Comedian defends send-up of President

Comedian Oliver Callan yesterday defended his lampooning of Michael D Higgins in the wake of criticism by Mark Patrick Hederman, abbot of Glenstal Abbey and a friend of the President.

While Abbot Hederman described Callan and fellow comedian Mario Rosenstock as comic geniuses, he declared: “There is a thin line between what is really funny and what is bullying. There is a difference between making a point that is useful and making a point that is toxic.”

However, in response, Callan said it would be wrong to suggest President Higgins — or anyone else — was above reproach or above being parodied.

Lampooning the President’s stature was not a form of bullying, he said, revealing he had been bullied himself in school. “I am a small man myself and I don’t find it anything to be insecure about,” he said, during a verbal joust with the abbot on the Sean O’Rourke programme on RTÉ radio.

“Both Oliver and Mario are geniuses,” Abbot Hederman said. “Their capacity to understand to the point of taking over someone’s voice is a gift which I feel can be used for useful purposes but can also be destructive. It can be destructive when you start to make insinuations about people’s sexuality or their height or their colour or any other aspect of personality we can do nothing about.”

The abbot was adamant Callan and other comics had gone too far in their portrayal of the President, who has been the subject of sketches on radio and television, at a National Concert Hall concert and in the Sunday Independent. However, he approved of Callan’s sketch sending up the President’s visit to Britain and his meeting with the Queen.

“Taking that imagery of the most magical moment when our President met the Queen and making something humorous out of it is different but when you portray someone as a dwarf … or you attack human beings for their own personal traits we are in a different scene.”

Abbot Hederman indicated that making a ‘point that is toxic’ can have devastating consequences.

“There is a difference between making a point that is useful and making a point that is toxic. We are in a debate about the Charlie Hebdo magazine in France because it insulted Allah and people took dreadful means to show they disapproved of it.”

Abbot Hederman said the comic attacks on the President over Christmas undermined the prestige and authority of the office.

“If someone is suggesting that because he is so tiny the President cannot represent us... or suggests he is having some kind of relationship with an assistant, which is not true but which everyone is sniggering about, that undermines his efforts to represent the public,” he said.

However, Callan said he had never insinuated President Higgins was too small to carry out his function. “Satire is the elephant in the room,” said Callan, expressing surprise that the President was so sensitive that he would regard being lampooned by comedians as a form of bullying.

President Higgins is not the only head of state lampooned by Callan. Last summer he did a send-up of Britain’s royals in Callan’s Kicks, portraying the Queen in the midst of a dysfunctional ‘Westenders’ family.