Cartoon family get animated

In The Name of the Grandfather sees the dysfunctional animated family travel, on a pilgrimage of sorts, to the village of Dunkilderry so Homer can make his ageing father’s dream of one last pint in Tom O’Flanagan’s bar a reality. . . .

“Something terrible has happened,” Homer laments. “The Irish have become hard-working and sober!”

Mr Brooks said the storyline was inspired by a newspaper article he read last year.

“I read this article in the New York Times about the smoking ban and the fact that the pubs were closing,” he said.

“Irish people were also working so hard and crunching hours to the point that the pubs were suffering.”

As Homer and Grampa attempt to overcome the shock, the one-pint pilgrimage descends into a drinking binge, featuring a cast of beers and a rare cocktail called Bushmills served in a potato floating on a Guinness.

The episode turns when Homer and Grampa wake in the bar the next morning to the news that, thanks to Irish property law, they purchased O’Flanagan’s in their inebriated state. . . .

The tale ends in a courtroom, where Homer tells a judge he ignored the smoking ban in his bar because he wanted to “take Ireland back to the good old days of ‘Angela’s Ashes’.”