Ardal O’Hanlon has recalled how a joke he made in an interview more than 20 years ago ended up becoming a tabloid headline.
Speaking on Friday night’s Late Late Show, the Father Ted star said he learned the hard way that a flippant remark can travel a long way once it loses its original tone and context.
O’Hanlon said he was once asked in a light-hearted magazine interview whether he took drugs and, instead of simply saying no, gave a deliberately mischievous answer.
"I said, 'Yeah, I do. I love them. I think everyone should take them. And I think you should put cocaine on your cornflakes,’" he recalled.
"You’re having a jolly conversation. It was a light-hearted interview. And you think that’s as far as that will go."
O’Hanlon said the remark was later picked up by an Irish tabloid, which he recalled ran a front-page story under the headline "Father Ted Star’s drug shame".
"They had a huge picture of me as Dougal in my most gormless guise," he said.
The actor said he had to deal with the fallout while filming Father Ted.
"We were actually shooting, I think, the second series of Father Ted at the time, and journalists were camped outside the set, waiting to get a word," he said.
"So that was pretty demoralising."
O’Hanlon said the experience taught him to be careful about how jokes can travel once they are taken out of their original setting.
"You have to be careful what you write. You’ve got to be careful what you say," he said.
O’Hanlon was on The Late Late Show to discuss his new book, A Plot to Die For, which he described as "a lovely, funny murder mystery" with themes of fame, family and the bond between a mother and son.
He said he wanted to write something his own mother would enjoy, adding that the book was written during a period when he was spending a lot of time with her.
"It was written at a time that I was spending a lot of time with her and getting to know her very, very well as a person rather than purely as a mother," he said.
"She’s a lovely woman. She’s elegant. She’s stoic. She’s philosophical. She’s good-humoured and she has no cynicism whatsoever. And so I wanted to write a book that she would love."
You can watch the interview in full on the RTÉ Player.
