The Trib

by David Kenny

  However, the news of her illness and subsequent death turned these journalistic foes into friends. The very journalists who took potshots at Ireland’s only glamour model now told us they considered themselves amongst her closest friends.

  In the sugar-coated tabloid world of celebrity reporting, friendship is a cheap commodity. Some of these new ‘friends’ explained that one of the main reasons they loved Katy French was because she made their jobs so easy.

  We were told last week that most people on the Irish social scene are almost impossible to prise a story from. French provided a refreshing alternative to the gossip writers by giving them what they wanted. It was a mutually beneficial relationship and one which was abused on both sides. Now, however, we are expected to believe all of these people were genuine friends to the woman.

  I don’t doubt some of the people Katy French met through the media became close to her. Paul Martin, the Irish Daily Mirror’s Showbiz editor, told the Breakfast Show on Newstalk on Friday that he and Katy concocted stories together, engineering photo shoots they knew would make the front page. They even went so far as to stage a reunion with her ex-fiancé.

  One paper took the decision to publish comments from a website message board which were critical of Katy French. The comments were slated by the journalist who described the piece as ‘disgusting’.

  The decision to close down the thread was praised. This piece of journalism characterised the week’s hypocrisy, coming from the same writers who laid in wait for Katy French to put her foot in her mouth. They who reserved column inches for the newspaper version of pointing and laughing at a personality they owned.

  One can only but wonder if these people who claimed they knew Katy French really believed she would value their fairweather friendship?

  The reaction of the red-top press to her tragic death has confirmed the stereotype. The only purpose Katy French served in most of their lives was to fill papers and make their jobs easier by being endlessly accessible. Professions of deep friendship and close bonds serve only to embarrass those who lay claim to them and insult the memory of Katy French. If French was even half as straight-up as she claimed to be, I am sure she would have appreciated honesty far more than faux friendship driven by guilt.

  As it became apparent last week that she was not going to recover, a friend asked me if I felt guilty about what I had written about Katy French a number of weeks previously. My responsibility to honesty will not allow me to deny I found what French represented unsavoury and unpleasant.

  I didn’t know her personally and did not bear her any malice. Am I deeply shocked and saddened by her death? Absolutely, and I pray for her and those who genuinely loved her.

  JUSTINE MCCARTHY

  Cloyne abuse report: one hand washes the other

  21 December 2008

  It is being said that Cloyne is another Ferns. It is not. It is worse. What has been going on in Cloyne for the last six months is the Catholic Church and the Irish State colluding at the uppermost levels to suppress the revelation that the diocese’s elders were ‘vulnerable to be seen as complicit’ with predatory child abusers ‘securing new victims’. By allowing priests accused of raping children to continue to wear their holy vestments and dog collars, Bishop John Magee and his now-sidelined enforcer, Monsignor Denis O’Callaghan, were giving an access-all-areas badge to criminals hunting for fresh young flesh, to paraphrase the excoriating report which the Church and the State nearly succeeded in burying.

  When the game was finally up last Wednesday, thanks to local TD Sean Sherlock’s persistence in the Dáil on behalf of victims, the Church and the State stuck with their fantasy tales, putting their own self-protection ahead of the protection of children and the appalling anguish of people whose complaints were never prosecuted by agents of the State or the Church. Bishop Magee, propagator of a faith that cherishes the ‘little ones’, and Barry Andrews, the minister who is supposed to look after the nation’s children, could teach Pontius Pilate about washing one’s hands of responsibility. Don’t be fooled. The diocese of Cloyne did not publish Ian Elliott’s report willingly. Nor was it Minister Andrews who ensured it was done. Our patrician State has done nothing but act hand-in-glove with a yet-again miscreant Church.

