Michael D Higgins’s dogs, Cillian Murphy’s blue eyes and Enya’s voice: Patrick Freyne’s 30 real Irish icons

Man falling on the ice

On January 8th, 2010, on an RTÉ report about some inclement weather (that’s what the news was like back then), a passerby was captured on camera falling over quite dramatically on the ice. It struck a chord with the nation. It had everything: drama, pathos, someone falling over on the ice. Who was this man, his plans in disarray, his legs akimbo, possibly sustaining a skull fracture while in a battle with man’s ancient enemy, ice? A legend, that’s who. He became the subject of memes and a national search for his identity. Where was he going? From whence did he come? We may never know. No matter. Perhaps he was not truly a man, but a feeling we had in our hearts. For are we not all, in a sense, man falling on ice?

Matt Damon, but only when he’s holding a Supervalu bag in Dalkey

In darkest 2020, while we were all stuck at home thanks to Covid, a photo began doing the rounds, of Hollywood superstar Matt Damon at the Vico swimming spot in Dalkey, holding his groceries in a Supervalu bag. We instantly took him to our hearts. Are not celebrities just like you and me? Do they not bleed? Do they not also go to Supervalu when they need their bits? Do they not also find themselves on occasion, through no fault of their own, in Dalkey? It was clear to us that Matt Damon had come to Ireland, not just to shoot a film called The Last Duel, but because, as we had suspected, we are great. Yes, it was a simple patriotic equation that even a child could understand. Superstar actor Matt Damon without a Supervalu bag? Rich, out-of-touch celebrity, hideous to the eye. Matt Damon with Supervalu bag? Wise, handsome, a bit of craic, in tune with the people of Ireland, probably a reincarnation of St Patrick himself.

The screaming statue of Luke Kelly down near the Convention Centre

In the 1980s, our psychosocial dysfunction manifested itself in religious statues moving and weeping all over the country. Now, as a more secular nation, our malaise has manifested as the huge disembodied head of genius balladeer Luke Kelly, looking for all the world like he’s just seen the property prices in this newspaper, having an ould scream down near the Convention Centre. He’s just screaming what we’re all thinking.

Claire the quantity surveyor from Room to Improve

Celebrity architect Dermot Bannon has had his time in the sun, literally, given his love of big windows. He has been bending the laws of physics and finance for some time now, imagining increasingly more open plan spaces, light flooded. Eventually I imagine him showing his design to a bickering couple, only for them to turn to him and say: “This is a field, Dermot.” Look, I love Dermot Bannon. Arguably reviewing his oeuvre has been my life’s work and greatest joy. So no, I have not come to bury Dermot (he’d hate it; he would much prefer being placed in a glass coffin on a plinth), but to praise Claire Irwin the quantity surveyor who is, as far as I’m aware, the world’s only celebrity quantity surveyor. This is because as a people we are deeply unwell. She is basically the Roadrunner to Dermot Bannon’s Wile E Coyote and should have her own show, where she goes around ruining people’s fun with a budget (another beloved Irish trait).

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Dermot Bannon

Who am I kidding? Of course, I’m putting Dermot Bannon on the list. He literally invented houses.

The President’s dogs

Michael D Higgins’s massive and delightful Bernese Mountain dogs have the legislative power of TDs. The nation mourned when we lost the elder hounds Bród and Síoda. Our hope now lies in Misneach, who is, and this is rare in political figures, snugly and adorbs. I suspect these ginormous hounds are actually secret service agents in dog suits – but I still love them.

Enya

She sounds like a ghost and lives in a castle. The synthtastic recluse is a total ledgebag and Orinoco Flow is a coded prediction of the future. David McWilliams uses it to calculate when recessions are going to happen.

CMAT

Big-voiced, tragicomic chanteuse, Ireland’s own Dolly Parton (sorry Philomena Begley), possibly haunted by Enya’s ethereal exact opposite voice. I want to write a sitcom in which they share a flat.

Denise Chaila

Look, while I’m on the subject of brilliant Irish vocalists who I want to see move in together Golden Girls-style, I’m throwing Denise Chaila into the mix.

