Never meet your heroes? Here's how we got on when we met ours
We were in the queue in Brown Thomas about five Christmas Eves ago, and Colm Meaney was sighing loudly behind us. I love Colm, especially in Intermission. I watch that film three times a year! I turned around, and he seemed really hassled. I said “You alright, Colm?” He replied: “I’ve been sent out with a list of stuff to get, and it’s driving me mad. I’ve just come from a shop called ‘Argos’. Do you know that shop?” I said I did.
“I mean,” he said, “you go over there, and you choose what you want, and you go over there and you fill a docket in, and you go up to that counter and you hand the docket in to pay, and then you go up to this little theatre at the front and sit there and wait for this number to come up.” I said to him: “I always think Argos is what life would be like under communism,” and he just burst out laughing, like it was ten times funnier.
“Aw, that’s a good one, man, that’s such a good one!” We let him jump ahead in the queue, and as he was leaving, he turned to me and said “Merry Christmas… Comrade!” That was probably the best Christmas of my life!
- Paul Howard’s latest Ross O’Carroll-Kelly novel, Braywatch, is on sale now
I met John Hume, when were interviewing him for The Den. They say “Never meet a Nordie”, but this guy was just tops. It was like he was normal. It was in the front room of his house in Derry, by the bridge, the week he won the Nobel Peace Prize. His grandsons were big fans of The Den, and he couldn’t have been nicer.
Now he did start quoting Seamus Heaney and I fell asleep, but he was a lovely man.
I’ve met Gay Byrne. The only decent broadcaster to come out of RTÉ beside meself. First time I met Gay I was so nervous I think I actually laid an egg.
Then I met The Plank. Now, I’m a carpenter, a builder by trade, but even I couldn’t work with Pat Kenny.
Tubridy? A human bookmark with feet. He does a good Toy Show, but the other 39 Late Lates are crap. Gay Byrne Lite. He’s not the worst broadcaster in the world but then he was taking over from The Plank, so you could have given it to Socky. Or even Miriam O’Callaghan.
Well… actually, no. Pat Kenny’s not that bad.
- Dustin is a former Eurovision contestant, former presidential candidate, and current UNICEF ambassador.
I remember roaring at Johnny Rotten not to gob in the corner. When I was about 14, I was working as a barmaid in the Stag’s Head in London, and he said “Don’t you know who I am?” I told him I didn’t care, just don’t effing gob in the corner!
Meeting Shane MacGowan was a big deal for me. My mentor in music, Johnny Curtin, got a gig as a whistle-player in Shane’s band The Popes. I think it was ’92 backstage at the Finsbury Park Fleadh I first met Shane.
Shane was just lovely. We used to ring each other from time to time. He used to call me Kilfenora Camden Town Katie. The band my dad was in in London, Dingle Spike, was one of the Pogues’ influences. In trad, the circles are very small. There are connections all over the place.
Shane’s a hero of mine, because I have so much respect for him as a songwriter and as a person. He’s a lovely guy.
- Katie Theasby’s album I Remember You Singing is available at katietheasby.com
I was at a star-studded party in London in 2014 (I mean, gold-standard level of celebrity rather than RTÉ canteen grade). I got stuck talking to a very famous, very drunk man, who towered over me, bellowing indifferently, whilst looking past me trying to find someone more important.
The host, perhaps seeing my discomfort, pulled my arm and said “Oh, you must meet Adrian…” and introduced me to the writer A.A. Gill (who I had long admired). I think I started babbling nervously, but he was instantly such blind-sidingly easy company.
Despite probably being the smartest man in the room, he didn’t have an ounce of pretension and was one of the few people at that party to ask me about me (not as common a courtesy as you might think). We chatted for about 45 minutes and then he left. It was the highlight of my night, and I was so sad when he publicly announced his cancer diagnosis two years later and died so quickly after it. A hero I’m very glad I had the privilege to meet.
- Maïa Dunphy is a writer, broadcaster, and the happy wrangler of a small boy.
Paul McCartney was exactly as I expected. He was charming and brilliant, but it was Linda who really blew me away.
It was in Brighton in 1987, and Paul was promoting his greatest hits album All The Best. I was sales and marketing manager for EMI Ireland so I was there.
I queued up to talk to Paul, but he was talking to someone, and Linda got talking to me about Ireland. She couldn’t have been nicer. There was such a negative view of her all along, that she wasn’t a musician but she had to be in Wings because she wouldn’t let Paul out of her sight, and she was part of the reason the Beatles broke up, but I think that was all because she married a Beatle and everyone felt they owned the Beatles.
Linda was lovely and that just made me think that until you meet them, don’t believe anything that anyone tells you about somebody else.
- Rory Cowan played Rory Brown in Mrs Brown’s Boys and plays John Bosco Walsh in Fair City.
It must be thirty years ago when Marianne Faithful invited me to her party. I was a stage manager in the Gate Theatre, and she was in a show there. At the party, I thought I saw my dentist. I went over and said “Hiya” and he replied in an English accent, so I realised, oh, this isn’t my dentist, so I was caught in this awkward dilemma of continuing the conversation, so I asked “What has you in Dublin?”
He said he was doing a gig in the Gate, and I replied “You must mean the Gaiety, because the Gate doesn’t do gigs, the only person doing a gig in the Gate is Elvis Costello, with the Brodsky Quartet”.
He just looked at me. Elvis Costello.
I nearly died. We just kind of turned away from each other and started talking to other people.
- Liz Nugent’s most recent novel, Our Little Cruelties, was described by Graham Norton as “brilliantly observed”, and “magnificent” by Marian Keyes.
