Willie O’Dea savaged on Liveline over support for Rubberbandits

Former Fianna Fáil minister Willie O'Dea appeared on Liveline on Wednesday to defend giving his support to the Rubberbandits, and came away proving he has a sense of humour.

Former minister Willie O’Dea faced a humourless attack on RTÉ's phone-in show, Liveline, for coming out in support of fellow Limerick natives the Rubberbandits, who are heading for a possible Christmas No1 with their single Horse Outside.

The video of Horse Outside on YouTube currently has around 1.5million hits.

The Rubberbandits’ website features a statement from Willie. In it he said, “I’m absolutely thrilled at this campaign and hope they get the Christmas number one. This has a lot of resonance with young people.”

Proving that he has a sense of humour, and that he understands satire, the moustachioed TD stood firm in the face of the usual moaning from callers to the RTÉ phone in show, who were accusing him of backing a song that “glorifies drug use” in children and showed Limerick in a bad light, with one caller saying that O’Dea was a “disgrace” for lending his support to the song.

“It’s simply reflecting reality – not just in Limerick, but in every town in the country. Rather than put your head in the ground and pretending that none of this sort of stuff is happening, I think it’s good what the lads are doing.

“I think the reputation of Limerick would be damaged far, far more than if we were put across as dour humourless people who don’t even have the capacity to laugh at ourselves,” O’Dea said.

Lampooned

“They’re not laughing at Limerick, this one aspect of Limerick is being lampooned.”

O’Dea then made reference to the fact that he had previously been mercilessly lampooned himself by the Rubberbandits lads. “I was mercilessly lampooned and I didn’t call in to Liveline to complain because what they did was funny and I can laugh at myself,” he said.

Later, Rubberbandit ‘Blindboy’ came on to the show to defend the TD who’d been defending the Rubberbandits’ track and video.

“Fair play to Willie,” Blindboy said. “We appreciate anyone who’s getting behind us. We’ve always known Willie is a legend, now he’s proving it.”

Turning on ‘Anthony from Limerick’ who had been leading the attack on O’Dea, Blindboy said, “Someone needs to give that man a dictionary and show him the definition of the word irony.”

Referencing one dodgy character at the start of the video for Horse Outside, which first appeared as part of RTÉ Two’s Republic of Telly show, Blindboy explained, “Look at him in the video. It [drug taking] did him quite a bit of harm. It is not a statement promoting drug use by children, you’re not supposed to take it literally.”

You can listen to Willie's Liveline performance here