Sminky

A few months ago, some shorts on YouTube went viral among the Irish community, depicting animals speaking with Irish accents and saying very typical Irish phrases (with some mild swearing, of course). They are the creation of a young Corkman, an animator named Jason Sullivan who works under the pseudonym Andrew James, and they are hilarious.

They are quite specific to Ireland, but I showed them to my Dutch colleague who also found them very funny. My favourite is the one involving a dopey spider, but it's a tough choice.

I heard that they were selling Tshirts at a stall in Cork City and I thought I might buy one for a friend for Christmas. I joined a friend of mine who had already been queuing for an hour. We queued for another two hours in the cold, enviously eyeing up the Tshirts being worn by these young men who were doing promotion work.

By the time we got to the top of the queue, however, most of the Tshirts were gone and there was none that I wanted to buy! So, instead, I bought a poster featuring all the characters and asked the artist, who was there to meet the customers, to sign it for my Dutch colleague, calling her a dopey spider. So it wasn't an entirely wasted endeavour... I suppose!