The papers are out. I’ve come to realise the enormous effort it takes to get column inches in the press, and can see how good the folks are in Hot Press to have encouraged a mention in the Irish Times yesterday, and today, a photo and a mention in the Sunday Tribune and a big interview and photo in the Sunday Independent. Although I had to have my coffee first, before bracing myself to read the end-product of Joe Jackson’s forensic scrutiny. It’s a curious business, the Irish emphasis on family – who you are, and who your parents are, matter here. I go away to godless anonymous London to forge my own life, to re-invent myself on my own terms, and I come back to Ireland and practically every newspaper mentions my parents.
The good thing is, it is all fine now. I don’t begrudge them a second of it. There was a time when I’d have been defensive, claustrophobic, but life is too short, and everyone’s very happy here. My folks took my answers to Joe Jackson’s grilling about early family life in good humour, and it dawns on me now that no one is defensive in our family anymore, including (and especially) me. That’s a very pleasant realisation.
I have enjoyed so much my time in Dublin. I was touched by Quentin Fottrell’s piece in the Tribune, entitled ”Return of the Prodigal Bootboy”. I found Joe Jackson’s piece fair, very intimate, and encouraging – “Not alone in loneliness” runs the big headline, under a great big fun photo of me.
The most fun was 2 1/2 minutes of telephone conversation I had with the charming Eamon Carr, who runs a radio programme called Carr’s Cocktail Shack on Sunday evenings on Dublin’s Choice FM. I rang in with a recipe for a cocktail (A dirty Martini) and then a bit of blather and then it was all over. But Eamon didn’t know that he (and the incomparable Horslips, his band) were my first ever rock gig, when I was about 13, for which I wore, special like, a purple flared denim suit. It was great to talk to him.
He was delighted to read that I mentioned Agnes Bernelle and the Radiators’ single in my last Bootboy piece – and it’s funny, she’s been on my mind this week. I miss her. I went to the wonderful Spiegeltent on Thursday night, in very genial company, to see Larry Beau sing with material that was very like Aggie’s (whom I knew well, from our years sitting together on the Irish Actors’ Equity Executive in the eighties). But Larry has a stage presence remarkably like Bowie’s – wonderfully magnetic, androgynous. Although the dancers were leather-clad and were swishing their whips and crops around in faux menace, they weren’t really very sleazy or intimidating. But, perhaps, on that score I should acknowledge I am perhaps a tad jaded. Anyway, Dublin in the throes of its Fringe Theatre Festival (they didn’t have a Fringe when I was around last) is looking alive and interesting and cosmopolitan, and I am having a ball.