A county councillor has hit out at the growing media frenzy in Kilcar when Sex and the City star Sarah Jessica Parker and her husband Matthew Broderick visit their holiday home there.
Fianna Fail councillor Brendan Byrne claimed photographers are arriving in the area in greater numbers during the stars’ annual family holidays.
At one stage last week, he said, gardai had to be called by locals.
He said: “Photographers were lying behind the houses. One unfortunate photographer was at the wrong house waiting for his snap of Sarah or Matthew. This kind of frenzy that you get, I would compare them to a pack of hyenas on the Serengeti plains of Africa.”
Cllr Byrne spoke out after a series of pictures of SJP and her family apparently taken without their knowledge as they relaxed in Donegal over the weekend appeared in papers throughout Britain and Ireland yesterday.
He noted that the family has had links to the area for more than 30 years, since Matthew’s parents first had a home there.
They came every year because they appreciated being able to mingle with the locals without any undue fuss being made of them.
But in recent years the international tabloid interest had got out of hand.
“It’s really out of control at this stage”, cllr Bryne said. “It’s crazy. The Broderick family take Kilcar as their holiday destination. They are not on work. They are not filming. They are there in their private capacity. We are very proud that they have chosen Kilcar as their venue for that and this frenzy seems to evolve each year. It’s getting a bit farcical at this stage.”
He accepted that it didn’t seem to phase Sarah Jessica or Matthew, probably because they are used to such attention across Europe and America.
Cllr Byrne admitted not knowing who SJP was on the only occasion he met her a few years ago.
“She stopped to ask directions to somewhere”, he said. “We got chatting and I asked who she might be and where she was from.
“When she told me she was Sarah Parker it still meant nothing to me. My television viewing consists mainly of watching National Geographic and the History Channel.”
He said that when he later told his wife Carmel – then his fiancé – about his meeting with “a very nice woman” she told him exactly who SJP was.
“Carmel is an avid Sex and the City fan”, he said. “She knew who Sarah Jessica was alright. They met a number of times in a local gym. But then Carmel is from Kilcar. I’m from four kilometres away in Carrick.”
There was no sign of the paparazzi when SJP and Matthew along with others in their party enjoyed a fish meal on Monday night at Charlie Whyte’s West End Café in Ardara.

Reporter: Paddy Clancy