  The report is out now, but the disinformation goes on. Minister Andrews, who gave his sole interview on the matter to RTÉ Radio’s Drivetime on Wednesday, is still trotting out his ludicrous line about a separate HSE investigation. This phantom investigation had never been mentioned, either publicly or privately, in the last six months while this newspaper was repeatedly contacting Andrews’ office to find out what had become of the Elliott report. The complainants in Cloyne had heard nothing about it and certainly had not been interviewed for it. Upon hearing about it for the first time on Wednesday, one complainant phoned Fr Bill Bermingham, O’Callaghan’s replacement as Cloyne’s chief child protector, to ask what he knew about it. The woman was told the diocese’s knowledge of the supposed HSE inquiry amounted to a single phone call from a HSE official last Monday afternoon (15 December), enquiring how many Cloyne priests now stood accused of child abuse. Undeterred by the reality, Minister Andrews (who says he got the HSE report on 4 December), issued a statement to the media on Friday lauding the publication of Elliott’s report and adding that he was still thinking about releasing his own beloved HSE report.

  No doubt that one, unlike the Elliott report, will not expose the inauthenticity of the minister’s original smokescreen about how his department never asked Elliott to do his damned investigation in the first place. Paragraph four of the Elliott report states unequivocably that the Department of Health and Children asked the chief executive of the Church’s National Board for Safeguarding Children at a meeting on 15 February this year ‘to investigate the circumstances outlined in the the complaint and to report back’.

  On Friday night, the woman who had phoned Bermingham about the HSE report sighed exhaustedly on the phone and said to me: ‘You know, this is a very sick country.’

  At the same time that the nonsense was emanating from the children’s ministry, Fr Bill Bermingham, a Youghal curate parachuted into the maelstrom last October as O’Callaghan’s substitute – a direct consequence of the Elliott report, despite Bermingham’s denials – was being equally disingenuous on national radio. In a pre-recorded interview (preventing any opportunity for debate), he stated that the diocese had decided to release the report on Friday because ‘it’s only in the last few days that questions have been asked about the report’. This is patent rubbish. Last July, this newspaper ran a page-one lead story about the suppression of the Elliot report, describing it as too hot to handle by either the Church or the State. The true reason why the report was finally published on Friday was because the bishop was made to understand that the demand for its publication was gaining momentum daily and the longer he prevaricated, the greater the damage to him and his Church. Why it was not published in the first place when it was completed last summer was because of ‘legal concerns’. It was misleadingly hinted last week that these legal issues related to the danger of prejudicing any potential criminal trials arising from the allegations in Cloyne. This is another untruth and more crocodile tears for the victims. The ‘legal concerns’ preventing its publication until now was the threat that Bishop Magee and Monsignor O’Callaghan would pursue defamation proceedings; essentially suing their own institution (Elliott’s office acts independently, but it was established by and is funded by the Catholic Church). How embarrassing would that have been for Ireland’s cosy establishment?

  The suppression of the report is now over. We are into stage two of institutional denial – the PR blizzard. Without any apparent concern for the emotional rollercoaster their actions were causing victims, Cloyne choreographed the release on Friday to ensure minimum damage for itself. While it was known in national Church circles on Friday morning that Cloyne was planning to release the report, a spokesman for the diocese was denying it to journa
lists. At that stage, they were going to release it exclusively to the Irish Examiner, the local newspaper where, perhaps, they hoped to get a kinder reception. (Unlikely, as the Examiner has recently been trenchant in its criticism of the diocese.) Next, we were told the diocese would post the report on its website at 4 p.m. Then it was 5 p.m. It came sometime after 5 p.m. by way of a press release, followed an hour later by a bland interview on RTÉ’s Six One News with Bishop Magee. There was no press conference at which journalists who knew the details of the scandal and the cover-up could have asked pertinent questions.

  Meanwhile, the facts are these. There is every chance that children, who could have been saved if Cloyne had acted correctly, have been added to the list of victims. A priest of the diocese who was abused as a child has left the priesthood. A woman who was abused by another priest and informed the bishop thirteen years ago is now dead.

  While the diocese was immersed in its ‘save-our-skin’ exercise, another woman was routinely attending her counsellor on Friday morning to try to cope with the damage she is left to live with.

  Yes, Cloyne is worse than Ferns because the minister and the bishop stopped the truth coming out. But it is also worse for this reason: Cloyne does not appear to have even heard of Ferns.

