BOOK OF THE DAY: Rhino, What You Did Last Summerby Ross O'Carroll-Kelly, Penguin Ireland, 490pp, £12.99
TRADITIONALLY, comic novels don’t get taken very seriously. After all, their sole intention is to provoke laughter from the reader (or at least mild amusement).
Once that goal has been achieved, there’s usually little or nothing more to say. Either the book made you crack up or it didn’t. Once you try to analyse the joke, the laughter dies. End of – as Ross O’Carroll-Kelly might have it.
Ross O’Carroll-Kelly is probably the last person you’d want to be trapped in a lift with. Oafish, selfish, thoroughly obnoxious and the kind of person who is guaranteed to lower the tone of any situation, he makes Gordon Ramsey look like a diplomat.
However, a casual reader – like myself – may be forgiven for imagining that his 15 minutes of fame must be up by now.
The 26-year-old Lothario has been cornering the market on Irish and international “birds” for many years, utilising his own particular brand of like, “Dortspeak” . How much more juvenile rugger-bugger humour can this country take?
Judging from his latest adventure, the answer is: lots. Like so many great comic characters – Homer Simpson, Basil Fawlty, Father Dougal and George W Bush – O’Carroll-Kelly inhabits his own peculiar and compelling comic universe.
The latest adventure finds him in LA, having been sacked as coach from the Andorra rugby team and on the run from Erika, the sister he never knew he had – had being the operative word here, but as this is a family newspaper, certain elements of Ross’s life and libido are best left unexplored. Ross’s mission is ostensibly to win back Sorcha, the love of his life and mother of his adorable two-year old Honor.
Soon, Ross is dating “birds” with names like Ptolemy, accidentally getting his daughter addicted to espressos as well as gleefully and hilariously entering a full-on war of words with his despised Mom Fionnuala whose new novel – Karma Suits You – States of Ecstasy – has become a chicklit sensation and is storming the US charts.
As Ross's new career as a "stor" of the new US reality TV show, Ross, His Mother, His Wife and Her Lover, takes off, our hero agrees to radical rhinoplasty that includes an "abdominal resculp" as well as a new nose (he decides on a "Reese Witherspoon"). In an attempt to keep his hands off Erika, he is persuaded to undergo a course in "tantric celibacy". Guess how long that lasts.
The American Dream gets a savage lampooning, as do other targets including consumerism, Las Vegas, modern relationships, the recession and Star Wars.
Nothing is sacred and there are throwaway jokes so politically incorrect that they would make Tommy Tiernan blush. It’s inexcusably shallow, deliberately vulgar, puerile and offensive – and it made me laugh like a drain.
Indeed, there are sequences so funny that I had trouble breathing – in particular, Ross’s hangover-induced vom-fest by the shores of Lake Ewok as well as a spectacularly disastrous date with the hapless Ginnifer who gets blown down a flight of stairs by one of Ross’s frequent attacks of intestinal gas.
Ross is back and the world is a better place for it.
Ferdia Mac Anna is a writer and TV producer/director. His memoir, The Rocky Years, is published by Headline