O’Carroll-Kelly creator has UL audience in hysterics

Limerick Independent

The audience was left in hysterics last Wednesday evening when Paul Howard, author of the infamous Ross O’Carroll Kelly series of books and columns, rolled into town to read extracts from his latest bestselling novel, ‘This Champagne Mojito is the Last Thing I Own’.

The UL Jean Monnet Lecture Theatre’s austere surroundings were transformed by colourful promotional posters stating, ‘The Ego Has Landed,’ and, ‘This poster is basically, like, morkeshing my new column, roysh’. And the writer’s ‘lecture’ generated more laughter than would be heard in that venue in a week of college classes.

For the uninitiated, the character of Ross is a satirical depiction of a wealthy, self-obsessed, South Dublin-dwelling rugby player. The stories, written in diary form, mock the “materialistic nonsense” that people in Ross’s social circles place so much importance on. He described one of the main events that influenced the creation of the series ten years ago. In a previous incarnation, Howard had worked as a freelance sports journalist. He went to cover a Leinster schools rugby match, and witnessed a father giving out to his son for not playing that well that day. The son’s response was to tell his dad to shut up and open his wallet. It was witnessing this scene, of children treating their parents like walking ATM machines, said Howard, that prompted him to parody the lifestyles of Ireland’s affluent classes.

Some readers observed that his latest offering is a somewhat darker, comparing its mood with the last in the Harry Potter series. Howard admitted this, noting that in some ways the ups and downs of Ross’ life could be seen as mirroring the path of the Irish economy. However, in an ‘interview’ Ross gave on his website, all comparisons with the bespectacled wizard end there: “I’m five books in and I’ve scored more birds than Enrique Iglesias and his old man put together. And they call Harry Potter a wizard?”