He took the title role in a 2013 film, Detective Downs. Before the last parliamentary election, in 2021, Andre got the chance to don his detective’s fedora again, but this time his job was to grill various politicians on their policies in his tongue-in-cheek style.
One such sequence shows him sitting on a bench outside the parliament building in Oslo, pretending to read a newspaper. A politician, Jonas Gahr Støre – the leader of the Labour Party – strolls outside but behind a pillar, a stooge is waiting to ambush him. As Hofsø looks on, the stooge throws a butterfly net over the unsuspecting Støre.
In the next scene, we see Støre in a chair in a basement. Hofsø shines an angle-poised lamp in his face, and shows him photos of disabled people looking sad and lonely. “If we vote for you, what will you do for us?”
At this point, Støre sets out his policies for disabled people. And after the election, he did indeed become prime minister.
Camilla Kvalheim laughs when she recalls the encounter. “That was very funny. Every time we’ve met him since, he says, ‘Oh – are you going to catch me in that butterfly net?!’”