The Irish Are Coming

FOR EIGHT HUNDRED YEARS OR THEREABOUTS, one of history’s greatest neighbourhood disputes has been rumbling on between two countries that on the face of it should be best of friends. Separated only by a 130-mile stretch of water, Ireland and Britain have always had what the Americans like to call ‘issues’.

Until relatively recently, the Irish considered themselves to be put upon by their nearest neighbour. We felt residual repression and an entitlement to complain about ‘eight centuries of hurt’. The British considered the Irish a boozy, noisy and troublesome neighbour but – let’s be fair – weren’t short of the odd bout of anti-social behaviour themselves. Such clichés are convenient by way of a Ladybird introduction to Anglo-Irish neuroses but they are glib and hide the enormous complexities that lie behind this strange and compulsive relationship. So let’s look a little deeper.

Eight hundred is a neat number. Round, even and large, it’s the number used when people casually refer to the amount of time Ireland has been annoyed, pestered and occupied by ‘the Brits’. For a long time, when someone was asked why we had such a gripe with the British, the retort was simply ‘Eight hundred years’. It’s unlikely there’ll be mention of the Norman invasion of the late twelfth century that marked the start of direct English involvement in Irish affairs but in many respects, that’s when the trouble began. Ireland proved a difficult outpost to maintain despite being right on the doorstep because the people tended to be fiercely proud, independent and uncooperative. The more they kicked off, the more the English cracked the whip and so began the rocky road that would last … well, eight hundred years.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Irish lands were confiscated and plantations created with English bosses in charge. Some were benign and respectful to locals but a lot came and treated the place and the people with contempt, often functioning as absentee landlords, sending in agents to do the dirty work while enjoying the financial rewards from afar. Cromwell was hated for bringing across his soldiers to enforce the law with an iron fist that left a bloody legacy, and when Wolfe Tone led the 1798 rebellion against English rule, he achieved national support. His efforts were fruitless in the short term, but the die was cast for future leaders of an embattled nation.

The famine known as the Great Hunger saw a million Irish dead between 1845 and 1852 and a million more emigrating to America, Australia and Canada, hoping that a new land would bring fresh hope and a bright beginning. The British government response to the famine was scribbled on the back of an envelope too late in the day and then tied up in red tape. In very simple terms, they sat back and tutted as the Irish starved and the population dropped by a quarter (although debate on this issue continues to rage, but that’s for another day).

Despite this, Ireland sent the English lots of its best writers and dramatists and in 1914 a whole load of Irish boys headed for London to sign up and fight for King and Country. But two years on, bang in the middle of the First World War, another bunch of Irish boys marched up to Dublin’s General Post Office to proclaim a Republic. Within months of that failed 1916 rebellion, the British made martyrs of the leadership by killing them in cold blood and found themselves in the middle of war they could well have done without. That was settled in 1921 and what can only be described as an Anglo-Irish Cold War began – and would last for the best part of the next century.

The lure of television

Throughout the fraught twentieth century, Ireland strove to forge its own identity by pretending that Britain barely existed. This meant doing things on our own terms as a country and not kowtowing to our former masters. We didn’t ‘do’ the Second World War (we even had our own name for it – ‘The Emergency’) and those who did join the British army were largely ignored or reviled on their return home and have only recently been officially remembered in post-peace-process Ireland.

The Irish might have moaned about the ‘bloody Brits’ but in the 1950s and 60s they headed to London in their droves when there was lots of building work to be had. There are very few motorways you can drive on, Tube stations you can enter, football stadia you can cheer in, or buildings you can work or live in that haven’t felt the trowel of an Irish plasterer or the brush of an Irish painter. It was suitable work for émigrés who weren’t particularly educated or qualified but knew how to dig a hole and work hard. They were drawn towards population centres like London, Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow, but often stayed in their own self-created ghettos – such as London’s Cricklewood and Kilburn. Partly this was because the welcome they encountered wasn’t the friendliest, with many a boarding house having a ‘No blacks, no dogs, no Irish’ sign by the front door. However, just as they did in America, the Irish newcomers found their feet, made money and set up homes.

United by war and economics but divided by history and denial, it was the second half of the twentieth century that introduced a third intangible thread that brought these disparate countries together – popular culture. Television would change the day-to-day lives of British citizens first and it wasn’t long before the Irish followed suit. By 1955, when the signal was strong enough, Irish television viewers could watch British programmes and suddenly the ‘old enemy’ was in Irish living rooms. They looked just like us and they had similar worries. Bar the accents, they could’ve been us. What to do now?

