Ross O'Carroll-Kelly is a satirical fictional Irish character, a wealthy South County Dublin rugby union jock created by journalist Paul Howard. The character first appeared in a January 1998 column in the Sunday Tribune newspaper and later transferred to The Irish Times. The series comprises twenty-one novels, three plays, a CD, two other books, a weekly podcast, and the newspaper column, as of 2023.

Works in the series

Language

The novels are written entirely from Ross's first-person perspective, written in an eye dialect representative of the intonation attributed to affluent areas of South Dublin, commonly called "Dortspeak" (after the DART, a rail service covering the Dublin coast). This accent is one of the primary targets of satire in the columns and novels. Due to the wide variety of esoteric slang used in the novels, a glossary ("ThesauRoss") appears as an appendix to Ross O'Carroll-Kelly's Guide to (South) Dublin: How To Get By On, Like, €10,000 A Day. Though the basic idioms are derived largely from standard Hiberno-English, the South Dublin accent as represented by Howard has distinctive features: Although the main satirical targets of the columns are affluent South Dublin dwellers, elements of working-class culture (sometimes called skanger culture) are also parodied, again, primarily through language. Eye dialect is also used to portray the accents of people from Northern Ireland, "culchies" (rural people), and foreigners.

Characters

Cultural impact

Ross O'Carroll-Kelly was something of a craze in Ireland, and his name has become a byword for all that is perceived to be wrong in Celtic Tiger Ireland. Though it is largely viewed as satire, there are those who view Ross O'Carroll-Kelly as a role model or an idol. Paul Howard has claimed some people have imitated Ross's friends pastime of driving through disadvantaged areas in expensive cars, shouting "Affluence!" at passers-by and throwing €5 notes out the window. Following Ross's move to The Irish Times, the Irish Independent began a similar column, OMG! featuring a female counterpart to Ross, in its Weekend supplement on 22 September 2007.