A question of taste: Cork actor and puppeteer Dominic Moore

Dominic Moore is an actor and puppeteer from Cork. His one-man show Mr Punch is playing the White Horse in Ballincollig, Co Cork, tonight, and he also has a role in Jack, a new play by Declan Hasset about Jack Lynch, which plays at Ballymaloe Grainstore and the Everyman in March.

Best recent book you’ve read:

Does Viz comic count as a book?

Best recent film:

The documentary Weiner — a fly-on-the-wall documentary about Anthony Weiner running for mayor of New York in 2013. I remember putting my hands over my face in shock at some of his antics.

Best recent show you’ve seen:

I remember thinking Love Peace and Robbery by Liam Heylin was superb and inspired me to take up stage acting again after years of television puppetry.

Best piece of music you’ve been listening to lately (new or old):

Citizen Steely Dan 1972-1980 is a compendium of all the albums of one of the world’s finest bands, and essential listening every week.

First ever piece of music or art or film that really moved you:

As a child, the film Oliver was my one of my first experiences at the cinema, and was overwhelming. The scene where Nancy and Bet discuss how to save Oliver from Sykes created a sense of deep unease that I still experience whenever I watch it.

The best theatre show you’ve ever seen:

Conor Lovett of Gare st Lazare in the Molloy series.

TV viewing:

I don’t watch television.

Radio listening and/or podcasts:

For radio, RTÉ 1’s current affairs. For podcasts, also RTÉ dramas. The musical Playboy of the Western World and Brendan Conroy’s Synge pieces are superb.

Your three favourite performances?

Seána Kerslake in A Date for Mad Mary, David Bradley in Kes and Paul McGann in Withnail and I.

Your best celebrity encounter:

Bono, in a pub in Dalkey. I went up and introduced myself. He was very sweet. The people behind him rolled their eyes up to heaven, so I made my excuses and left.

You can portal back to any period of human cultural history or music event — where, when, and why?

I suppose it would have to be Woodstock in 1969. So many myths have grown up around this concert in upstate New York that it would be such fun to go back there and experience it. Documentaries at the time show the concert goers in mud, squalor and general states of drunkenness. At what point do the stories of mud fade away, and the stories of ‘the best guitar riff ever played’ start?

Do you have any interesting family or ancestors?

One grandfather was a garda, and the other an intelligence officer in the old IRA. What happened afterwards is interesting enough!

Unsung hero — individual, organisation or group you think don’t get the profile/praise they deserve:

The IMNDA (Irish Motor Neurone Disease Association) are doing Trojan work and need more help.

You are king for a day — what’s your first decree?

Every TD in Ireland would be mounted on a tumbril and brought through the streets of their local town, to see what would happen.