It was only a matter of time before the lure of the London limelight became too strong for a slew of Irishmen who watched their televisions in awe as Frankie Howerd, Tony Hancock and Bob Monkhouse strutted their stuff. The small screen offered some local talent the opportunity for big things. A selection of Irish broadcasters, actors and entertainers reckoned they had what it might take to mix it with the best of these guys and so packed their bags, kissed goodbye to a future in Ireland and headed for the streets of London. In many respects, this marked the beginning of a very public association between Irish people and the great British public. The most obvious and recognizable names emerge throughout the 60s and into the 70s and yet these iconic monikers are only one part of a much bigger story and a much deeper relationship.

Anglo-Irish relations deteriorated again with the Troubles of the 70s and 80s. The British looked askance at anyone with an Irish accent and wondered if they had a whiff of sulphur about them, or if they were related to someone who might be troublesome. Then there were the gross injustices of the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four when people were just picked up off the street and banged away until eventually justice came along. Throughout that time, Terry Wogan was enormously important as a symbol of the civilized Irish. Every morning from 1972 to 1984 people woke to the tones of a cheery Irishman who made them forget about the unrest and reassess their view of the nation, then throughout the 80s he was on their TVs every evening straight after the news. I’ve always thought Wogan was more important than he’s given credit for in terms of tempering the British view of the Irish at a critical time.

The peace process came along in the 1990s, leading up to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Sure, there have been ups and downs since but once Queen Elizabeth came to Ireland in 2011 and was seen belly-laughing with a fishmonger in Cork, it seemed clear the Cold War was over and the neighbours were friends at last.

The Irish in Britain

The question this book asks is ‘What have the Irish ever done for the UK?’ Sit comfortably, because the answer is rather longer than you might realize … Who invented the submarine? Who is the cleverest funny man in Britain? Who is the most-loved radio host? Who makes the best hats for royal occasions? Who populates the cast of Harry Potter films? Who raised hell like no others? Who reports from the world’s most treacherous hot spots? You know where this is going but you’ll have to read on in order to equip yourself with such ‘Oh, I never knew that’ moments.

From the Duke of Wellington (the man, not the pub) to the Coach and Horses (the hostelry of choice for Richard Harris and Peter O’Toole) and from Eamonn Andrews to Graham Norton, the Irish have served and been served by the UK. This book is intended as a friendly postcard or, at the very least, a yellow Post-it from one neighbour to another with a view to reminding each other of how we’ve enriched each other’s lives, in sickness and in health, for richer and for … you get the idea.

I wrote this to celebrate those born in the Republic who came to live in Britain (for a time at least) and made a significant impact on British life.

* * *

Inclusion is based on a more or less arbitrary decision-making process by a committee of one, with no discussion and no voting. This is not Eurovision or a council election. This is one man’s curiosity about two countries that mean so much to each other. I haven’t included Bono, who is of course a household name in the UK, because he has always remained resident in Ireland. I haven’t included Daniel Day Lewis because he was born in England although he now has Irish citizenship. I haven’t included anyone from the North of Ireland because their history of emigration to England and reasons for emigrating are an entirely different story. I’m writing about the country I’m from, and George Best, Kenneth Branagh and Patrick Kielty need a book of their own (maybe someone will write it one day). Having said all that, I might break my own rules sometimes – but that’s the author’s prerogative.

For each of the people my committee of one has chosen, I’ll be looking at why they came over, how they fared, what the Irish think of them, what the British think of them, and what I personally think of them. In this way, I hope to shine some light on our differences and similarities, our shared quirks and oddities, and the way history has affected our views of each other.

So let’s get on with it and endeavour to discover how the Irish really did help to make Britain Great.

1

THE HELLRAISERS

THE IRISH HAVE A REPUTATION for drinking a lot – and make no mistake, we do drink a lot. There’s no point being politically correct about it. A 2009 survey found that 54 per cent of Irish adults engage in harmful drinking each year, compared to a European average of just 28 per cent. The oldest pub in Ireland is said to date back to 1198 and the Irish have been drinking ever since, perhaps to help them cope with all those centuries of hurt they blamed the English for. The first written mention of whiskey comes from 1405 and they famously invented the shebeen (Irish: síbín), a place where illegal home-brewed booze could be drunk without paying excise duties to the British.

Drinking has always been a sociable thing with the Irish. We don’t sit at home nursing a can of Guinness; we’re out there with our friends, supping a well-pulled pint and enjoying the craic. The pub is a place where deals are done, tips on the horses are passed along, and generally the world is set to rights. Until fifty or sixty years ago no decent lady would be seen in a pub (many banned them), but I’m delighted to say that the Irish now welcome just as many women in their drinking establishments as men.

