Irish American comedian Des Bishop's Tik Tok post promoting his Edinburgh Fringe show goes viral as he posts an old clip of himself on a Chinese dating show singing the old Irish rebel song "Come Out Ye Black and Tans".

New York-born comedian and Ireland’s own Des Bishop gave a rousing rendition of the Irish classic “Come Out Ye Black and Tans” on a Chinese dating show, similar to the Fox original “Take Me Out” back in 2014. This week Bishop shared the old video on his TikTok and so far it's had 59.8k likes. 

Bishop, an Irish American who moved to Ireland when he was 14 years old, lived in China for a year back in to learn to speak Mandarin. His six part documentary on the cultural experiment and experience, “Breaking China,” airs on Ireland’s national broadcaster, RTE, back in 2014.

Bishop’s Mandarin seemed pretty impressive as he charmed the girls on the Chinese show, “One out of 100” or “Cream of The Crop,” but it was his heartfelt rendition of the Irish classic “Come Out Ye Black and Tans” (a rebel song referring to the Black and Tans, the British paramilitary police auxiliary force in Ireland during the 1920s) that really got the crowds going.

Here’s the clip:

@desbishop5 Scotland come see my show Mia Mamma at the Edinburgh Fringe 2022. This isn’t in it but I know some of you love this. #comedy #glasgow #scotland #funny #celtic #standup #edinburgh ♬ original sound - Des Bishop

"Breaking China was Bishop’s second language-based cultural experiment. He previously lived in the Gaeltacht in Connemara and learned Irish for his show “In the Name of the Fada” (fada being the Irish word for the accent placed on a vowel – such as á).

"Come Out, Ye Black and Tans" is an Irish rebel song referring to the Black and Tans, or "special reserve constables" (mainly former World War I army soldiers), recruited in Great Britain and sent to Ireland from 1920, to reinforce the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) during the Irish War of Independence. 

The song was written by Dominic Behan as a tribute to his Irish Republican Army (IRA) father Stephen, who had fought in the War of Independence and is concerned with political divisions in working-class Dublin of the 1920s. The song uses the term "Black and Tans" in the pejorative sense against people living in Dublin, both Catholic and Protestant, who were pro-British. The most notable recording was in 1972 by the Irish traditional music group, The Wolfe Tones, which re-charted in 2020.

* Originally published in April 2014, updated in 2022.