Is Shane MacGowan Still Alive?

by Tim Bradford

  An afternoon with a future foreign correspondent of the Irish Times

  Being mid-afternoon by now, I decided it was time for a bit of a break, so went and sat at a long bench in the back room of the ancient wooden interior of O’Neachtain’s with a not-too-cold pint of Guinness. At the far end, a blond ponytailed Eurotourist with little round specs who I decided was called Wolfgang started barking orders at the slumped and lived-in Irish couple to my right.10

  ‘Excuse me, ve are a big group could you move up please.’ A not unreasonable request – it was just the tone that rankled. The woman, with a sharp face and a mass of curls in a short cut, looked up and winced. Her man – like a slightly pudgier Gabriel Byrne – simply sat still with his head on his chest and eyes closed, as if someone had just shot him in the forehead. Wolfgang repeated his order.

  ‘Zere is more room up zere for you. Zere are more off uss zan you!’ The woman punched her man on the shoulder – ‘Dermot, get up!’ and they picked up their drinks and staggered six feet closer towards me, her grumbling, him smiling with his eyes still closed. They sat down, her next to me.

  ‘Bloody tourists. Bloody Germans and bloody English. They’re all over the place. A load of poofs,’ she spat in inner-city Dublinese to no-one in particular, as her man settled down into the Just Killed position and closed his eyes again.

  ‘Yeah, fucking English,’ I said in my best RP accent.

  ‘You an Australian?’

  ‘Er, I’m English,’ I said, staring down at my pint.

  ‘Oh. But you don’t mind us sitting next to you, do you?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘You’re all right then.’

  She asked me what I was doing in Ireland and I said travelling around trying to pick up Irish women while writing a book. She punched her man.

  ‘Dermot, Dermot,’ she said, ‘he’s writing a book. Dermot’s writing a book too, aren’t you Dermot.’

  ‘Nnggg,’ said Dermot.

  ‘Dermot wants to be Foreign Correspondent on the Irish Times but he doesn’t know how to go about it. I think he’d be brilliant. I said he should get in touch with them, but he refuses to.’

  Dermot shook his head, eyes still closed. ‘Nggg, ngggg.’

  I asked her what she thought about the Arts Festival and she started ranting about how unfair arts funding was and that normal local people didn’t get a look in and that it was all just geared for the tourists.

  ‘What is art?’ I asked.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, if I asked you to write down in my notebook what you think is the definition of art, would you do it?’

  She thought for a couple of minutes then started scribbling.

  ‘Art is stuff that’s done in such a way that normal people understand it.’

  She took a swig of drink. ‘This place is full of poofs. Look at them all poncing about.’

  ‘Eh? How can you tell?’

  ‘You can just …tell.’

  Then Dermot stirred. ‘Nnnng,’ he said. I went to the bar and bought them a drink. When I got back they had swapped places. While the woman, Maggie flirted with the young blond German guy she had previously been slagging off, me and Dermot made pleasant conversation for a while. I can’t remember what I said to him, but he suddenly draped his arm around my shoulder and said, ‘That’s it,’ finally opening his eyes slightly, ‘That’s the thing. The thing.’ He jabbed the air with his finger. Then he smiled and nodded and shut his eyes again with a ‘Nnnnngg’.

  ‘What thing?’ I asked, stupidly.

  Dermot’s eyes prised themselves open. ‘It’s the thing. You, you. It’s YOU. You understand. You. You’re the man.’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘You know. You know. The thing.’

  Dermot had plainly fallen in love with me. He wouldn’t let go. Maggie introduced me to a German guy with a Cork accent. He was a party piece. He looked like an orthodox German until he opened his mouth. He combined the robotic teamwork and luck with refereeing decisions of a German with the charm and wit and sparkle of the Irish. He seemed incredulously happy at this good fortune. ‘It’s terrible,’ said Maggie. ‘He doesn’t know what he is. He should make his mind up.’ I rather admired the Cork German. He seemed to have the best of both worlds. Dermot started to bum cigarettes off him while Maggie went off at a tangent into a rant about the English and Oliver Cromwell.