When there was a wave of Irish folk emigrating to the UK in the 50s and 60s, it was soon noted that they had a taste for the hard stuff. The Americans had long known the Irish were that way inclined. If they wanted an Irishman in a Hollywood movie in the 1950s, they stuck Bing Crosby in a priest’s outfit with a whiskey in his hand. If they wanted an Irishwoman, they chose someone tired-looking, with twenty-five children and a boozy husband. The stereotype stuck for decades as the waves of economic migrants caught the ferry across to British shores.

It wasn’t just booze and builders the Irish were exporting to the UK in the 50s and 60s. Some of our home-grown actors fancied playing in front of the bigger, more cosmopolitan audiences of London’s West End and making names for themselves in the movies so they sauntered over, complete with their home-grown drinking habits. If they made fools of themselves appearing drunk on chat shows, it was only part and parcel of the world they lived in. Besides, the English had Oliver Reed and the Welsh had Richard Burton, so it’s not as though they were drinking alone.

The ones I put into the ‘hellraiser’ category weren’t just boozers, though; they upgraded their drinking until they were completely out there. It was a Gatsby party done three-six-five days a year, and it included plenty of womanizing and sometimes a snort of white powder as well. Yet these were extraordinarily talented men who managed to work hard and play hard. How they were able to hit the tiles and hit the boards at the same time I’ll never know, but they lived to a good old age – well, most of them.

Back home the Irish watched with a mixture of pride at the awards ceremonies and horror at the tabloid headlines, but always there was a sense of ‘He’s one of ours.’ And the first two hellraisers I’m going to talk about are legends who completely transcend their boozy reputations because they were simply so amazing at what they did.

RICHARD HARRIS: the excessive-compulsive

1 October 1930–25 October 2002

If I win an award for something I do, the London papers describe me as ‘the British actor Richard Harris’. If I am found drunk in a public place, they always refer to me as ‘the Irish actor Richard Harris’.

Standing proudly in the south-west of Ireland there’s a significant province that reeks of rebellion, tenacity and belligerence. That province is Munster, and within Munster is Limerick, a city that produces paradoxes by the cartload. A rugby city with a large working-class population, there is a celebrated statue that shows two players, arms outstretched, grasping for a ball. One of the players is a docker, the other a doctor. Together they play for the same club, province and (if lucky) country. They work hard, they play hard and they are unconcerned by class. Welcome to the city that gave the world Richard Harris, a city where two classes met and mingled freely.

In fact, Richard Harris’s father started out wealthy – he was a flour mill owner – but home life was shattered when the family business fell on hard times and, almost overnight, the cars, maids and gardeners that had populated his life were gone. Harris reflected, ‘One day was luxury, the next morning my mother was on her knees scrubbing floors.’

Loss figured regularly in the young Harris’s world. A sister’s death from cancer deeply affected him and in many ways informed his worldview: ‘I wanted to embrace it all. I had a terrible desire to let nothing pass me by.’ That desire led to a contrary existence that helped to attract and repel people in equal measure. At home, as one of seven children, he had to make a lot of noise to get heard. At school, the air heavy with testosterone, Harris was first in the queue and back of the class. He set fire to the toilets on one occasion and when a nun rapped his knuckles with a ruler, he grabbed it from her and whacked her back. Small wonder he left early, after failing to complete his leaving certificate. It’s a big wonder they didn’t turf him out.

For Harris, it was all about the rugby, and despite eight broken noses, it was a sport he excelled in, winning medals and cups and nurturing an ambition that he might go all the way and wear the green jersey at Lansdowne Road. This sporting life came to a crushing end in 1953 when he contracted TB and was forced into convalescence for two years. He was lucky to survive because tuberculosis remained a significant cause of death in Ireland, with a considerably higher mortality rate than in England at the time.

What he had lost to academia in school, Harris made up for in his sickbed where he directed all his attention to books. A love of drama and a brief dalliance with amateur dramatics informed his move to London in 1954 where the young Harris had been accepted to study acting at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He had an experience common to many émigrés when he saw a notice in the window of an Earls Court paper shop advertising a room for 30 shillings a week, followed by the message ‘No Irishmen or blacks need apply’. He reacted by pulling his sleeve down over his hand, punching through the glass window, removing the offending notice and keeping it as a souvenir.

In the rarefied environs of London theatre, Harris wasn’t going to be cast headlong into Shakespearean leads but made his debut when he finagled a part in Brendan Behan’s prison drama The Quare Fellow. He had overheard someone talking about the production while out drinking one night and decided to make a phone call about it. On being told the part was for a fifty-year-old, Harris explained: ‘I look f**king fifty. I haven’t had a good meal for four months and I haven’t slept in days. Just take a look at me.’ They did – and he got the role.

