This much I know: John Healy

This week we meet up with Maître d’ and restaurant manager, John Healy.

I was driven by work… driven to run away from myself.

When I was in school, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I discovered my love of the hospitality sector completely by chance when I needed a summer job as a kid in the 80s and started working as a waiter in The Lord Bagenal Inn in Loughlinbridge, Co Carlow. I took to it like a duck to water. I’m an extrovert and really enjoyed being around people. They’re right when they compare it to being on stage. It’s a control thing. I still thrive on it — the showmanship of the thing.

Growing up in Naas, I was quite nuts. I used to ride my bike all around town and was knocked down by a car and had my leg broken when I was only eight.

I wasn’t academic at all and failed my Leaving Cert miserably. It was only when I decided that I wanted to go to Cathal Brugha Street to study catering that I became focused. I repeated in the Institute of Education, which I paid for myself.

My favourite saying is to be careful what you tell yourself — you just may end up believing it.

My television career began by accident when I was asked to bemaître d’ on RTÉ’s The Restaurant. I’d just moved back from London to Dublin, after 12 crazy years there, and was fronting the restaurant at the then new Four Season’s hotel.

I said no at first, as I’d visions of them casting me as the mad camp queen, and there was no way I was going to destroy a career I’d spent years building up, but eventually the producers convinced me it was going to be a serious food show.

I used to live a crazy life. I always worked hard, at least a 70 hour week, believing that hard work never killed anyone, but I partied hard too. I survived on coffee, cigarettes, and alcohol.

When I took a four-week holiday in Thailand, things began to change. The best way to put it is that I suddenly met myself. I realised that, beneath all the craziness, I was quite a nice person, and rather shy and subdued. The problem was, once I went back to work at the old pace, something had shifted. It culminated in me having my first heart attack at age 41.

Afterwards, things actually went from bad to worse for a while. Although I went to rehab, I lapsed back into depending on cigarettes and alcohol until I had a second heart attack and then a life-changing heart transplant. That’s when I made a commitment — to myself. I went back to rehab and began to get my life in balance — mentally, psychologically and spiritually.

After the transplant, I was on a journey of discovering exactly who I was. I changed my diet, took up exercise, started up my own consultancy, and wrote a book.

I do believe in fate and destiny. When I was sick I didn’t know where the money would come from to pay for all the bills as I couldn’t work, but my colleagues all rallied around and had a fund raiser to support me.

My biggest challenge has been learning to sit with myself in silence. If you can do that, you can do anything.

I’m not sure about an afterlife but I do believe we are spiritual beings having a human experience. I also believe that we are destroyed by childhood and healed by adulthood.

If I could change one thing in Irish society, I’d change our attitude towards people with mental health issues.

If I could be reborn as someone else for a day, I don’t think I’d want to be anyone else, rich or famous, as I really enjoy being me.

My idea of misery is not being able to sit in my own skin.

I’m more of an owl than a lark, although I’ve taught myself to wind down after work with a cup of tea and a slice of toast.

When I’m not working, I enjoy yoga and walking in the fresh air along Dublin’s Howth Head or down by Charlotte Quay. Being near water is very important to me.

So far life has taught me that it’s very short.

John Healy is the general manager at Suesey Street and Number 25 Fitzwilliam Place, they will be hosting a Thanksgiving celebration on November 24. For more, log onto sueseystreet.ie.

John’s book is A Perfect Heart.