  ‘The most evil bastard ever! And he was a bloody poofter.’

  I then went into a long-drawn-out spiel about what’s great for one country may be disastrous for another and how at school we were taught by earnest left-wing teachers who were themselves products of the radicalism of the sixties and seventies that Cromwell was essentially good because he challenged and defeated for ever the absolutism of the crown. It laid the foundations for the world’s most democratic parliament. It wasn’t a proletarian revolution like the French one – there were various groups agitating for further reform like the Diggers and the Levellers but they never got anywhere near real power – in reality it was one set of nobles against another, one gang with floppy hats against the other with soup pans on their heads. Irish people of course have a very different view of Cromwell. He came over to break the back of the Irish Catholics partly because they had supported Charles (though some rich families hedged their bets and supported both sides). But basically he was a hero to the English, he freed us from the yoke of absolute monarchy.

  ‘Absolute shite more like,’ said Maggie. ‘That’s a load of bollocks.’

  ‘Nnnnnggg,’ said Dermot.

  She then slagged off arts funding (again), flamboyant arts tourists, gays (again) and the English (again).

  We loped out to a little Chinese café round the corner, Dermot with his fist full of cigarettes he’d bummed off the Cork German, Maggie still banging on about poofs and Oliver Cromwell. We ate some chips and as she ranted Dermot started to become more and more vociferous. ‘Fuck them. Let ’em try. Let ’em try!’ He went to the toilet and on his way back got in an argument with one of the beefy waiters. ‘Fucking Japanese. Are you the man? Are you?’ We were asked to leave. Dermot held my hand and wouldn’t let go. They invited me back to their tent where, they said, there was a full bottle of vodka. I said no thanks. He looked at me sadly. They walked off towards the square, arm in arm, Dermot perhaps dreaming of filing stories from the far-flung corners of the world, Maggie still furious at the misdeeds of seventeenth-century English closet homosexuals.

  I got out my notepad and jotted down some thoughts. I had to write it down, all this oral history, these myths and false legends, for it to become my memory. Then I’d walk around tomorrow with my pack on my back stuffed full of bits of paper with similar scribble on, like a Memory Snail.

  Review of Mike Peters in pub

  After having a quick wash then a snack in Abrakebabra (‘It’s magic – wolf it down and it comes right back up!’) I headed down to the music pub to catch the ex-anthemiser from the Alarm. As I was strolling down Quay Street I passed a little pub – called simply ‘Murphy’, I think – that I hadn’t noticed before. And so went in.

  It seemed to be the perfect combination of old lads in their seventies and young women in little strappy dresses. At my table was an old Scots guy, being ‘tucked in’ by his daughter and son-in-law. She was nagging him, telling him what time they would be back for him – I could tell he couldn’t wait for them to go. He had two hours to get wellied before they returned.

  He sat there with a stony face for about half an hour. He was so quiet he made me seem gregarious. I could tell I’d only get one chance to try and talk to him. Then I got self-conscious and felt like a parasite, sucking people’s stories out of them. Like Dermot, the Irish Times ‘correspondent’… what do I give them back? I decided, though, that this was what I wanted to be like when I was an old man. Telling my relations to fuck off so I can drink in a quiet pub in peace. What else is there? I tried to get inside his head. What would I want if I
were him?

  I said, I’m buying a whiskey, did he want one? Ah that’d be grand lad he said, please, with a bit of water. We started to talk about football. He’d played for a junior team in Scotland in the 1930s, worked down a mine – left early every Saturday to play football. He supported Celtic. What did he think of Dr Vengloss, the Celtic manager from Prague? His eyes twinkled. ‘He writes the cheques eh heh heh heh heh.’ He used to play ‘back kick’ (which I suppose must be a fouling ‘special teams’ position) in a 2–3–5 formation. Players could look after themselves in those days. But he didn’t begrudge money going to young players now. A lot of the Republic’s players were going to England, he said. He just wanted to be part of the craic. Another old man appeared, even older than Old Back-kick. I was in ‘his’ corner, so had to move. With him was an Irish Frasier lookalike in a Bavarian jacket, a local doctor or poet. The two old blokes talked to each other around me. I left. Good luck to ye lad, he smiled. As I left he moved round to become the junior partner.

