SEÁN CRUMMEY: IT'S PROBABLY some sort of post-modern take on comedy that former IRA prisoner and Sinn Féin junior minister Gerry Kelly was listening to BBC Radio Ulster in his car one day when he heard Seán Crummey, who has died at the age of 53, impersonating him.
Crummey usually played him as “Gerry Kelly, Private Eye”, employing a rather menacing and halting voice that perfectly caught the distinctive inflexions of the North Belfast Assembly member.
A pretty good job of mimicry, Kelly acknowledged to his Sinn Féin colleagues in the car with him – only to be reminded by one of them that the speaker was actually himself, Gerry Kelly, in a recording of a proper Stormont interview he had completed 10 minutes earlier with the BBC.
The Folks on the Hill, a reference to Parliament Buildings, Stormont, was the comedy programme, on radio and in animated form on television, that allowed west Belfast man Seán Crummey to express his impersonation skills and also his great comic talent.
Crummey wasn’t an acerbic, sometimes bitter Lenny Bruce or Peter Cook, but there was a mischief and edge to his satire that was fresh, funny and inventive.
That he could capture the whistling modulations of Ian Paisley, the west Belfast monotone of Gerry Adams, the terse precision of Peter Robinson and the flowery wordiness of the late David Ervine, and many others such as Enda Kenny, Bertie Ahern, David Trimble and Martin McGuinness, and have pointed and topical gags in tandem with the impressions – all added to the gaiety.
One of his favourite subjects was the late Pope John Paul II. A mid-peace process story he told, and worth repeating, rather captures the nature of Crummey’s style of humour. A curious onlooker sees the late pontiff at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. “What’s he doing?” he asks a nearby rabbi. “He’s praying for peace between Jew and Arab.” “And who is he talking to?” the man asks. “He is talking to God,” replies the rabbi.
The man is unsure so asks a South African Methodist minister. “The pope is praying for peace between the blacks and the whites.” “And who is he talking to?” “He is talking to God.”
Still uncertain he asks an Irish priest. “He’s praying for peace between the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland,” says the priest. “And who is he talking to?” “He’s talking to the wall.”
Seán Crummey was a graduate of Queen’s University, Belfast, who, before taking a gamble on a full-time career on the comedy circuit, taught French at the De La Salle school in Belfast.
He wrote and performed in 10 television series of The Folks on the Hill,as well as 16 radio series of the programme. He also wrote and performed in a stage play, Stormont. His last radio show, which he recorded a short time earlier, went out at the weekend.
One of those sketches had Dr Paisley ringing to congratulate the Taoiseach on his tough position with the Vatican. “No pope here, that’s what I say,” says Kenny to the chortling Doc.
First Minister Peter Robinson, echoing the comments of many other politicians whom he had parodied, said learning of Crummey’s death was like “losing a bit of yourself”.
His wife Gabrielle and children Conor, Niamh and Brendan survive Crummey, who died from a cancer-related illness.
Seán Crummey: born December 23rd, 1957; died November 13th, 2011.