Colm O'Regan: Jessie Buckley deliberately had herself born in Kerry, but the UK still claims her
Roger Kenny Photography Actor Head Shots www.rogerkenny.ie
Shocked but not surprised. I think that’s the general view. Killarney actor Jessie Buckley was claimed as British when she was nominated for an Oscar. In fact, Ruth Negga, Ciarán Hinds and Caitriona Balfe were also snaffled when it appeared they were in the shakeup. Negga and Balfe reverted to Irish again when they missed out.
Ciarán Hinds -or to give me his correct name according to mangled pronunciation at the announcement Kareen Hinds- was born in Belfast so he could claim to be a citizen of the UK and Ireland.
But Jessie Buckley, sensing her talent from a very early age, deliberately had herself born in Kerry, as far away from the UK territory as it is possible to get, just so this very thing wouldn’t happen. But to no avail.
At this stage, a famous Irish person will have to dress entirely in shamrocks and shillelaghs with pints-of-stout gloves on their hands before there’s any hope of not having their citizenship changed. And even then, someone will think they’re an Irish-American attending a football match at Notre Dame.
It’s difficult to calibrate just how outraged we should be. There are a lot of things to be outraged at: short prison sentences for bad people, footballers kicking cats, developers using machines that look like Transformers to obliterate the last few ditches in the country. But there is always room for ‘Claimed As British’ rage.
Although I wonder if what we feel is no longer anger. Just a sort of intense exasperation. The feeling that you have when a flatmate continues to leave used teabags in the sink despite being repeatedly told to just put them in the brown bin. At some point we may just give up calling them out. As we take the metaphorical teabag out of the sink one more time we’re thinking “Okay at first I thought it was just ‘their thing but now I actually think they trying to wind me up’
Claiming Irish things as British is not new. It started in 1169 but more recently the actor Richard Harris said that he was called English when he won an Oscar and Irish when he was arrested in a drunken brawl. Similarly Conor Mcgregor was British in 2015 when his career was on an upward curve but has been Irish for some time now, especially when filming himself eating a HB brunch in bed laughing maniacally. We are coming up to the 10th anniversary in August of the time numerous British newspapers predicted boxer Katie Taylor would be a gold medal prospect for Team GB.
That one particularly struck a nerve. Ambassadors were summoned to be dressed down. The Defences Forces were on a heightened state of alert. It looked like Irish President of the US, Irishman Barack Obama would get involved. The Cork fishermen we called in to diffuse tensions.
Is it ignorance? Or are there any reasonable explanations? Do they never really accept when former colonies go their own way? Is it that school doesn’t tell them quite how Great-Grandad made his money? Or it is because every Irish accent they hear is judged in the media to be automatically from Northern Ireland and therefore UK. Maybe they’re too used to seeing those maps of the UK which just show the North as a six county island, giving Tyrone, Fermanagh and Armagh some lovely rivieras. (We do that here too. Many maps in very official places are extremely 26countyish and appear to give Cavan and Monaghan some excellent surfing coastlines.)
Football solves the problem of identity very simply – by offering someone a senior competitive cap. So to put this issue to bed, if anyone looks like getting famous, with a few seconds left on the clock, bring them on against Andorra.
