Mike Garry: From punk ethic and prison to the voice of Man Utd
IKE GARRY is Manchester through and through, but his parents are Irish. He was born in 1965, one of six kids; his mother is from Armagh, his father from Mullingar, Co Westmeath. In the 1970s, the family used to holiday around Carlingford Lough, careering about the countryside in a sky-blue Volkswagen Beetle. Each evening they had to cross the border to get back to their digs.
“My drunken father was telling every English soldier,” says Garry, “these young lads with camouflage stuff on their faces, to ‘Go on then, F-off back home and get out of my country.’ As a kid, it was a bit hairy. We were brought up in a household where my dad was an extreme Republican. Obviously he was nowhere near the Troubles! He didn’t understand it. My mam was a really bright woman, but she had to get out because she found herself getting slowly drawn into it so she escaped to Manchester.”
