Hack slings mud at ‘pug-ugly low-born Celt’

She didn’t quite say he was so ugly, that even Hello Kitty said goodbye, but the film critic’s reference to Chris O’Dowd as a “pug-ugly, low-born Celt” did get the Twitter machine going for a few hours yesterday.

In her Evening Standard review of his new movie The Sapphires, film critic Charlotte O’Sullivan described the Roscommon actor as a kind of Celtic Hugh Grant. “It’s oddly delightful that Grant’s schtick has been recycled by a pug-ugly, low-born Celt,” she wrote.

Actress Amy Huberman was so shocked she swore, but well within the Twitter word count. Comedian Des Bishop wondered if Ms O’Sullivan had watched one-too-may episodes of Game of Thrones. Chris O’Dowd tweeted that he was confused, not at being called “pug-ugly” but at the reference to him as a “low-born Celt”. Various opinions were tweeted. Maybe he was born in a basement? In a submarine? Maybe his mother was squatting while giving birth? Or could it mean he was born in a hut, sometime before 1890? One twitterista suggested it meant he was “not posh, a commoner, a scrub”.