Saints and begorrah – here’s a list of the greatest-ever Irish fictional characters

The Leprechaun from Leprechaun
An annoying American steals a leprechaun's gold and returns to the US, where the leprechaun (Warwick Davis), understandably in my view, goes on a killing spree. This premise is recycled for a series of seven films including Leprechaun 2, Leprechaun: In the Hood and Michael Collins. My favourite is Leprechaun 4: In Space in which the eponymous Leprechaun courts alien princess Zarina (to quote Tracy Morgan, "Freaky-deakies need love too") before exploding out of the groin of a space marine and killing everyone. Who said the Irish have issues with sex? Some yank who wants to steal our gold, probably.

Darby O'Gill from Darby O'Gill and the Little People
Fiddling groundskeeper and fantasist Darby O'Gill was the break-out star of this documentary all about Irish life in the 1950s, much like White Dee from Benefits Street. Actually, I really like Darby O'Gill and the Little People. It's a big daft, fantasy film about fairy mischief culled from the folklore collection by Walt Disney. I won't have a bad word said about it.

Cassidy the vampire from Preacher
Preacher was a much loved, ultraviolent comic book series written by Garth Ennis all about a preacher who wants to kill God. It has been adapted as an AMC series by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. It features an amoral alcoholic Irish vampire called Cassidy, played by English actor Joe Gilgun, and an American hitwoman called Tulip, played by Irish actress Ruth Negga. Her American accent is better than his Irish one. In the trailer, Gilgun sounds like he's actively mocking us.

Scottish People pretending to be Irish people
Gerard Butler in P.S. I love You, Sean Connery in Darby O'Gill and the Little People, Kelly MacDonald in Boardwalk Empire, Sean Connery in The Untouchables – when it comes to depicting the Irish in US drama some producers like to hire Scottish people. Sometimes they don't even change their accents. Let's just admit it – being Scottish and being Irish are basically the same thing. I suppose it's better than hiring Gerard Depardieu or taping a bunch of cats together, Simpsons-style.

Brad Pitt in The Devil's Own
A handsome terrorist called Frankie the Angel (Brad Pitt) goes to America to buy guns, befriend Harrison Ford and grow out his mullet. It's hard to follow because Frankie is Italian and speaks Italian throughout. What? That was a Northern Irish accent? They really should have hired a Scottish person or Gerard Depardieu.

Shannon and Joseph in Far and Away
Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman escape the tyranny of the intergalactic tyrant Xenu to start a new life as disembodied souls in a Hawaiian volcano… sorry, that's the story of Scientology. Far and Away has a similar plot involving 19th-century Irish peasant/landlord lovers in American exile. It features comforting American creation myths, bare-knuckle boxing and truly excellent Irish accents. They sound like the Clangers. Frankly, I feel like we're letting ourselves down by not taking these accents as a template for all future speaking. That said, Tom Cruise looks far too healthy to be a malnourished Irish peasant. They should have taped a bunch of cats together.

Chief O'Hara from the Batman TV series
Years before David Simon explored the decay of American civil society on The Wire, the creators of Batman did likewise with their depiction of Gotham City as the under-resourced, crime infested fiefdom of a fighty billionaire leather-fetishist. As a young Irish child in the 1980s watching the only American programme RTÉ could afford, it was Police Chief Clancy O'Hara who fired my imagination. "Begorrah!" he'd say and "Saints be praised!" and "Mother Machree!" All phrases I frequently used myself. I found Chief O'Hara's elevation to high office inspiring. Perhaps as an emigrant from these shores I too could rise up the ranks of the US civil service to become a well- paid enabler of a rubber-clad tycoon? And so it came to pass.

The Aliens in Toy Story
Cultish green midgets with funny voices, initially in thrall to a celestial being ("The claw!") but increasingly more influenced by all-American authority figures – the creators of Toy Story certainly have our number.

Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot
(Yes, I know it's an Irish play written in French but it's iconic worldwide)
Two lads hang out by a tree waiting for something to happen. Internationally seen as a triumph of absurdist existentialism, Waiting for Godot is recognisable to anyone who's ever lived in a small Irish town as a work of naturalistic realism. Indeed, it started life as a journalistic account of a trip Beckett took home called "What I did on my Summer Holidays." "Vladimir" and "Estragon" are also good examples of the kinds of names Sinn Fein politicians have before they Irishify them.

The Bringloidi on Star Trek
As well as 'the Leprechaun' there are other Irish people in space. When Colm Meaney first agreed to take the space soup as Irishman Miles O'Brien on Star Trek he surely never foresaw the episode in which the crew encountered the Bringloidi, a group of colonists from Stage Ireland who like to drink, fight, cultivate Punch-magazine-style sideburns and keep livestock in the house. Look, I know that's what your family does, but other people found it offensively stereotypical okay? No I won't fight you. And it's far too early for a drink. Put that pig down.

The Healy Raes from Borat II
When I first encountered Sasha Baron Cohen's bitingly satirical depiction of winking flat-cap wearing Irish politicians, I felt it was a little on the nose. "What is the line between satire and offense?" I wondered, my quill poised for my latest 'hot take' as a paid-up member of the Dublin liberal media. Was my amused reaction an inherent critique of self-defeating localism or a mark of my own deeply ingrained, hibernophobic self-hatred? I just didn't know. On the other hand, Pat Shortt's cruel lampooning of cosmopolitan champagne socialism "The Labour Party" is clearly offensive.

Magneto from X-Men
You can take the superpowered mutant terrorist out of Kerry but you can't take Kerry out of the superpowered mutant terrorist. If you think there's no plot related reason why Michael Fassbender's depiction of X-Men supervillain Magneto occasionally slips into a Kerry accent and think it's just because Fassbender himself has a Kerry accent, well then you haven't read my extensive archive of X-Men fan fiction (soon to be serialised on the books pages). And while we're dealing with superheroes…

The Incredible Hulk from The Incredible Hulk
He's big, he's green, his pants are too tight, he goes from town to town looking for work, he has a lot of repressed rage and he speaks of himself in the third person. Paddy knows the story. Hulk smash.

She-Hulk
Just like The Incredible Hulk but without the same bodily autonomy.