  FERDIA MACANNA

  Nobody died, so the concert must have been a success. But for a while in Punchestown last weekend, it was touch and go

  5 July 2009

  You are standing with your twelve-year-old son in a field with 70,000 people. A small hyperactive fifty-three-year-old Australian with wild hair plays a storming twenty-minute guitar solo in teeming rain on a podium in the centre of the crowd while his bandmates stand on stage, dry as sticks. It is the climax of a wonderful concert by AC/DC.

  You feel exhilarated, delighted to have had such a joyous communal experience and proud that your boy has had a good time, as has nearly everyone in the mixed, all-ages crowd – from teens to bikers to dads with their kids.

  Afterwards, you trudge along heading towards the buses. The crowd from Slane had a terrible time getting home a couple of weeks back but the word is that all that has been sorted.

  You take your place in the zig-zag queue like a good responsible heavy-rock citizen and wait your turn to board a bus home ... and wait ... and wait ... and wait. In front of you, packed bus after packed bus leaves yet the queue doesn’t move. Overhead comes the whirr of departing helicopters ferrying the artists and the privileged.

  An hour and a half later, the queue hasn’t budged. Few stewards in sight. No police. No announcements. No news about delays. No news about anything. People are fed up. The mood changes to anger.

  Suddenly, the crowd at the far end breaks through the barriers and gallops for the buses. Now the crowd at the other end follows suit. You and your son, along with thousands of others, are cut off, trapped inside a series of steel barriers. The crowd surges forward but there is nowhere to go. Where are the stewards? A group of them stands huddled together in a far field, as though this mess is now out of their hands.

  Where are the police? Who’s in charge here? Someone unhooks a barrier and slips through. Others follow suit and now it’s anarchy. People skip the queues. Barriers are pushed over.

  Thousands dash for the buses. Some shout abuse at the few stewards who are still around. You struggle to keep your feet. You worry about your boy. Hold on tight. Keep your feet no matter what. Trip and fall, and you will get trampled.

  A lone cop tries to restore a barrier and he succeeds, but it’s too late. All discipline is gone as the crowds storm the buses. Rows and arguments everywhere. Your son tells you that he is scared. You don’t blame him because you are scared too. You feel powerless in the face of all this confusion, chaos and ill-feeling. You wonder how it seems to him, to any kid. Panicked, angry adults everywhere. All rules out the window. You see dads with little kids trying to find a safe way through the mass of humanity. The organisation seems to have completely fallen apart. It’s a free-for-all.

  Eventually, one of the bus stewards takes pity on you and flags down a packed bus. Doors hish open and you pile on. A sign on the wall notes that the bus holds ninety-one passengers. Here people are squished two or three to a seat and sitting on the stairs or on the floor. You don’t care. Anything to get out of there. Your son makes the trip home sitting on a luggage rack. You squat on the floor beside a bunch of exhausted Germans.

  You are lucky. The bus passes hordes of people desperately trying to get home. How could things get so out of hand at such a joyous occasion? Nobody died, so the concert must have been a success.

  But for a while in the rain in Punchestown last weekend, it was touch and go. All it needed was one person to start a panic. If people had tripped over a pushed-over barrier at the peak of the crowd surge, they would have got trampled and crushed, perhaps killed.

  Once when I was ten, my dad brought me to Dalymount to watch Ireland play. Afterwards, we got trapped in front of a locked exit gate. I remember elbows in my face, the smell of cigarettes and beer, belt buckles scraping my hands. Each new push crushed the breath out of me and took me further away from Dad’s outstretched hand. I remember the awful feeling that my dad couldn’t help me. It’s a shocking thing for a child to realise that their parent is suddenly powerless.

  Eventually, the gates opened and everything turned out okay, just like at Punchestown. But it doesn’t take much to change a happy experience into a tragedy.

  Festivals and open-air concerts are a big feature of the summertime. Oxegen is on next weekend and I hope that many thousands will have a wonderful time. I hope that there is no repeat of the chaos of Punchestown or Slane.

