RTE star Oliver Callan has opened up about his relationship with his partner and the factors that have led to their delayed wedding.
The nation’s most notorious imitator has had a huge year as he took over Ryan Tubridy’s 9am slot on RTE Radio 1.
Oliver has been with his husband John Lannin since the pair met after a night-out in Dublin in 2012.
The happy couple dated for six years and got “engaged” in 2018, Oliver explained at the time that the proposal was “more of an agreement”.
He told The Independent: “We decided in the summer, went to London and ordered gold signet rings in Hatton Gardens. Gay men used to wear them in Oscar Wilde’s time to signal to each other.
“It took months to have them made so when they finally came we told both sets of parents and that made it official. Christmas made it handy to tell most others face to face.”
After their “agreement proposal” it took the pair four more years to actually tie-the-knot.
They got married in October 2022, only recently celebrating their two year anniversary.
Oliver told the RTE guide: “We’d been together for 10 years, but the wedding got delayed because of the pandemic. Isn’t the line that, ‘You should have someone to love, something to do and something to look forward to?’, I have all of that but probably too much to do.”
Despite their decade spent together, the pair are yet to decide if they will bring kids into the mix of their marriage.
Oliver explained: “That’s a conversation I’d have to have with John and, to be honest, I don’t really know how to answer that.”
The 43-year-old feels he already has one child, as he was a “dad” to his sister Aine, who’s eleven years his junior.
He joked: “I now say to my husband that I got some semblance of being a dad from that time.
“I remember the thrill of telling Aine what movies to watch or what books she should read, believing then that I could shape a child with my interests, but eventually, they just rebel to become their own person.”
The popular comedian only publicly came out in 2011, on The Saturday Night Show, one year before he met his now husband.
His comedic style of interpretations, imitations and funny voices was born out of a “type of protection”, to ensure he would blend-in in school.
FUNNY MAN
However, Callan doesn’t think his sexuality has held back his career, as he has enjoyed the perks of being one of RTE’s rising stars of the last decade.
Oliver said: “Coming out interviews were quite rare back then. Donal Og Cusack did it in 2009, but there was a big build-up to it with his book’s serialisation, whereas I did it in one big atomic bomb style live on television.
“Now if I’d waited five years, I might have ended up as Taoiseach as in Leo Varadkar’s interview with Miriam O’Callaghan. If Leo did that interview now, I don’t think he’d become Taoiseach because we seem to be facing into right-wing headwinds.”