JOE meets Dermot and Bernard to chat about Blue September and man crushes

JOE

JOE sat down with Dermot and Bernard to talk about Blue September, the quality of steaks in Dublin restaurants, and Jason Statham

vhi

Blue September, sponsored by Vhi Healthcare is a month long campaign encouraging men to face up to cancer and challenges them to take more responsibility for their own health. First launched in New Zealand in 2008, Blue September has grown into an international fundraising and awareness campaign. This is Blue September’s third year in Ireland and the first year that it will be sponsored by Vhi Healthcare.

We caught up with Bernard O’Shea and Dermot Whelan to chat about what got them involved in the whole campaign last week, and we had a bit more banter

JOE: Who is your man crush? Ours is Xabi Alonso

Dermot: Jason Statham. He’s got amazing stubble, and he’s the only action hero I’ve seen that opened a movie by beating the crap out of two guys with a hurley. That and we’re the same height. I looked up his stats on the Internet…

Bernard: I might go more Irish, and go for Derek Davis, in his prime from the ’80s and now. He was very slick and nice on TV, but he also did the Calor Gas Housewife of the Year awards. The reason he’s my man crush is that someone like Don Draper goes in and gets women by being absolutely gorgeous, but Derek Davis wasn’t particularly good looking (neither am I, which is no bad thing) but he still got twelve women to cook dinner for him. Because when the looks fade, a hot dinner doesn’t go away.

JOE: If you could change your name to something manly, what would it be?

Bernard: Man Manlyensson. I’d be Nordic.

Dermot: I have a radio character called Chug Stenson, which I think is pretty manly. He’s quarterback of the basketball lacrosse teamsquad.

Bernard: I might change my name from Bernard to Ferrero actually, because then my name would be Ferrero O’Shea. It’s very Italian. Italian men are the only group of people I know who can get away with all the trappings of femininity and yet women look at them and swoon.

Dermot: They have amazing eyebrows too, although I may be basing that view entirely on the Dolmio puppets.

Bernard: And they check their balls regularly too.

Who would play you in the movie of your life?

Dermot: Jason Statham would be good for the action scenes since I grew up in Limerick, but maybe Brad Pitt since he’s the spit of me.

Bernard: I would, no doubt about it, say Helen Mirren. She’d get all sides of me.

How do you like your steak cooked?

Dermot: Medium rare. I hand steaks back all the time. My record is four times in one meal.

JOE: They definitely spat on that…

Bernard: Can I make a general point about Dublin and London restaurants? A serious point. All of these food shows, Game of Scones, the Great British Finger Bake, whatever… I worked in catering and restaurants for years, and we didn’t serve the fanciest food in the world, but the chefs knew how to do the simple things like cook a steak. Now you go into restaurants in town, and while they’re lovely and fancy they can’t cook a bloody steak. I want to get this on the agenda! Are you cutting this out?

JOE: Absolutely not, this can be a whole article on its own

Bernard: Anyway, this is the point I wanted to make. All this rare meat culture is nonsense, It’s not difficult to cook a steak. Cook it for a minute each side, then pop it in the oven so the blood congeals and there’s not going to be blood all over my plate. It’s the same as tea. No one makes a proper cup of tea anymore, they dip the bag in and then whip it out. Make a proper pot and give me some bloody biscuits.

JOE: We’re fully behind your next campaign to get steak cooked properly and tea served with biscuits. Anyway, what’s your favourite manly movie?

Dermot: Has to be Gladiator. It’s about a man and other men. It’s got everything, hacking, explosions I think at the start.

Bernard: Dirty Dancing, of course. It’s about a man who’s not afraid to dance.

Dermot: So is Step It Up 4.

Bernard: I have to add there that I was very disappointed not to be involved in any of the Step it Up titles. By the time the sixth one came around I flew out to LA to get in touch with the director and the production company. I was raging. Anyway, Dirty Dancing or There Will be Blood. I love westerns too, and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is fantastic, but didn’t get much coverage because No Country for Old Men and There Will be Blood were out at the same time, but all three of them were brilliant.

JOE: What’s your best chat up line?

Dermot: ‘You’ve got great lips for cooling soup’. Soup is often too hot.

Bernard: ‘Do you know what I’d change about you? Nothing’. That, or ‘Can you sign me out of Store Street’. I used to do a tag team with a friend of mine where I’d go up to a girl and say ‘My friend over there looks like a warrior, but inside he’s just a little German teddy bear called Klaus’. Later on that night he’d then go over to them and give them a little teddy bear.

Dermot: That’s incredibly creepy.