Marty Whelan and the Tattoo of Marty Whelan

Somewhere out there is a man named Phil who has a photorealistic tattoo of lusciously mustachioed, rich-voiced broadcasting hunk Marty Whelan on his thigh. He lost a bet, he says, but he won at life, because now there’s a photo of Marty Whelan interviewing Phil’s tattoo. This is a wondrous thing: TWO Marty Whelans. I am gibbering with delight. I gaze from man to tattoo and tattoo to man and I cannot tell which is which. It’s like the end of Animal Farm but cooler, because it’s about Marty Whelan.

Roy Keane

Annoyed sports man (darts?). Did something that tore the country apart once (chess?). I’m a bit vague on it (lacrosse?). That’s all I know. Sorry. I felt I needed to have one sports person and Roy is from Cork, objectively the best city.

The stereotypical AI-drawn Irishman from the Epic ad

In a well-meaning publicity wheeze, Epic the Irish Emigration Museum asked an AI image generator to show them a picture of an Irishman. It produced a cursed image of a man with a ruddy scowling face, a green “I love spuds” T-shirt stretched over a large belly, a pint of Guinness in one hand and the other raised in an aggressive fist. They were appalled. “This is not us!” they cried, and put him on posters and buses around the city, or else they used his AI-generated cousin, a really angry, shouting leprechaun man. The only problem is, I’m pretty sure it is us. I think I went to school with him. Yes, while Epic were appalled, the rest of us said, “Touché, AI overlords, you have our number.” I mean, look at the big Irish head on him. It’s undeniable.

Cillian Murphy’s piercing blue eyes

The most famous eyes outside the big googly one owned by Sauron, Murphy’s steady gaze is the wonder of these islands (specifically: Cork). The cheekbones above which those eyes sit like ocular sapphires are also pretty noteworthy. They’re like “eye shelves”. Okay, I feel like I’m taking him apart like Mr Potatohead now so I’ll stop here and note that he is also an excellent, multi-award winning actor.

Former RTÉ newsreader Anne Doyle

Anne Doyle presented her last news reports back in 2011. Since then, we’ve had Trump, Brexit and Tubsgate. Coincidence? I think not. The post truth, post-Anne Doyle world is in sore need of her calm, elegant composure, perfect helmet of hair and firm grasp of the facts. It is said Anne Doyle will return when Ireland has most need of her. And so it was that last year she was responsible for a collection of Irish ghost stories called Tales of the Other World (the Other World, presumably, being Montrose).

The Gleesons

The talented actorly, writerly rabble that sprang from the Zeus-like head of voluble patriarch Brendan. They’re everywhere, the Gleesons. Everywhere. I was in the garden there and there was a bunch of them out there, doing their acting. I shook my broom at them. “Shoo,” I said. “Shoo.” They did not shoo.

The Cardboard Cutout of Barack Obama at Obama Plaza

In 2011, former US president Barack Obama and his wife Michelle came to Ireland and went to the home of his ancestors in Moneygall, Co Offaly, a moment which brought several things together – the immigrant experience, the triumph of hope over cynicism, and the union of two great nations. What better way to commemorate this than to name a petrol station after him (it’s arguably a sly reference to the US’s oil wars) and have road-weary tourists have their picture taken with a presidential cardboard cut-out? It’s to our credit he didn’t have it taken out with a drone strike.

Derry Girls

The only education many British people have had about Northern Ireland. Lisa McGee’s brilliant regionally specific schoolgirls are now the subjects of a mural in Derry. Looking at the Tory government, it’s not clear how much of this history lesson they understood. I wouldn’t be surprised if Derry Girls is now a proscribed organisation.

Agent to the stars Noel Kelly at the Dáil Committee

Not all the icons are here for good reasons. In many ways, agent to the stars Noel Kelly at the Dáil Committee represents a triumph of the human spirit, a solid Irish tradition of wheeling and dealing that’s arguably at odds with the public good. I mean, many of the people at the Dáil committees are members of parties that once loved this kind of stuff. “I was just trying to get the best deal for my client!” is, incidentally, one of the things my worst nephew says in response to criticism.