  ‘Where are you off to then lad?’ he shouted. I’d missed the gig by now.

  ‘Er, I, um, was thinking of going to see the Miss Galway beauty contest. Fancy going?’

  ‘Ah no, that’s young man’s business. Good luck lad.’

  Miss Galway Competition

  Leaving behind the old guidebook Galway with its hair twizzlers and didgeridoos I made my way north to Salthill, a more prosaic working suburb of the city. Miss Galway was taking place in Bogart’s night club. A classic night club name. Big pub nightclub down the back in a hall with a smaller bar.

  People were already earnestly looking at their programmes to check the form, like a horse race, lots of serious expressions. The programme was a sheet of heavy A4 paper folded in half with photocopied photos of each contestant grinning gormlessly, their age and occupation, the judges and a few inches of space for the sponsors – Budweiser, Connacht Mineral Water, Sienza Clothing Ltd and ‘Flowers by Kay’.

  Lorcan Murray, the compère, was a patronising git of the old smooth school, smart grey hair and a sucked-in belly like a gym instructor, with the girls doing their mat work at the other end of the sports hall. One was a little girl-next-door bird, her head darting around with nervous energy. She twittered away about her neighbours in some out-of-the-way village and I could just see her in, say, forty years time, chatting away in a village shop about the comings and goings of people. She was gorgeous. The next contestant, trying to get in with the compère, pulled her tummy in so that her tits stuck out at right angles. One a curly haired country girl with a thick accent whose father fished and who loved children. ‘I love children,’ she said. Applause. Then came an anorexic English-looking blonde air hostess with prominent pubic bone showing through a clingfilm12 thin dress. She hadn’t got a man at the moment. Even more applause and laddish cheering. Then a Russian student who didn’t like Irish men because they expected women to do all the ironing and washing (she was very pretty but only got sporadic applause for this subversive attitude). She said she spoke six languages. Name them, said the compère. Then came a shy sales assistant from Spiddal, and finally a student with wild red hair. She’d got a man so the lads didn’t like her at all. As they pranced about on stage I looked around me – I felt so out of place, so scruffy, long-haired and unshaven after travelling around. All the lads were well ponced-up, eighties-style, thick gel, shiny little loafers, pressed trousers, nice shiny shirts with a crappy little smear of a moustache to set off the look. Maybe they would be the lucky one who’d get off with Miss Galway. That’s what we were all thinking. I hit on my chat-up line if, for some reason, I got within speaking distance of the little village shop girl: ‘My great grandmother’s family were horsepeople.’

  The blokes next to me, thin little whippet and his big-arsed mate, both in suits and clean looking, were clutching pints to their chests and discussing the scene:

  Bigarse: I wouldn’t fancy my bird prancing about on stage in front of all these idiots.

  Whippet: (Ogling someone’s arse) Aye. Pause

  Bigarse: I liked the air hostess. You could see her nipples through that dress.

  Whippet: Aye.

  Air hostess was the winner (Shopgirl came nowhere), to riotous applause from the snappy dressers, who stuck their chests out, jumped about and roared like eager-to-please lion cubs. Air hostess would go on to the Miss Ireland final, to be held in some airbrushed nightclub in a prestigious Dublin suburb (though I consoled myself with the fact that Shopgirl would have memories which would never leave her and she’d probably become a bit of a local celebrity in a small way). At the end of the night there was a tacky disco so I got up there, scruffy smelly and hairy, and proceeded to shuffle my butt to crap disco, like a tramp with his can of superbrew who’s walked in on an under-thirteens youth club party and staggers straight onto the dancefloor trying to snog the teacher. Miraculously, I started to get what’s known in the nightclub scene as Dancefloor Attention from Young People. It’s a while since I’ve been hit on by nineteen-year-olds – not since I was nineteen, in fact – and I can only put this down to the fact that all the other blokes looked like Adolf Hitler (if he’d shopped at Mr Byrite).

