{"id":471555,"date":"2026-03-12T13:48:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T13:48:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/471555\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T13:48:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T13:48:17","slug":"patrick-freyne-on-the-manosphere-influencers-who-shaped-him-from-charlie-haughey-to-magnum-pi-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/471555\/","title":{"rendered":"Patrick Freyne on the manosphere influencers who shaped him from Charlie Haughey to Magnum PI \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Watching Inside the Manosphere<\/a>, Louis Theroux<\/a>\u2019s decent new Netflix<\/a> documentary about influencers with horrible attitudes to women and totally normal names like HS Tikky Tokky and Sneako, has me thinking about the golden age of male role models. I am talking, of course, about the 1980s and 1990s. These are the olden-days manosphere influencers who shaped me. <\/p>\n

Ren\u00e9 from \u2019Allo \u2019Allo!\"GordonGordon Kaye as Ren\u00e9 in the sitcom \u2019Allo \u2019Allo! Photograph: BBC <\/p>\n

As you know, I am an aficionado of French cinema, and I often use this column to help educate The Irish Times\u2019 sullen, slack-jawed readership. (Look at the state of you.) \u2019Allo \u2019Allo! tells the dark wartime tale of an ample, moustachioed restaurateur, Ren\u00e9 Artois<\/a>, at the height of the Nazi occupation of France. He is a source of erotic fascination for at least two women (his wife and a waitress, Michelle). He is also an art critic (particularly of The Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies), and he is at war with himself and with fascism. What a man. Talk about fostering an unrealistic body image. I spent my early teens wearing an apron, sighing philosophically at beautiful women, attempting to foster a combover and wearing a pillow up my shirt (no longer necessary these days).<\/p>\n

Robert Smith from The Cure<\/p>\n

I spent most of my late teens trying to be Robert Smith<\/a> from The Cure<\/a>. This is much more achievable than trying to be Ren\u00e9 from \u2019Allo \u2019Allo! To be Robert Smith you need five things:<\/p>\n

A Boss delay pedal and a Fender Bass VI.A photograph of your favourite mad auntie after a few drinks, to model your make-up and hair on.Your mother\u2019s hairsprayA big black jumperA dour and mopey voice<\/p>\n

A sense of humour and an ability to craft perfect pop songs also help, of course, but you don\u2019t need those if your main goal is to hang around outside a small-town rural shopping centre holding a book by Albert Camus that you\u2019ll never read. I still want to be Robert Smith, to be honest.<\/p>\n

Pob<\/p>\n

The very first looksmaxxing influencer, Pob<\/a> has plush lips, wide eyes and a wonderful shiny complexion. By the standards of today\u2019s manosphere ghouls he is positively ordinary looking, but he lives inside your television, where he writes his name on condensation on the glass. Like many looksmaxxers he\u2019s leaking. He frequently does \u201ccollabs\u201d with other influencers of the age, people like Toyah Willcox, Bill Pertwee and Brian Blessed.<\/p>\n

Brian Blessed\"VeteranVeteran actor Brian Blessed. Photograph: Yui Mok\/PA Wire <\/p>\n

I mean, look at him. He\u2019s magnificent. His Flash Gordon look is me on a Saturday night.<\/p>\n

Magnum PI\"TomTom Selleck as Magnum PI <\/p>\n

Tanned, richly moustachioed and wearing, most commonly, tiny shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, Magnum (Tom Selleck) is hired by an unseen rich man to hang around his mansion with an effete, mustachioed British man named Higgins. The \u201cPI\u201d clearly stands for \u201cprostitute-in-residence\u201d, but this largely remains subtextual. In each episode someone gets killed on or near the rich man\u2019s house, and Magnum must do something about it \u2013 investigate the crime, hide the body, pay off the other partygoers, ride around in a helicopter, etc. It\u2019s quite a show. (See also The A-Team, a more versatile outfit featuring all four kinds of men \u2013 handsome, tough, boss and lunatic \u2013 in this instance operating out of a van at the edge of town. We had something similar in Newbridge.)<\/p>\n

Charles J Haughey\"FormerFormer taoiseach Charles Haughey in 1990. Photograph: Matt Kavanagh <\/p>\n

