Merry Chris mass(production)

Name: Breffni Hassett

Job: CEO, Chris O’ Dowd Toys.

Boyle ( Pronounced Boil) in Co. Roscommon, is well known because, according to Wikipedia, Brendan Gleeson has a holiday home there.

It is also the hometown of another actor, Chris O’ Dowd. You might recognise him  from popular sitcom The Computer Lads on channel 4,  but O’ Dowd was unleashed on a global audience last year off the back of the box office hit Father of the Bride 2. It’s this new found international fame that has spurred Breffni Hassett, a local businessman and childhood friend of O’ Dowd’s, on to his latest entrenpreneural endevour.

“I always knew that Chris would become a big star, he’d be the life of the classroom, always telling stories to make us all laugh,”  Breffni tells me over coffee in his office.  “When the school drama class would put on a musical every year, Chris would be the first person picked to star. He was a revelation in Grease, but mainly because he was the only thirteen year old in class who could grow sideburns.  If John Travolta had seen him as Danny Zuko, I tell ya, he’d have shat himself.”

Inspired by the endless merchandise associated with the Star Wars films, Breffni is determined to honour his old friend Chris in a commercially appropriate way, as he puts it. “Look it,  George Lucas is a genius. He got them to make a lollypop in the likeness of Jar Jar Binks’s tongue.  I’m not saying that there is any mass demand for a Chris O’ Dowd tongue lollypop, maybe there is.  A lot of perverts out there.   But Chris O’ Dowd matching coal bucket and shovel sets?  Now you’re talking. How about waking up in the morning with the sun shining through a pair of Chris O’ Dowd curtains? I have a thinktank of lads who spend 10 hours a day writing complicated marketing diagrams on a flipchart, thinking of new ways to explore the O’ Dowd goldmine.  ”

With that, Breffni holds up the crown jewel in his empire, the talking Chris O’ Dowd action figure.  I have to admit, it doesn’t look much like him.  In fact, there is more than a passing resemblance to...

“Patrick Bergin?”  Says Breffni, not the least bit surprised at the comparison.  “  I got these babies off the internet. Bergin’s version of Robin Hood didn’t do the business that Costner’s one did, possibly cause he didn’t play him as an American and there wasn’t a catchy song attached. These figures were gathering dust in a warehouse, so we got ‘em,  repackaged them, and gave them a voice.”  He passes me the figure, and urges me to pull the string on the figure’s back, which I do.  “Hi, I’m Chris O’ Dowd, let’s be friends and sing a song together” it tells me.  It sounds like an argument between a Drunken C3PO and a cash register.  This man’s gonna make a fortune.