Oliver Callan has said The Traitors Ireland star Paudie Moloney is "well able to act" ahead of the retired prison guard's guest appearance on his satirical sketch show Callan Kicks The Year 2025.
The broadcaster and impressionist is gearing up for the two-part special, set to air on Tuesday 30 December at 9:30pm and Wednesday 31 December at 9:20pm on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player, marking his sixth consecutive annual review of the year.
Speaking to press, Callan said that Paudie, aka The Paudfather, who became a break-out star of The Traitors Ireland alongside his son Andrew, agreed to take part in the show straight away.
"When he turned up on set, it turned out he'd been watching the show every year. He's a big Callan's Kicks fan - who knew that retired prison officers loved satire on the establishment," Callan laughed.
"He plays himself, and I'll tell you, Paudie is well able to act, he's better than some of our supporting cast, dare I say. I'm Siobhan McSweeney to Paudie, and the sketch is like we're [in] an alternative universe for something like The Traitors.
"But rather than spotting traitors, it's a group of tenants trying to spot landlords among them, and one of the contestants is Paudie. He was great craic and the man can act."
Callan said that the past year was ripe for satirising and that "the only way you can review messy years... is to do it through comedy".
"In my head, I've had all these bizarre, mad moments of 2025 trundling around since we started discussing this in August, and even more things happened since we started making the show," he said.
From the drama of the Presidential race, to Eoin Hayes' scandal, Trump's Tariffs and the Bezos wedding, the Co Monaghan TV and radio star said that there was plenty to skewer.
"When you think of the start of the year, Michael Lowry and his two fingers, what could possibly unfurl? And then the Presidential election - everyone said it will be the most boring election ever - there's only three people in it. And it was by far the most bananas we've ever had," Callan said.
"If you told someone outside of Ireland - a woman who did keepy-uppies won the presidential election, why did they select her? Because she did keepy-uppies!
"Maybe they liked her policy? No, they hate all the mad lefty things that she said. But in Ireland, we love the fact that she was consistent. And when people said, 'That's a mad thing you've been saying, it's quite mad, isn't it?' She goes, 'No, I still believe in that mad thing. Now here's a football, watch me do 10 in a row and own some kids on a basketball court'.
"And I went - this is the woman who needs to represent this nation. And we haven't seen her since!"
Callan, who said that "everyone's a target, even if it's to my enormous detriment", said that some of his new impressions were harder to crack than others.
He plays Móglaí Bap in a new sketch and said "you have to be precise with Belfast" accents.
"Getting those Belfast-isms really accurate was very important. And Elon Musk is quite a tricky one because he's got the South African accent which people can't do, but he's got this kind of American thing inside him and he laughs like a teenager too," Callan continued in a pitch-perfect South African drawl.
"They were kind of tricky ones. Plus it's a dark universe to inhabit. The hardest ones to do are always the most worthwhile, I think."
As well as busily working away on his two-part special for television, Callan is also adjusting to a new double-length runtime on his RTÉ Radio 1 programme, which airs for two hours from 11am to 1pm instead of his previous slot of 9am-10am.
Callan said he was "apprehensive" for the time change, rather than filling an extra hour of air-time.
"I was thinking, 'Can you still have that chat monologue style in the morning at 11 o'clock, people have kind of found out everything by then?'
"Oddly, with more shows before us, I know what's missing, what little bits people haven't been informed about - the quirky asides and curiosities, as I call them on air," he said.
"Like a lot of what I do with comedy, that opening part of the show is about education through stealth, entertaining people, but they're learning something at the same time.
"Because for Callan's Kicks, TV or radio, you always like them to laugh, but at the end of it, have a realization of, 'that's said something that we should take seriously or be more aware of'."
The broadcaster said he is sure the show will "evolve" in the New Year.
"I know from having started a new show from scratch at the start of 2024, that the show ends up being quite different four months, six months, and a year later, and I think the same thing's going to happen now.
"It's going to evolve - all these shows change. I mean, even two years being in radio, it's kind of nothing in radio land. TV, you have to be exactly the thing from the get-go, but radio can change, because when you get that audience, you have them for long term."
Despite being run off his feet with multiple projects running simultaneously alongside his weekday radio show, Callan shows no signs of slowing down.
"It can sound like a brag in one way and then it just sounds like I'm having a crisis in the other!", he said. "It's amazing what you can do when you just have to. And Christmas is only around the corner, so I think I'll cope."
Thankfully, the tiredness hasn't caught up with him yet.
"Since I'm coming into my mid 40s, I'm 45 on the 27th of December, I've just stopped drinking from September to Christmas anyway, and I don't really miss it," he said.
"So everybody else seems to be wrecked, I'm kind of flying through it. Get the flu jab early and touch wood. You tend to get sick when you stop working!"
Callan Kicks The Year 2025 airs on Tuesday 30 December at 9:30pm and Wednesday 31 December at 9:20pm on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player, and Callan's Christmas Eve airs from 9am-11am on RTÉ Radio 1.
