‘Dying Hungover’ Man Wants Quiet Train Ride, Meets Worst Nightmare on Board

Traveling on public transport after a big night out is difficult at the best of times, but one Irish man heading home after partying in Galway has the story to beat them all.
Ben McGoohan, 23, from County Kildare in Ireland, was heading home on a two-hour long train from Galway last year, which was packed with people and had all the seats reserved.
When he spied two empty seats, he tried his luck and sat down on one—and moments later was joined by a children’s entertainer: a clown, in full dress and carrying balloon animals, followed by “swarms” of children.
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McGoohan, a makeup artist now living in Glasgow, Scotland, told Newsweek: “When he first came on I thought maybe I was sitting in his seat, [I] hadn’t even really registered the full clown gear.
“Then the swarms of kids started flowing into the carriage, not a parent in sight.”
He thought for a moment that he was “dreaming,” and when texting a friend who didn’t believe him, he took a “sneaky vid” to prove it.
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That video, taken last year, recently reappeared on his Snapchat memories and he shared it to his TikTok page @benmcgoohann, where just days later it has over 126,000 views and 27,000 likes.
It first shows McGoohan staring down at the camera as the clown chats off-screen to multiple children, telling jokes and asking questions, before showing his stripey rainbow suit and clown shoes. One shot captures the side of the clown’s head, which, naturally, is adorned with red curls and a big red nose.
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McGoohan said the clown was “proper entertaining the kids, doing balloon animals, stories, funny voices. Fair play to him.”
But, he added: “I felt like part of the show: dying hungover man in the corner. Felt like all the kids were pure staring at me, too.”
McGoohan had hoped to catch some sleep on the train back home to Kildare, but the children’s entertainer stayed on for the entirety of his journey. He did take a break, however, as McGoohan said the clown “told the kids to come back in 10 minutes, ate half his tuna sandwich, and carried on.”
While forms of clowns can be found as far back as ancient Egypt, the modern circus clown—brightly-colored entertainers—became popular around the 19th century, according to the Smithsonian Magazine.
TikTok users were in stitches at McGoohan’s video, with one writing: “I did not think you meant a literal clown.”
“This would send me over the edge,” another laughed, while one insisted they “would have to move, I absolutely could not.”
And as one put it: “This is the definition of a fever dream.”
McGoohan told Newsweek: “The reaction to the video’s been mad. I thought it would get a few likes but it’s been non-stop since I posted!”
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