"EEK, HOPE my accent isn't too dire . . . " The words, or should one say, the tweets, of British actor Stephen Fry from An Spidéal, Co Galway, last night as he sat in make-up for his cameo showing on TG4 soap
Ros na Rún.
Fry had already been sent his half a dozen lines in the first language, written in phonetic pronunciation and recorded for him on an MP3 file.
However, there was some apprehension yesterday when his flight to the west was diverted from Knock, Co Mayo, to Shannon due to fog – and after he later tweeted that he might “lurch slightly due to the six pints of Guinness poured hospitably down my throat”.
Fry's Ros na Rúnrole was that of a confused English tourist, lost in Connemara, who wanders into the hostelry, Tigh Thaidhg, seeking directions – only to have publican Tadhg Ó Direáin (Macdara Ó Fatharta) and regular drinker Séamus (Diarmuid Mac an Adhastair) try to run rings around him.
The actor and broadcaster, who commands a following of 2,017,364 on his Twitter account, began his day in the west with a visit to the Connemara Isles golf club in Eanach Mheáin, where TG4’s Páidí Ó Lionáird, presenter of current affairs programme Seacht Lá, had promised to join him for a quick round.
He was then whisked to the fishing port of Ros-a-Mhíl to be filmed on a lobster boat, before arriving in An Spidéal.
“Connemara is pretty extraordinary,” he said in a quick comment to the press. “It’s like the sea – wet and very cold, but actually it’s beautiful.”
He said he was the focus of two production crews, as he is also participating in a BBC series on minority languages, Planet Word.
As part of filming a sequence on the Irish language, his agents offered Fry's services to Ros na Rún.
“The great thing is, because I’m a tourist I don’t have to speak it very well. I just have to make an effort,” he said of his lines.
Fry, who has spoken openly about his depression and caused some controversy over comments about female sexuality in a recent interview in Attitude magazine, was then filmed on a closed Ros na Rúnset yesterday evening.
"He was an absolute pleasure to work with and I have to say that we were all very impressed with his command of the Irish language," director Hugh Farley said."It was a bit surreal to think that he offered his services to us, and the part we wrote for him had to be convincing – we've never been self-reverential on Ros na Rún."
One person who may not be quite so enamoured by his tweets on Ireland is one Michael O’Leary. “My first time on Ryan Air [sic]. It’s very, um . . . that’s to say it isn’t . . . How can I best put this? Yes. Well, there you are, you see . . .” he said of his flight.
The cameo Ros na Rúnscene will be broadcast on TG4 next year and incorporated in the BBC2 Planet Wordseries, also during 2011.