’t matter what it cost, I owed it to myself to experience that, if even just for a few weeks. Give yourself something like that, you deserve it.

Banker Tailor Teacher Guy is at the Water Rats on the 3rd and 4th of August at 7.30pm, as part of Camden Fringe 2026. Tickets are £10, with places limited to 100 per show, a properly fringe price for a properly fringe venue.

Check out all our Camden Fringe 2026 interviews: