Cathal gets his Golden Ticket to the Chocolate Factory

Kells man Cathal Dolan had a pleasant surprise when he came to work last week at The Central Bar in Navan, writes Michael Keaveny.

He found an autographed 'Golden Ticket' and a note from Paris Themenn, aka Mike Teavee from the 1971 movie of the Roald Dahl book 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory', who he had been serving drinks to at the bar.

The note on the ticket said: “To Cathal, thanks for the laugh and the tiny beer”, before signing off as Paris Themman, while advising him that he should Google his name.

Although Cathal didn’t know who he was talking to initially, he was delighted when he found out the identity of his customer afterwards.

“I didn't actually recognise him, but as I've loved the film since I was a kid, it made finding out who he was all the more surprising. He had had been travelling for 18 hours and was exhausted so when he asked me for 'the smallest Guinness you have', I gave him a shot glass of it.”

Themman wasn’t the only actor in the Central that night as he was meeting another well-known friend in the bar there, according to Cathal.

“He was meeting another actor called David Coburn,” he said. “It turns out he voiced the role of Captain Planet in the cartoon 'Captain Planet and the Planeteers', which ran from 1990 to 1996. They were both over to do a tour of the country and were both great craic”.