Another fella who loved a good \u201ccollab\u201d, Charles J Haughey<\/a> had both \u201cswag\u201d and \u201crizz\u201d. He owned a boat, a country estate, several horses and an island, all on a public servant\u2019s salary. If he was still about today he\u2019d have been through at least one weeping-apology video, be selling seminars on TikTok, and be getting beaten savagely by Logan Paul in a Las Vegas boxing ring as we speak.<\/p>\n

Alf from Home and Away\"HomeHome and Away: Ray Meagher as Alf Stewart <\/p>\n

If I have to explain why the chunky antipodean grump Alf Stewart embodied my lifestyle goals in the late 1980s you\u2019re nothing but a pack of flamin\u2019 galahs. Alf\u2019s role is to look on, taking a steady salary for himself, as several generations of his younger colleagues are chewed up by the Hollywood machine. As the world turns, he stays in Summer Bay, never ageing a day. I assume that, when I die, Alf Stewart will welcome me into his garden, which is paradise.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Patrick Freyne: If I could marry a TV show, I\u2019d choose this one about a bearded manOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The clientele in the Star Wars Cantina<\/p>\n

A diverse bunch of dudes with wonky fangs, fur, pig noses and tentacles (totally looksmaxxed) ignore the violence in their midst in order to listen to the jaunty avant-garde space jazz of Figrin D\u2019an and the Modal Nodes (the actual name of the band in the Star Wars Cantina). They are by far the most relatable cohort in the entire Star Wars universe, wherein we are presented with a choice between the dynastic theocracy of actual princess Leia Organa and violent priest Obi-Wan Kenobi or the space fascism of goth cyborg and asthma-campaigner Darth Vader. Today this choice is often presented as being between fascism-fascism and neoliberal technocracy. Given that depressing choice, I might also choose listening to Figrin D\u2019an and the Modal Nodes in the Tatooine Cantina. Canonically, at least according to the Star Wars Holiday Special, Bea Arthur from The Golden Girls owns and sings in the Cantina, so it\u2019s also definitely a gay bar, adding to both its appeal and property prices on Tatooine.<\/p>\n

Big Ted from Play School<\/p>\n

Less sophisticated Play School viewers preferred those hacks Hamble (evil) and Humpty (pompous), but the more incisive among you could spot Big Ted\u2019s raw power radiating from the screen, accompanied, always, by his wife, Little Ted. Big Ted is a pillar of industry, really. He is now director general of the BBC.<\/p>\n

Denis O\u2019Brien\"BusinessmanBusinessman Denis O’Brien in 2021. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw <\/p>\n

In this list largely to give our lawyer something to do, Denis O\u2019Brien showed my generation that if you\u2019re a privately educated young man and you really want something enough, not only can you have it, but there\u2019ll be a tribunal about it and many people will be able to put their kids through college on the legal fees. #alwayshustlin #yougoboy #signuptomyseminar<\/p>\n

Vladimir and Estragon<\/p>\n

From the pen of another famous looksmaxxer, Samuel Beckett (just look at those cheekbones), Vladimir and Estragon, in Waiting for Godot, showed me that being a real man involved spending a lot of time waiting around for stuff, making conversation, wondering what the hell was going on and contemplating the probable meaningless of existence. Arguably, women experience this a lot, too, but young men are so fragile now that any suggestion that men and women might actually be similar will have them reaching for Nazi armbands. So we have to pretend all the good stuff is just for them or the poor little freaks will wank themselves into tearful, totalitarian hysterics.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018It\u2019s important for ice hockey players to be clean!\u2019 I jot down during Heated Rivalry\u2019s shower sceneOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Famous Sports Team<\/p>\n

You know the one, that renowned synchronised-movement ensemble who played ballsport in an expert manner that halcyon day in our youth that we remember fondly even now? Did I see the match? Why, of course I did. I\u2019m not just pretending to like sport to fit in. Yes, the big men in miniature trousers sure kicked the ball far. They sportsed so good and Other Team, those bounders, were totally confounded by their athletic shenanigans. \u201cPropel that sphere into the opposing team\u2019s stationary net!\u201d I cried, just like a regular man. \u201cHuzzah for hand-eye co-ordination, industrial production and the surplus resources that make all of this possible!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Watching Inside the Manosphere, Louis Theroux\u2019s decent new Netflix documentary about influencers with horrible attitudes to women and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,160733,96,36095,392,168533,27154,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-471555","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-charles-haughey","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-louis-theroux","12":"tag-netflix","13":"tag-patrick-freyne","14":"tag-robert-smith","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}