A MAN IS poking at Ryan Tubridy’s head in a building at the back of an unassuming home in a sprawling housing estate in Co Kildare. He brushes back his hair, scrapes at his ear, rotates the television and radio presenter’s neck around to face the light. Next to him, a Viking is staring solemnly outwards, looking pretty unimpressed with the celebrity to his left. Welcome to the process of turning Tubridy into a waxwork.
PJ Heraty has been making waxworks for the National Wax Museum for nearly 30 years in the most unlikely of settings – a small workshop in his back garden in Leixlip. In the next month or so, the presenter of the Late Late Showwill become the latest addition to the wax museum, taking his place among the collection of celebrities and icons represented in the building at Foster Place in Dublin city centre. "He called into the museum and we did a mask of him and photographs. That was interesting. He was very patient and helpful, I could only say good things about him," says Heraty.
Tubridy, who sat for a couple of hours, says it was no trouble. “They made it very painless and said, ‘Will you come in? We need to put this gunk on your head’,” says Tubridy. “I became very self-conscious because they have to pin down your hair and put straws up your nose [so you can] breathe through the plaster. It’s all very undignified. They wanted to take photos of the process, but I said no because I’m bad enough without having something becoming another caption competition.”
So with a closed room, they got to work on Tubridy’s head, and here it now lies in Leixlip.
Behind the head are six photographs taken from different angles. A publicity shot from the Late Late Showlies on the floor under the table. Heraty says Tubridy emitted a lot of energy while he was there, rarely not moving. The shape of his head is very unusual, Heraty remarks, talking about squares and rectangles.
On the back wall, there are photographs of previously completed models: Samuel Beckett, Gollum from Lord of the Rings, a leprechaun, Phil Lynott and Pope John Paul II.
Boxes of tools, moulds of faces, silicone spray, jars, bottles, stones, carving materials, and models of everyone from Buzz Lightyear to Jesus fill the small workshop. There are two rooms, one for storage and a smaller work space with a desk, chair and lamp where Heraty sits working. His primary company is an 18-year-old ginger cat.
Heraty goes through the history of mask-taking from Egyptian times to the Italian sculptor Bernini. Bernini used to put rosewater in plaster and apply it directly to the model’s face. Nowadays a material called alginate is used. It is hypoallergenic and sets very quickly, Herarty explains. “You pull it off the face, and use rubber and plaster bandages to hold it together. You pour plaster in it and then you have a plaster replica. It’s a good reference, but it distorts because of gravity, because the face is quite fleshy . . . everything moves generally downwards with the weight of material on it. You lose expression and stuff like that, so that’s where the photographer comes in.”
After the head has been modelled from clay, a rubber mould is taken of it. The mould is then held together by plaster or fibreglass, and the wax poured in. “You have to leave a space for the eyes,” explains Heraty. The glass eyes he uses are made in England. There are very few glass-eye makers around, he says. Madame Tussauds makes its own.
“So you put the eyes in from the inside and adjust them so they’re facing in the proper direction,” he says. After that the hair is implanted using a special needle. Finally it’s colouring, clothes and positioning.
Illustrating the process, he pulls out a heavy mould of Samuel Beckett’s head from a box, moving Fred Flintstone’s arm out of the way to get it free. The waxwork of Beckett is one of Heraty’s favourites.
Lisa Jameson, the marketing and operations manager at the National Wax Museum Plus, explains how they decide whose image will next be created in wax.
“Choosing the next waxwork to be made [involves taking] a number of factors into consideration, usually what the visitors want,” she says. “We survey our visitors on a regular basis and have a suggestion box in the museum hence Jedward will be one of our next waxworks.”
They recently approached rugby player Brian O’Driscoll, but he declined.
In contrast, Tubridy seems bowled over by the whole thing. “I just thought it was a bit of a fun thing,” he says. “So utterly different and borderline ridiculous. If Michael Jackson’s in [the museum], I might as well be there as one of the freaks of my time.”
He has not seen the work in progress. “I think the surreal part of it will come when I see it. Until I see it, it’s just a notion really,” Tubridy says. “It hasn’t become a physical reality . . . I’m laughing my way through it, not disrespectfully or anything like that, but I just think it’s so odd.”
Tubridy visited Madame Tussauds in London when he was 14 and he liberated “a chunk of Pablo Picasso’s head” from the museum. He also visited the Wax Museum in Dublin in its former location. “Now as an adult, I’m quite freaked out by it,” he says. “It’s all a bit trippy, but I see the value of it as an entertaining diversion for children.”
Heraty is a former art teacher, who got the job with the museum after he had made a model of Eamon de Valera’s head.
Along with the sculpture of Beckett’s head, he is fond of a bronze sculpture he made of Jack Charlton.
You get the impression he prefers bronze to wax. “Wax,” he says, “like celebrities, can be easily melted down.”