  On the way back into Galway I went to a phone box and rang Annie up in Texas then ranted on to her about ‘beauty contests and how the-nicest-one-should-have-won-but-didn’t-it’s-not-fair-and-jeez-you-could-see-the-winner’s-pubes-through-her-dress’. I then staggered off. That’s the last I remember. I woke up in the morning in my B&B with the contents of my rucksack everywhere, all my memories spilled out on the floor. I could feel a headache rushing like a banshee wind down the corridor towards my room. Then something started moving in my guts – the very physical creation of a totally mental concept.

  * * *

  1 Guidebook stuff … Galway is known as the city of the tribes. It used to be very English. Loyal to the crown. No Os or Macs were allowed inside the city unless specifically invited. The Claddagh was the little fishing community on the other side of the river. It lasted up until the 1950s when, in its wisdom and for reasons of health, the council knocked down the village and built council houses in their place. That’s where the rings come from. You wear the heart pointing towards you if you’re in love, and out if you’re looking for love. Got to get it right.

  2 Though even the drunkards seem to have their pecking order. Some aren’t even bearded and stand in pairs in scruffy old suits leaning against the rusty modern art sculptures, looking like civil servants who got sacked back in the early sixties after one liquid lunch too many. They stare off into nothingness and occasionally mutter the odd word to each other. Others are more true to the genre and sit around in groups on the benches, with hair all over the place and cider, shouting ‘argh!’ and ‘egh’ at each other and hold Who’s Got The Reddest Face competitions.

  3 Although recently I was out drinking at the Anchor Bankside in London with a group of blokes and telling them about my visit to Galway and a friend of a friend told me that Martin McDonagh was a mate of his and a really nice bloke. Why don’t you meet up with him? And I said I like the idea of him but what would I say to him? That I’m writing a chapter in a book about the fact that I’ve never seen his plays? My mate Tom played football with him in Regent’s Park now and again and for some reason I stopped hating him then because, well, when did Oscar Wilde ever play football in Regent’s Park with his pals? But I forgot to ask what position he played, because that would have been important, tells you a lot about a man, if not a playwright. Wilde would have been either an old-fashioned centre forward or a goalkeeper, John B. Keane on the wing, Behan mid-field genius, O’Casey Nobby Stiles hardman. I imagine Martin McDonagh and his brother as sort of literary equivalents of Jack and Bobby Charlton. But which is Jack and which is Bobby?

  4 This has been going on for years. When people are older than me there’s always the chance that I’ll one day equal or even overtake their achievements, be it in writing, politics or number of famous actresses they�
�ve been out with. It’s highly delusional of course. But if they’re younger, then they’ve already bettered me, so to speak, not that they’ve done it on purpose or anything.

  It’s mainly happened with football. For years I would note the age of an up-and-coming player and, if he was older than me, think, ‘There’s still time for me to make it. There’s still something to look forward to. Thank you, Footy God.’ I felt that some players had grown up with me, the ones who were the same age and who hit the big time at around the same period that I should have done if I hadn’t gone off to college to watch films for three years and drink too many pints of Tolly 4X.

  One star in whom I had a particular interest was Mark Smalley, a central defender who started his career at Notts Forest and has done the business in a small business sort of way at a variety of other clubs. In the late seventies, Smalley was a dashing left-winger for a crack East Midlands under-fifteen club side, and during one particularly fraught North Kesteven Cup Final I had the onerous task of being skinned by him. He was a class above the rest of the honest, pimply fourteen-year-old virgins (Sorry Bon – never believed you, mate) on the pitch that day, and we all knew he was going to ‘make it’.

  The last time I saw him play was in the late ’80s at Brisbane Road, when he came on as substitute for a half decent Leyton Orient side. After that he moved on to Mansfield Town and Maidstone United, then I lost touch, with only his grinning features in my 1989–90 Rothman’s Yearbook to remind me that he ever existed. I had observed his descent through the divisions with genuine sadness, and it felt all the more real because he was born only a day later than me. OK, I admit it, he represented all my hopes and fantasies about football success.