Liam Neeson. Why, Lord?

Sweary

As any one perving on my Twitter account will know, I’m currently battling a blissful path through Fallout 3 on my XBox, an RPG with Chinese Assault Rifles and an Alsatian. Jaysus I love Fallout 3. I love almost everything about it. The dank, post-apocalyptic setting inspires the arse off me. The Billie Holiday-riddled soundtrack pleasures me raw. The fact that during yesterday’s session I found two mutated cockroaches called Fluffy and Jitters in a cage tickles me something shocking. The only thing I don’t love about Fallout 3 is the fact that I am constantly belted by the peculiar tones of this overgrown mayonnaise bucket.

Like boybands, Cheryl Cole’s hair, and erectile dysfunction, I don’t get Liam Neeson. Yes, yes. I know he played Michael Collins and brooded like the Almighty’s chicken coop in Schindler’s List, but that was, like, seven hundred years ago. As far as I can gather, nowadays he is used primarily as a laxative. His voice is so pure and bland he’s like cod liver oil with legs. He’s so inoffensive he might as well be a maternity bra. And he seems like an eloquent, affable gentleman, but even bowing to that can’t prevent my saying that his voice acting skills leave me cold. And shaking. And throwing up, like a grimy young victim in an Ashley Judd movie.

His crimes against passionate personifications don’t begin and end in Fallout 3, where he plays the protagonist’s noble dad with the intensity of a J Cloth. I was waiting feverishly for the Narnia movies since I was an embryo, and to have Aslan castrated so by Ballymena’s mildest export near gave me a hernia. Ian Paisley would have been so much better.

White Witch: How do I know your promise will be kept?

Ian Paisleylan: BECAUSE I WILL NOT STAND IDLY BY AND BE MURDERED IN MY BED BY A BRAZEN TAIG!

vs.

Neesonlan: *patronising purr*

Then there’s the trailer for Taken, in which Liam’s character, with the menace of a butter knife, tells the baddies that he will find them…

Not to mention the benevolent waxwork that was Star Wars’ Qui Gon Jinn, a Jedi about as charismatic as a dead hippy. Oh, I don’t know. I want to like Liam Neeson. I do! He’s a great ambassador for Northern Ireland – gentle, intelligent, not infected with rabies – but Holy Onthedoley, does he have to be so fucking boring? I’ve seen more expressions on Jennifer fucking Aniston, for God’s sake!

I am aware that having no patience for Liam Neeson’s treacly droning puts me quite firmly in the minority, so I don’t doubt you’ll not agree with me. I feel ashamed. Honest to God, I feel ashamed. It’s very wrong to plump for Eamonn DeValera in the great soap opera that is Ireland’s recent past, but that’s what Liam Neeson did to me. I mean, c’mon. Surely you’d let Alan Rickman take you backwards over a hotplate any day of the week than Liam Neeson’s sonicly dry-cleaning your ear canals with his great big buttery croonings?

Oh Jesus. Help me. I’m sick.