Interview/Risteard Cooper: Loose limbed, Risteard Cooper unfurls into a voluminous sofa. Given he is a renowned comedic talent, you expect to be entertained while conducting the interview. The 38-year-old Dubliner, a brilliant mimic, doesn't disappoint. The conversation is peppered with beautifully observed impressions; pitch perfect.

Cooper is promoting a documentary, Chasing The Lions, in which he co-starred with Hector Ó hEochagáin, a quasi-rugby road trip around New Zealand during last summer's ill-fated Lions tour. The dynamic between the pair works. Ó hEochagáin is manic, goofy and full-on, Cooper the antithesis, laid back and providing the belly laughs.

Courted for the project, Cooper didn't have to debate the issue for long. "I might have flirted with the idea of going down under my own steam, but when you walk into the kitchen to be greeted by a wife and three children you quickly realise how unrealistic it would be.

"When it's work-related, though, it's another matter. Approached about co-presenting the documentary, I asked what was involved, pretending that I didn't care. The three match tickets were the clincher. Even though it (the Lions tour on the pitch) was a disaster, I'll never forget it."

From a comedic perspective he's always been associated with soccer by virtue of Apres Match, alongside Gary Cooke and Barry Murphy, and latterly I, Keano, in which he played Quinnus.

However, rugby is his first love. He played the sport to a reasonable level at school - he was educated at St Michael's College.

His career foundered somewhat following a serious injury while playing against Belvedere College on a rock-hard Anglesea Road pitch in an under-13 cup final.

Cooper explains: "This heap disguised as a 13-year-old boy ran after me, (me being) under the illusion that I was about to score a try.

"He not so much tackled me but dived on my back and my knees buckled. My knee hit the ground and the kneecap burst open. There were guys in my class who went: 'Cooper, I am never going to forget that. I saw your kneecap. You made me look at your kneecap.' I broke my collarbone in the same incident.

"I absolutely loved rugby, loved tackling - more proud of that than anything else. I never really recovered from that (switching to D4 accent), otherwise I would have played for Ireland. I played a few J matches, but then got more involved in the acting.

"I started smoking and acting, got into a different set, a different group of people. It was more about standing around talking about Oscar Wilde. (I was) hugely interested in Not the Nine o'clock News and the Young Ones."

COOPER'S thespian tendencies had been gleaned from his father and late mother. He recalls their origins.

"I stared singing at an early age. My ma, she taught music and Irish in Loreto Crumlin. Every year there was a Christmas opera, a concert in the RDS.

"This one was called Amal and the Night Visitors. They needed someone to play the little boy, a cripple who gets cured.

"I was brought in to the piano and made to learn the part. As soon as I got out on the stage I felt there was something very right about this, something very comfortable. I was nine years old and the only boy among 300 girls.

"I remember, to the shame of my parents, that when I was interviewed at the time - it was a very light article in The Irish Times in which I was asked what it was like to be among so many girls - I responded: 'I couldn't give a damn.'

"From there on I started to enter competitions, including the Young Musician of the Year, singing. I got to the final of the boy soprano section."

When asked how he fared, Cooper (effecting a luvvie accent) laughed: "Some little poof. He's shit. I don't know what's become of him, probably licking the streets."

Cooper's role in the documentary is largely to interview the Irish players in a variety of guises from Colm Murray to Bill O'Herlihy, taking in George Hook, Eddie O'Sullivan and a couple of national stereotypes.

So how did he find the players?

"Ronan O'Gara was pretty relaxed. There's a bit that's not in the DVD where I am talking to O'Gara and (Paul) O'Connell and I ask (switches to Colm Murray voice): 'How are preparations going for the big game?' O'Gara takes me up deliberately to mean the Manawatu, not the first Test, because he wasn't playing. He has a nice, quirky, smart-arse Cork tone.

"We were really restricted initially. There was an incredible layer of protection fronted by quite an austere young woman. As soon as the (Brian) O'Driscoll injury occurred, the response (from the Lions party) was that we need every help that we can get here. All of a sudden we were given accreditation, access.

"They (the Irish players) seemed to me very relaxed. I was looking for chinks, some indicators of whether they were really having a good time. I was asking them about Alistair Campbell, whom I thought was the greatest single selection error by Clive Woodward.

"I think he's a bully. That's his reputation and there was nothing I saw in New Zealand that would make me change my mind. The players said he was grand - not brilliant, not fantastic.

"Gavin Henson was enigmatic in that people don't know what to make of him. Players were saying that he literally didn't say a word when out at a team dinner. He would not say anything, not a word for the entire trip, apart from ordering his meal.

"The rooming arrangements reminded me of one-night stands, where the players would return to their little clusters the following day. Some of the Welsh and some of the Irish seemed to have a rapport. There was a feeling it didn't work with some of the English players.

"There was one particular story I heard. Fisticuffs were overheard on the corridor between two English players at six in the morning. There was supposed to be training at 10am, but they were throwing each other into doors - two clubmates."

The O'Driscoll injury in the first Test, a catalyst for the presenters' new-found access, also spawned a financial reward. They printed anti-Tana Umaga T-shirts complete with the All Blacks captain's picture and sold the lot for €30 apiece.

"It was my one and only piece of entrepreneurship. They sold like hot cakes, not just to Irish people. It's funny, the (Lions) fans were more united than the players."

CURRENTLY starring in Harold Pinter's Betrayal at the Gate theatre, Cooper spoke about his decision to leave I, Keano.

"I actually really enjoyed the process and the rehearsal. I just felt there was a lack of ambition in it in terms of how it was produced.

"I felt frustrated about that. I thought that potentially it could go out of Ireland. It could have, on its own merit, become a good musical and you wouldn't have had to know Roy Keane. There were a couple of frustrations and I just felt that you were better walking away from it in those situations than pretending everything is kosher."

Good news for comedy lovers is that the Apres Match team will reconvene for next year's soccer World Cup in Germany. "There'll be some live gigs and we'll do something with RTÉ. It could be a programme in its own right rather than just something added on at the end of the coverage of matches."

On the latest saga to drape itself around Irish football, Cooper is unequivocal in his support of former Republic of Ireland manager Brian Kerr.

In discussing the return of Apres Match for the World Cup he mused: "It would have been a lot more focused had the Irish players done their job and I say the Irish players rather than Brian Kerr. I think he did as much as he could. I just think it is missing the point to not continue his contract."

Conversation returns to Chasing the Lions and not alone his enjoyment in making it but also the rapport with Ó hEochagáin.

"We had never met before (the project) and then did so twice before going out. You never know how things work, but we hit it off. I don't see how you couldn't get on with him.

"There's no side to him, he's great craic, a good bloke. He has his chill time; he's not full-on all the time. It worked really well. The highlight of the documentary, as I said to Brian O'Driscoll, was that I'm sorry for your injury but it was great for the programme. From a rugby perspective it was a terrible tour."

The final scenes in the documentary see Ó hEochagáin and Cooper doing what they do best - making people laugh.