Smoking cigarettes and sporting plastic bags over their faces, Blindboy Boatclub and Mr Chrome of Limerick comedy hip-hop duo Rubberbandits descended – without their horse – on Leinster House this morning.
With the assembled media hanging on their every word, they strongly denied they were in competition with X-Factor winner Matt Cardle to secure the Christmas No 1 slot in the Irish charts.
"People keep talking about the X-Factor and we've never heard of it. We don't know nothing about it. We thought we saw it once but it might have been that One Foot in the Grave," they said.
The video accompanying their single Horse Outside has received almost 1.5 million views on Youtube in just five days and is currently the second most tweeted video in the world.
The duo were accompanied by a man dressed up as former Minister for Defence Willie O’Dea, the subject of one of their other songs.
Their horse did not make an appearance as, according to the pair, he was relaxing in their hotel room “eating a toasted sandwich and watching the news”.
Asked if they had a message for politicians in the Dáil, they said Brian Cowen should “cop on and get a good horse. It’d save on fuel”.
They refused to give a rendition of any of their songs, in printable form at least.
Several photographers nearly came to blows in their eagerness to capture the pair, leading them to quip “you should start a new boy band called the bickering photographers".
Paddy Power say Horse Outside is now odds on favourites at 8/11 to be the Christmas No 1 with Matt Cardle's When We Collide drifting to even money.
Former minister for defence Willie O’Dea said critics of the song needed to “get a life” and the band were just “having a laugh”.
Mr O'Dea, who is portrayed in another of the duo's songs as selling hash to make ends meet after resigning from the Dáil, was refuting suggestions by callers to RTÉ's LiveLine this afternoon that the song promoted drug use and was extremely vulgar.
“I can laugh at myself. I was remorselessly lampooned by them and I didn’t ring you. They portray me selling hash and swearing on my tash that it’s decent hash,” he said.
"If you don’t like don’t watch it. I don’t support drug usage. I support a group that laughs at that. For heaven’s sake, get a life. If it gets to number 1 for Christmas it will reflect well on Limerick.”
Former lord mayor of Dublin Eibhlín Byrne rang the programme to say she was appalled by Willie O'Dea's support of the song. Mr O'Dea dismissed her views saying she was "obviously from a different political party." He was forced to apologise when it was pointed out to him that Ms Byrne is a member of the Fianna Fáil party.
Blindboy denied the song glamourised drug taking, saying it was a “piece of art” and was “not meant to be taken literally”.