Donald Trump’s Life next for Irish cartoonist?
But Liam Hallihan, who created ‘Martin’s Life’, readily admits he wouldn’t have been top of The Donald’s invite list to the inauguration yesterday because he can’t stand him.
Liam, who was born in Mallow but works in the civil service in Dublin, said if he was doing a cartoon series on the comb-over king he would “try and make it as bad as I could...I hate him”.
Liam, 34, wasn’t happy with the outcome of the US elections, especially as “Bernie Sanders was the guy I was backing”.
His ‘Martin’s Life’ series revolves around a young man trying to explain life to his parents and vice versa, showing generational differences in a comic fashion, which are readily recognisable in most families.
Only once, though, has he brought politics into the series, when he focused on the Marriage Equality Referendum, “which proved to the most popular” one to date.
He was the January monthly winner in the Cork Person of the Year awards and yesterday was the first time that his true identity as the ‘Martin’s Life’ creator was publicly revealed.
Since starting the cartoon series in 2014, he’d tried to keep his identity secret.
Liam was even able to do this when persuading the organisers not to publish his name when they gave him the monthly award.
Information started to leak out recently that he might be from Mallow, and yesterday he had to pose for pictures with his proud parents, Benjie and Anne, at the awards ceremony.
“I simply didn’t want to be in the limelight,” he said, trying to change the subject by then focusing on a book his father had published recently.
“It’s about the oldest dragon in the world and dad wrote it for charity, the Jack and Jill Foundation. I’d prefer if you mentioned that,” he said.
Whether he likes it or not he is now in the spotlight for his creative talents and is looking in the longer-term to creating comedy cartoons, each probably 30 minutes long.
Liam revealed that his favourite comedies are Father Ted, Seinfeld and Black Adder and admitted that he would test ideas on his long-time partner Claire Owens, who is also from Mallow.
He said ‘Martin’s Life’ was based on “everyone’s parents” and his family knew it wasn’t based solely on them.
“My nieces and nephews look at me as a fool when I can’t operate a [smart] phone. It happens to every generation,” he said.
“People can relate to this mam and dad thing.”
To emphasise the point, Liam said the family were rushing out to the awards ceremony when he got out the ironing board at the last minute.
He said his mother had asked him why at such a late stage he had done that “and I said I brought it out just to look at it!”
