Irish people today are growing up with an unreasonable sense of their own coolness, and I hope these words help counter that. For St Patrick’s Day, here is a brief survey of Irish characters on international television from olden times to the present day.
The Lucky Charms leprechaun
He looks like a perfectly normal guy, but does his accent sound... Dutch? Well, look closer, my friends. Lucky the leprechaun is actually an animated Irishman designed to shill breakfast cereal to Yanks. See his pug nose, green apparel and russet locks. See how he is besieged by avaricious passersby, who assault him in order to purloin his “lucky charms”. This is deeply relatable. “They’re after me lucky charms!” he cries, much like you do yourself. And then he attempts to escape by taking a hot-air balloon or rocket or rainbow to the place where he keeps his gold. It’s probably a PO box in Dublin’s docklands.
Yes, the whole thing is a metaphor for our approach to corporate taxation. “They’re after me lucky charms!” we cry when the EU talks about stopping the delicious flow of inward investment. Incidentally, the people at Lucky Charms were among the first to add marshmallows to the breakfasts of children, so you know they’re total psychopaths.
The expendable extended cast of Irish episodes of Murder, She Wrote
Jessica “Death Bringer” Fletcher frequently found herself in Ireland, because the wonderful actor who played her, Angela Lansbury, wisely had a home in Ballycotton. The Irish episodes have names like The Celtic Riddle and A Killing in Cork (even though nothing bad really happens in Cork). Sadly, Fletcher never went anywhere without death stalking her, and many Irish actors had to bow before the reaper in her employ.
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The Irish RM
Based on Somerville and Ross’s 19th-century stories, this Channel 4 and RTÉ co-production from 1983 follows the adventures of a local resident magistrate (Peter Bowles) and his wily fixer (Bryan Murray) as they engage with the eccentric and contrary Irish peasantry. I like it, but it’s a very specific reading of colonialism that might not fly today. You do come away from it feeling as if the feckless locals really do need Bowles’ firm hand, and not in the usual sexy way.
Chief O’Hara on Batman
An Irish-accented foil for dim-witted Commissioner Gordon on the psychedelic 1960s Batman TV series, Clancy O’Hara – a proud immigrant success story – is a high-ranking public servant who lets a billionaire industrialist have the run of his city. Plus ca change, as they say in Ireland. And what does this billionaire want to do? Does he want to pay a progressive tax rate so that Gotham City might be able to better address deprivation and thus crime? No. He wants to dress in rubber and beat up freaks unhindered by the dead hand of government. Luckily, Clancy O’Hara knows what’s what. He’s seen Eyes Wide Shut. Clancy O’Hara is a close spiritual cousin of Chief Clancy Wiggum on The Simpsons, who has neutralised his accent after years in Springfield but is clearly from Laois.
O’Reilly the builder from Fawlty Towers
O’Reilly (David Kelly), an inept, God-fearing Irish builder, fails to fix the Fawltys’ hotel in good time and is violently beaten with an umbrella by Sybil Fawlty (Prunella Scales). This is fair enough, because (a) beating an Irishman with an umbrella wasn’t an offence in the 1970s and (b) it’s legitimately funny, so I’m uncancelling it. It should be on the Leaving Cert curriculum.
Gerry Adams’s Voice 1988-94
In the late 1980s, Gerry Adams, who is known today largely as a meme creator, developed a strange condition where his words did not sync correctly with his lips on television. It turns out that the voice of the Sinn Féin president was being played by an actor (often Stephen Rea – seriously). This was because of a UK ban on the broadcasting of direct statements by paramilitary groups or their supporters and not because, as Derry Girls suggested, his voice was too sexy.
I still feel that TV creators were missing a trick in not giving Gerry Adams’s Voice further work on nature documentaries and children’s telly (separate from the corporeal Gerry Adams, who had, in all likelihood, other things on his mind).
The Kelly Family
These weird flaxen-haired folk clan had an Irish name, but their skin was too clear, their posture too straight and their demeanour too loving towards one another to fool us. Where was their sneery sarcasm? Where was their inhibiting shame? Where was the fevered scheming about who would inherit the farm? They were Euro-Americans all along. They might as well have been called Celtic Lies.
Eamonn Andrews/Terry Wogan/Graham Norton
These three charming, clever, twinkly eyed men are totally distinct to the Irish (we know their families, after all) but are legally the same person on the other side of the Irish Sea, where a statute says there must be a prominent media Irishman in Britain at all times.
Chief Miles O’Brien from the Star Trek franchise
O’Brien is the only character in Star Trek’s clean and glossy universe who frequently went under the hood of the spaceship to get his hands dirty with space oil. Apart from a lamentable early episode in which he meets a bunch of drunken Irish space colonists with livestock under their arms, O’Brien is a realistic depiction of a space Irishman. He looks like he’s moments away from saying “Jaysus” at all times. Though that might just be the general Colm Meaneyness of the man.
Chewbacca’s family
Every year I watch the Star Wars Holiday Special, a one-off variety show from 1978 that George Lucas wishes we could forget despite it being the best thing he created. In this musical extravaganza, the hirsute and dashing space pilot Chewbacca and his slack-jawed, sullen co-pilot, Han Solo, visit his family to celebrate Life Day. They live in a place occupied by posh soldiers where Chewbacca’s family and pals converse in unapologetic Wookiee growls and groans, commit occasional acts of violence and burst into song. It’s clearly set in the midlands. They’re the Athlone Chewbaccas. Chewbacca was also in Planxty for a bit.
All Saturday Night Live sketches about Irish actors to this day
When the editor of Punch magazine circa 1870 fell through a rift in the space-time continuum and landed in Saturday Night Live’s studio in the 21st century, Lorne Michaels put him to work creating sketches for or about Irish guest stars. Brendan Gleeson, Colin Farrell, Liam Neeson and Saoirse Ronan have all felt the weight of his cutting edge 19th-century satire. In these sketches Irish people are typically depicted as weird, violent, potato-snaffling drunks. This would be reasonable if (a) it was funny (see: O’Reilly the builder from Fawlty Towers) or (b) it was me saying it about people from the midlands (see: Chewbacca’s family).
Cool Irish people
For the past decade we’ve had cool, clued-in Irish characters on UK and US shows like Sherlock (Andrew Scott), Being Human (Aidan Turner), Get Shorty (Chris O’Dowd) and, most recently, Extraordinary, Emma Moran’s excellently funny superpowered romp, which features the Corkonians Máiréad Tyers and Siobhán McSweeney. The new series has a pointed joke about English-accented children (a fair target, in my view).