  I love going to concerts with my kids. Usually we have a great time, despite the over-priced merchandising and the dire food.

  However, after Punchestown I am going to give open-air gigs a miss. I don’t trust them. I never again want to stand in a field and feel that I can’t protect my kids. I don’t ever want to feel like a ripped-off, tossed-away, worthless specimen of humanity just because someone somewhere took my money and then couldn’t be bothered to organise the buses home.

  We took ourselves darned seriously. We spent as much time choosing stage names as we did rehearsing

  3 January 2010

  Aweek before Christmas I received a surprise email from the producers of Killing Bono, a new film based on Neil McCormick’s memoir of life as Bono’s best friend. I had visions of being offered a part in the film or being hired as a consultant. There is nothing like a brush with Hollywood to perk up a person’s day.

  Instead they just wanted permission to use an original 1978 poster of my band, Rocky de Valera and the Gravediggers, as background in some scenes set in Howth. Fame at last, if only as a fleeting image on the wall of someone else’s film.

  The poster shows six unkempt student types posing in the loo of the Belfield Bar in January 1978 – wannabes with a big new year’s resolution to become the next Boomtown Rats. Though inspired by the energy and DIY attitude of the punks, most of us looked more like rejects from the film Woodstock than future new wave icons. Still, we took ourselves darned seriously. We spent as much time choosing stage names as we did rehearsing. I devoted inordinate energy to finding a suitable eye-patch for my image. Such attention to detail surely meant that our success was predestined. However, like most new year’s resolutions, it failed. The line-up kept changing. By the end of 1980, all of the dreams had petered out and the band folded as though someone had put it in a drawer.

  However, we had played a dozen gigs as headliners at Howth Community Centre, where Neil McCormick and his guitar-playing brother Ivan’s band, Yeah Yeah, had often played support. The headlining gig was later taken over by U2 and we all know what happened to them.

  Now Neil McCormick, ex-Hot Press hack and failed rock star, is destined to have his moment of fame on the big screen with a screenplay courtesy of Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, who penned The Commitments and Lovejoy and who created
Porridge and The Likely Lads. I remember Neil as an exuberant, speccy geek – he could have stepped out of the movie Superbad – and a chatterbox who seemed to be an expert on any subject under discussion. I had no idea that he was Bono’s best mate. But then, once U2 had hit the big time, Dublin’s pubs teemed with people who claimed to be Bono’s pal.

  McCormick, though, was the real deal and his memoir, I Was Bono’s Doppelganger (retitled Killing Bono for the US market), is an honest, often painfully funny account of failing in the music business while enviously watching as his best friend’s band becomes the biggest thing in rock.

  I had mixed feelings when I read McCormick’s book. I knew many of the people who were featured and I grudgingly related to the cartoonish but probably deadly accurate portrait of myself that appears fleetingly in a couple of chapters. Somehow it felt as though my teenage dreams of rock stardom had been hijacked. The book depicts a Howth that seemed about to become the epicentre of the rock universe. It was the world of my youth, and now Neil McCormick had made it accessible to everyone.

  But I can’t really complain. Howth has been on the silver screen before and I was partly responsible. The Last of the High Kings, based on my own coming-of-age novel and starring Gabriel Byrne, Jared Leto and Christina Ricci, was filmed in Howth in 1995. In a curious twist, Jared Leto has recently renounced Hollywood fame to become a rock star. He is now lead singer in his brother’s band, 30 Seconds to Mars. Unlike other Hollywood rock wannabes such as Juliette Lewis and Keanu Reeves, Leto has made a decent fist of rock stardom and 30 Seconds are one of the hottest tickets on the planet. Just goes to show the power and allure of rock and roll.

  It’s perhaps fitting that McCormick’s story is being filmed in January, a time when people make new year’s resolutions and set out to change themselves for the better. Indeed, the new year seems to be the only time in the year when optimism becomes mandatory and people allow themselves ‘what if’ moments. What if I lost weight? What if I kept a tighter control of my money? What if I finally learned to play the guitar?