More theatre followed, both in London and Dublin, and the film roles began to trickle in. It’s always fun to spot the young Harris among the grizzled tough guys in The Guns of Navarone (1961) and as an angry sailor in Mutiny on the Bounty (1962). But his knock-out role came in 1963 when Lindsay Anderson chose him for the lead in This Sporting Life. As part of the gritty, realistic ‘Angry Young Men’ films that were starting to emerge from the UK at the time, this was seen as an early classic. Harnessing his hard-nosed Limerick sporting background, Harris played the part of an angry, emotionally stunted, testosterone-fuelled rugby league player from Yorkshire, with Brandoesque style and an accent that’s more Limerick than Yorkshire. Widely praised for his authenticity, Harris was nominated for an Oscar and won the award for best actor at the Cannes Film Festival in 1963. I’ve recently watched it on DVD and it’s mind-boggling how good he is. I strongly urge you to go back and catch it if you haven’t already.

As a result of all this success, Harris was in serious demand and appeared in dozens of movies, but none of these roles matched the performance that in many ways defined the early part of his career. Maybe some of his potential was wasted away by the already legendary hellraising – who can say? Certainly, any accounts of Harris’s life in the 60s and 70s include words like ‘hedonistic’ and ‘debauched’. Always featuring in lurid tabloid headlines, he dressed in a style that garnered attention and lived in a neo-Gothic mansion in London. He worked hard and played hard, indulging his darker side to his heart’s content.

Harris had a particular love of women and they adored the mixture of charm and danger he exuded. ‘I overpower women,’ he once confessed. He showered them with love and sex and spontaneous partying until he exhausted them, and one woman would never keep his interest for long. His appetite for the next girl, whoever she might be, was insatiable and it’s reported that he once flew to New York on Concorde for an afternoon of sex. He picked up and lost two wives along the way, for which he took all the blame: ‘I have made seventy movies in my life and been miscast twice – as a husband.’ Commitment of any kind scared him. It wasn’t his thing.

At one point, his cocaine habit got out of control and a stint in hospital saw a priest rushing to Harris’s bedside, armed with the last rites. The story goes that Harris woke suddenly to hear the priest reciting the holy rosary and announced to the padre: ‘Father, if you are going to hear my confession, prepare to be here for days. By the end of it all, I can guarantee you will very much regret your vow of celibacy.’

At first the film studios accommodated his hellraising, adding extra shooting days to allow for the hangovers and lost weekends, but by the late 70s work was getting thin on the ground. The ‘good’ life finally caught up with Harris in 1981 when doctors told him he had eighteen months to live if he kept going that way. It was a summer evening when, with typical gusto, he marched into a club for a final drink. He cracked open two bottles of Château Margaux 1957 (£600 per bottle), drank them slowly – he later described the experience: ‘I treated them like you’d treat making love to the most gorgeous woman in the world. If you knew you only had one orgasm left, you’d say, “I’m holding it up babe, because I don’t want this to end”’ – and then stopped taking alcohol. For a decade.

The good roles were still few and far between, though. When he had a shot at playing Maigret in a 1988 TV series, the Daily Mirror suggested that his Irish accent made a mockery of the programme, and ironically suggested Harris should go the whole distance: ‘How about Sherlock O’Holmes, Paddy Mason, Hercule Guinness?’ But this kind of ridicule failed to faze Harris who was well used to the stereotyping that suited elements of the British press. He acquired the rights to the stage production of Camelot and took it on a world tour, making a lot of money in the process, and in 1990 he won the London Evening Standard Award for best actor for his role as Henry IV.

But perhaps it was a sweet irony that Richard Harris had to come home to put in what many consider to be his finest acting moment – in The Field as the megalomaniac farmer Bull McCabe, whose lust for land was visible in the actor’s every fibre. Harris was trying on hats for the part when he saw the name of Ray McAnally inside one of them and realized that the great Irish actor had been earmarked for the role before he died. ‘I’m very sorry Ray McAnally died,’ Harris reportedly commented before adding, ‘But I always knew I was destined to play this part.’

Whether it was fate or luck, Harris was right and the part gave him the opportunity for a glorious final lap. Nominated for his second Oscar, Harris was back to his old self when explaining why he didn’t want to attend the Oscar ceremony: ‘Why the f**k would I want to participate in any of this Hollywood b*****ks. It’s fourteen f***ing hours there, fourteen f***ing hours back, two hours of f***ing stupidity and kissing people’s f***ing cheeks. F**k that.’ … It seems he didn’t want to go. However, Richard Harris was back in the game and had rediscovered his acting groove. The 90s proved fertile ground for the once-again sought-after actor – even though he’d started back on the Guinness. Close to his seventieth year, Harris moved into a suite at London’s Savoy Hotel where he justified the princely rent of £6,000 a week by saying: ‘If you’re paying the mortgage on a home, you can’t ask the bank manager to fetch you a pint.’