- Culture
- 03 Nov 16
Dublin-bound with his singer wife Judith Owen, Harry Shearer talks This Is Spinal Tap, The Simpsons, Saturday Night Live and warmongering US presidential candidates with Stuart Clark who resists the temptation to stick a cucumber down his Y-fronts.
You mightn’t necessarily be able to pick him out of an identity parade, but I guarantee you that Harry Shearer has made you laugh like a demented hyena at some point in your life.
A former child actor, the Californian made his cinematic debut in 1953 as a four-year-old alongside Abbott & Costello (“Who’s on first base?” etc. etc.); became a TV regular in the late ‘70s as part of the Saturday Night Live crew; co-wrote and co-starred as cucumber-enhanced bassist Derek Smalls in 1984’s This Is Spinal Tap, if you will, rockumentary, and in addition to presenting the weekly, syndicated Le Show for American Public Radio currently voices Mr. Burns, Waylon Smithers, Principal Skinner, Ned Flanders, Reverend Lovejoy, Kent Brockman and lots more in The Simpsons for a cool $300,000 an episode. Today, like most Americans, it’s the upcoming Presidential election that is of primary interest to the affable 72-year-old who’s married to Dublin-bound singer Judith Owen.
“I’m scared of both of them,” Harry confides. “My take is: he’s more likely to get us into a war by accident, she’s more likely to get us into a war deliberately. It’s a subtle distinction.