Like, coola boola: here comes ‘Fran the Man’ Coonan as the Drummer

One of the two dramatic characters in the main picture above is a foul-mouthed egotist who is paranoid about his enemies and deeply entangled in the pursuit of money and power. The other is Fran from Love/Hate.

Feast your eyes upon the first picture of the actor, Peter "Coola Boola" Coonan, as David Drumm, the former Anglo Irish Bank chief executive. Coonan, who caught the eye as Fran, stars as the Drummer in new film, The Guarantee, written by Colin Murphy and adapted from his Fishamble stage play.

Filming of the movie, which dramatises the final four years of excess at Anglo as well as the mysterious events on the night of the bank guarantee, wrapped up in TV3’s swanky new HD studio on Wednesday.

Gary Lydon stars as the former taoiseach Brian Cowen, while David Murray plays Brian Lenihan, the late finance minister. It is an ensemble cast and each of the actors plays a number of roles. Coonan also stars as an unnamed "Central Banker". Considering how close some real-life Anglo executives were to their putative regulators, it's no wonder they got Coonan to play that role too.

The film is being produced by John Kelleher Media, the company run by the former director of the Irish Film Classification Office. If he was still in his old job, I wonder what rating he would give The Guarantee?

It should definitely be classified as a disaster movie with content likely to deeply upset viewers, considering the effect the real guarantee had on the country. No doubt, there will also be plenty of scenes of gratuitous stupidity.

The €500,000 film will hit selected cinemas in October, followed by its television premiere on TV3 the following month. If the real-life Drumm wants to catch a glimpse of how Coonan has portrayed him on screen, he will probably have to return to Ireland from his self-imposed exile in the US. Although that might mean having to talk to the Garda fraud squad about Anglo.

Love/hate that.