Oliver Callan’s annual satire-fest, Callan's Kicks, has both TV and radio specials airing this week. RTE.ie’s Audrey Donohue caught up with the presenter and impressionist to look back at the year that was and to find out who can expect the biggest kicking on his satirical round-up shows.
It’s rare you get a programme that acerbicly covers topics as varied as AI, Barbie, Joe Biden’s tour of Ireland, the rise of Holly Cairns and the fall of Ryan Tubridy, Taylor Swift tickets wars and Dáithí Ó Sé’s mane, evictions, the Dublin riots, the surprise return of Bertie and The Wolfe Tones.
Presenter, columnist and impressionist Oliver Callan takes it all in his stride and says that people will be "stunned" at the amount of stories that happened in 2023 that will be covered in his annual specials.
Before we get to all that, it’d be strange to look back on the satirical year that was without asking the Monaghan man about his own 2023 and how, professionally at least, it panned out differently to what was planned.
A short-term gig filling in on Ryan Tubridy's radio slot on RTÉ Radio 1 at extremely short notice, in the middle of one of the biggest media furores of recent years, certainly threw a spanner in the works.
"Oh gosh," he laughs. "I mean, I thought it was initially for a day, and then we thought, 'Oh I'm going to be doing next week’ - and then it just became this sort of endless thing.
"It was the most amazing scandal and it was sort of fascinating to be weirdly in the middle of it, without being involved."
The presenter didn’t hold back from addressing the story on the radio show. "I was coming in on the morning going, ‘We've had just like two hours of RTÉ scandal on Morning Ireland – does anyone want to hear any more?’
"But this is also the show that doesn’t have its presenter because of the scandal, so I suppose I just did some ‘awkward comedy’... a bit of awkward sarcasm, and got through it that way."
Describing the announcement that Tubridy would not be returning to RTÉ airwaves as "the second big shock of the summer", a shock that led to Callan getting many on-air miles under his belt one of the alternating presenters of the slot. How comfortable is he now just being himself on radio, as opposed to playing his large array of Callan's Kicks characters?
"You know, I suppose the two big times I filled in for Ryan - the first time I ever did it was March 2020, when Ryan had Covid and then this stint, which happened all of a sudden too."
"I think on both occasions if I had had a week or any amount of time to prepare, I probably would have created some radio persona and stuck woodenly to it, whereas when you have no time to prepare and you don't really know the atmosphere you're back into... I think it's easier to be yourself then."
And luckily, listeners seemed to have taken to the presenter. "There was a good mix of people in the end there. Initially people were thinking, ‘Oh god, what’s it going to be like without him?’, but it’s amazing how quickly audiences move on."
The question on radio fans’ lips - will he be staying on? "I can’t say - I don’t know, so I won’t say anything.
"I’m reluctant to say anything because I looked at the experience of The Late Late Show where people were ruling themselves in or out and I don’t want to get involved with any of that... I don’t have any answers, no."
So that’s that. But needless to say, Callan’s upcoming TV and radio specials certainly won’t shy away from exploring the "many elements" of the scandal, including "Toy Show: The Musical, Marty leaving back the keys to the Renault, the flip flops... the show will open with a song combining Ryan Tubridy’s year with the story of Ken from Barbie, as he goes through RTÉ to say farewell."
As early as January, Callan thought he had predicted what the biggest and most kick-able story of the year would be – but was proven wrong.
He recalls, "I remember saying to the director of the show at one stage, 'You know this Enoch Burke thing… this is now the story of the year - nothing's going to wipe this story out.'" Little did he know then what huge stories were to follow, including the Dublin riots which took place as he and his team were knee-deep filming the show. How does he find the humour in such a horrible story as the O'Connell Street riots?
"For us, it's the political fallout," he says. "I found sketches we did on radio in February talking about how people are scared of Dublin. We actually had a sketch of a fake court reporter being slightly scared and not wanting to hang around the Four Courts any longer because the ‘Nipper Narcos’, as we're calling them, who control Dublin city, would be out any minute."
"How are all these people pretending they didn't know there was trouble brewing in the city when everyone I know was avoiding the city centre for this very reason?!"
"And Helen McEntee's Prime Time interview on the night which kind of startled the nation, when she said the immortal words, ‘This is not about the streets being safe’ while cars were literally on fire."
On the other end of the spectrum, more frivolous topics will be discussed, including the obsession with man of the moment, actor Paul Mescal. The Normal People star is not played by Callan himself, who laughs that he doesn’t quite have the physique required to play the Gladiator actor.
"I leave him to [Irish comedian and social media star] Killian Sundermann, who does an amazing Paul Mescal."
"I think anyone who has seen the Paul Mescal Gucci ad - even that sentence! - like three years ago he was just a lad in Trinity going into an indie TV series and now he's like he's the face of Gucci, and he's kind of wearing a trench coat and his underpants."
On the show, there’ll be "a sort of campaign for Paul Mescal - leave him alone, stop making him the poster boy for sexy spud-headed Irish men because they're exotic to the world!
"He's a spokesman for sausages from his Denny days, for GAA shorts with Gucci loafers, for ties and speaking Irish – we need to give him a break."
Citing Micheál Martin as his current favourite politican to impersonate, he says, "In 2020, obviously Leo [Varadkar] was quite fun because we had all those Covid speeches and the movie references and he had a pep in his step but now he's utterly miserable… whereas to me Micheál Martin is just delighted with himself. My feet start to bounce around [when I get into that character]."
"Remember how happy he was to meet Joe Biden and Biden gave him a cap, and he puts on the little 'capeen' and he’s just delighted with himself… I think people are just happy to see someone who’s delighted to be in the job."
Also getting a kicking is the world of Irish sport, as he quips, "It’s been an unbelievably bad year for sport - bumper times, which is always good for comedy. GAA Go – all those ructions were this year if you remember. The girls in green and the boys in green all did terribly, and we’ll have Rory McIlroy and Stephen Kenny's hair of course."
"We’ve put in characters like Vogue and Joanne, the 2 Johnnies, and Marty Morrissey of course. They’re not in to be figures of great satire, they’re just there to lighten the load because it’s New Year's, it's the Christmas week, so people want to have a bit of fun."
Callan Kicks The Year 2023 airs on RTÉ One on Friday 29 December at 9.30pm.
On RTÉ Radio 1, Callan Kicks 2023 will broadcast on Saturday 30 December at 1pm and will be available as a podcast.
