Damien Delaney: 'One of my favourite novels is Voltaire’s Candide'
Former soccer star Damien Delaney. Picture: Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile
One thing that stands out as a kid growing up in a housing estate in Donnybrook in Cork was that my mother used to let me watch the original Predator movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger on VHS. I was only about 10 or 11 years of age. I remember asking my mother about it recently and she said: “It kept you quiet.” I used to watch it on repeat, two or three times in a row. I can still repeat it line for line like the scene where a soldier is screaming at the native Indian character, the tracker:
“Billy, you know something. What is it?”
“I’m scared, Pancho.”
“Bullshit, you ain’t afraid of no man.”
“There’s something out there waiting for us. And it ain’t no man.”
Homeland is something I still think about. Its themes reflect what has been going on in American society.
The last season, which has just finished, was about the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. A season before that was about Russian interference in the US election and undermining the president.
I always enjoy that aspect to it. A lot of it is almost prophetic.
It shows things happening before, or at least running parallel with the way they played out in real life.
My favourite TV series is The Thick of It by Armando Iannucci. It’s loosely based on Yes, Minister, which I’ve never watched, and the main character Malcolm Tucker – they say – is based on Alastair Campbell [former spin doctor for the British prime minister].
The humour in the show is fantastic – the one-liners, delivered at the correct time to undermine a serious situation, to make light of something. It shows you how incompetent people are behind the scenes. You wonder are people in charge really this stupid.
Do they rely on their aides so much? Are people like Alastair Campbell – or Dominic Cummings today – the real driving forces at the heart of policy-making and government?
I really enjoyed Slash’s autobiography. He grew up on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. His mum was a costume designer.
From an early age, he was exposed to fabulous musicians and a really bohemian lifestyle, being surrounded by people like David Bowie and Ronnie Wood, who would be around his house. Obviously he went on then to be a part of Guns N’ Roses.
The band blew up with two back-to-back albums released really quickly – Appetite for Destruction and Use Your Illusion I and II. I remember having those two albums on tape as a kid. They were a band I listening an awful lot to.
I remember having one of those sleeveless T-shirts at one point with a Guns N’ Roses album cover on the front and the tour dates at the back.
I wouldn’t describe myself as a book-type person, but I like stumbling upon books. One of my favourite novels that I stumbled on – and I’ve read it a couple of times – is Voltaire’s Candide.
It’s a mythical story. It’s not set anywhere. It’s about a guy’s journey, trying to find a girl. There’s a lot of life lessons in it. It’s satirical to a point. It’s a fantastic book to put yourself at Candide’s side, to just go on the journey with him, and the problems he encounters, and the setbacks he has.
His determination and belief that he’s going to find his love is what I admire in Candide the most. It’s very hard to explain emotionally and mentally – unless you’ve read it – what it does to you.
That type of writing and description takes you into another world. It triggers something in me. It frees me up and I get lost in it when I read it.
Another book I liked reading is The Eternal Philistine by Ödön von Horváth. It’s about a used-car salesman, a down-and-out type of guy in Germany in the 1920s who hears about the World’s Fair in Barcelona where loads of wealthy women attend.
He’s a trickster. He’s always conning people or taking shortcuts. Never worked a real day in his life. Always believing he’s gonna make it rich, but doesn’t want to put in the work to get the rewards. The novel is basically his journey from Germany to Barcelona, as he travels down through Europe by train and hitch-hiking and all the characters he meets along the way until he finally gets to the fair.
Reading it, I got lost in it. It gave me a vivid picture of everywhere he went, even though I wasn’t around in that era.
Armando Iannucci also did The Death of Stalin, which is probably my favourite film of all time. It’s about the day Stalin died.
All his cabinet members are there, jostling for power, looking to succeed him. It’s based on the silliness and desperation of these guys, these huge titans of Russia at the time – the general that won the Second World War; Khrushchev; Beria, who was the head of the secret police and responsible for dragging people out of their homes at night time never to be seen again; and Malenkov, a guy who’s not destined for power.
You wonder was Malenkov really like that. Is it based on fact or is Iannucci putting his own spin on it? It’s fantastic – razor-sharp, fabulous dark humour and subtlety. I found it interesting that the film was banned in Russia.
I’ve seen the Rolling Stones three times live, twice in London, but getting to see them in an outdoor stadium gig in America was number one on my bucket list. I was on holidays in New York. I knew the Stones were on this tour, playing obscure places.
I saw they were playing in Minneapolis in a few days’ time. I also knew that Bill Wyman, a founding member of the Stones, was a Crystal Palace fan (my club at the time). I was always edging to try and meet him. So I phoned up Mark Bright, who used to sit in the directors’ box with him at games, and said, “Brighty, listen. I’m in New York. Will you get onto Bill Wyman and see if he can get tickets to this gig in Minneapolis?”
He said: “Leave it with me.” He called me back, telling me I had to go to this hotel the day of the concert. I was panicking, trying to get a flight up there, but it all worked out – I got to see the Stones in a quintessential American open-air concert with a beer in my hand.”
