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THE SATURDAY INTERVIEW: JOHN KELLEHER:LAST WEEK, a function was held in Dublin’s Light House Cinema to acknowledge the retirement of our outgoing Director of Film Classification. You’d have thought that the honouree, John Kelleher, would have been delighted to see the back of the post. After all, the Irish film censor – as that civil servant was previously identified as – has generally found himself dragged deep into the bloody, sexy maelstrom of his era’s social conflicts.

“I think I might have been seen as the most liberal,” he replies. “Certainly as regards sexual content. I would welcome that description. That related to when I was growing up. I was 16 when the 1960s started and 35 when the 1970s ended. What happened during the 1960s and 1970s here was disgraceful: people were denied the right to see hundreds of films. When they did eventually appear, as was the case with Casablancaand The Graduate, significant sections of plot were often excised.”