"You’re Ross O’Carroll-Kelly, you’re supposed to be a role model for our children!"
Ross O'Carroll-Kelly is one of the most-loved fictional characters in modern Ireland with the stereotypically posh Dublin man striking a chord with people all over the country.
The creation by Paul Howard has been a roaring success with the book series as a whole shifting more than 1.3 million books.
Howard appeared on
Ireland Unfiltered with Dion Fanning this week to discuss his career as a journalist and the creation and enduring popularity of Ross O'Carroll-Kelly.
He even told a story of how he was confronted in Brown Thomas by a woman who claimed her son had learned a very rude word from reading his books.
You can read the full story below.
Paul: I heard a woman in Brown Thomas once say, 'How dare you!' I just felt my shoulders go like this. She was talking to me actually and I had written something, I'd written - actually it wasn't anything specific I'd written.
She told me her son called her a name and she was holding me responsible. 'I want a word with you', that strangulated, adenoidal, South Dublin voice, 'I want a word with you'. I just froze and I looked over my shoulder and she was talking to me and she said, 'my son called me this name'.
I asked her what the name was and he called her a 'fuckpig'. I said I have never ever used that word. I've never written that word in my life, I might in the future but I've never. She said I'm blaming you for the attitude that caused him to call me that, reading your books.
So I looked behind me and the escalator was there so I just kind of stepped onto the escalator so I'm suddenly going away from her and she shouted up the escalator, 'You’re Ross O’Carroll Kelly, you’re supposed to be a role model for our children'.
You can watch the interview in full below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCzPoR9tWmc
Ireland Unfiltered, brought to you in partnership with Carlsberg Unfiltered, will be available everywhere you get your podcasts and on YouTube every Tuesday.