Barry Keoghan

“Come here young fellow me lad and I’ll ruffle your hair and give you a shiny sixpence,” is what I think whenever I see roguish, twinkly-eyed thespian Barry Keoghan. He has been great in Dunkirk, Banshees of Inisherin and Saltburn. And then, more recently, he appeared in the nip in a Vanity Fair cover shoot. I can’t help feeling like this was his plan all along, the scamp.

The many stuffed animals in the Natural History Museum/Dead Zoo goggling out of the Victorian cabinets at us

Look at them there, the lads.

Sally Rooney

Yes, there are lots of great Irish writers out there right now, but few have found themselves so central to the culture. The extended Rooneyverse includes novels, high-quality television adaptations and thoughtful essays on important things she cares about (the housing crisis/the suffering in Gaza). She’s also indirectly responsible for people who are in Trinity for the wrong reasons and lots of opinion pieces about young people by writers who are folding their arms in their byline pictures. Also, there’s a new novel, Intermezzo, coming this September.

Marian Keyes and Tara Flynn giving advice to Britons on Radio 4

I possibly spoke too soon about other writers not having the same cultural power as Sally Rooney. Over on the BBC, wonderful comedian person Tara Flynn and brilliant novelist person Marian Keyes are literally advising our former colonial overlords on their life choices with their show Now You’re Asking. “So you didn’t need a friend like me. Now you come and say, ‘Don Corleone, give me justice,’” to quote a postcolonial studies professor.

Phil Lynott, who was a charming genius, but also all the nice Dublin taxi drivers I’ve met who say they knew him

Not many people were at the early Thin Lizzy gigs, but all of them apparently became people who want to tell me about Phil Lynott as they drive me around the city. I appreciate this, to be honest. Fair dues to Phil and to them. The man chiselled an early crack of light into the theocratic gloom.

Daniel O’Donnell

I have a copy of the laid-back country crooner’s book, Living the Dream, inscribed from the man himself “from one gentleman to another”, so I’m not even going to debate the matter. He’s in. The man’s a saint.

Sheamie, the wise, mulleted child from last year’s Toy Show

The Toy Show has a grand tradition of featuring legendary rural youngsters who talk like ould fellas, discuss agriculturally themed toys and secretly want to knock RTÉ down to build a corrugated iron shed or a block of Section 23 apartments in 2008. I have two things to say about this: 1) mullets are cool now. 2) I would not object to having Sheamie run things for a while.

Kneecap

An admittedly very talented Irish language psyop designed by the king to stimulate the opinion column industry. They actually went to Eton.

Ayo Edibiri

After years putting up with perfidious Albion claiming our celebrities as their own, it made for a refreshing change when the brilliant actress, writer and comedian Ayo Edebiri began riffing about playing the donkey in Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin. Look, we’d be happy to take her. A passport is in the post (do we have that power at The Irish Times?).

Mr Tayto

Mr Tayto appears on my television and I bite my fist in frustrated agony as I realise my wife will never look at me like she looks at Mr Tayto. Look at him there with his come-hither dots for eyes, that elusive Mona Lisa smile and the yellow pallor of a man who knows how to live. He’s very stylish in pinstriped yellow trousers, daring red jacket and black porkpie hat, very like the one Walter White wears (for aren’t Cheese and Onion Taytos the crystal meth of crisps?) What is Mr Tayto? Is he a potato, a potato-themed human man or an alluring but cursed human-potato hybrid? It doesn’t matter. I love him. I want him to run for president. I want him to host The Late Late Show. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here by saying we should help him take back his theme park by force (it’s now called Emerald Park). This is now the official Irish Times position. There’ll be an editorial on the subject next week.

Paul Mescal

Mr Tayto’s cousin. In Ireland, Paul Mescal’s main appeal is that he took all of our sisters to the debs. Yes, he was a revelation as an actor and an all-round charming fellow, but the bigger revelation was that a lad we all knew at school would be the subject of such international erotic inquiry. The church really did a number on us. If the international Mescal fans ever went to a GAA match they would collapse to the ground gibbering, “So many Paul Mescals”, and then there’d be no more memes.