John Kelly: 'I went to a Thin Lizzy concert in a brown cardigan, but I came out in a leather jacket'

Culture That Made Me: The broadcaster reveals touchstone influences from Horslips and Seamus Heaney to James Cagney

John Kelly, broadcaster and author. 

John Kelly, 56, grew up in Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh. He is the author of several novels, a book of poetry and has presented arts programmes on RTÉ television for more than two decades. He presents Mystery Train on Lyric FM, Sundays to Thursdays, at 7pm-9pm.

Horslips jamboree

I saw Horslips in 1977 when I was in the scouts. It was a massive jamboree in Mount Melleray, Co Waterford; 10,000 people there from all over the world. It was a daytime gig. It was stunning. The fact it was Irish music was significant. Barry Devlin in particular sounded very local because I was from Fermanagh; he was from Tyrone. 

They were evidently good guys. In later years, I got to know “scary” people like Lou Reed. Horslips were nice guys. We weren't afraid of Horslips. They were rock’n’roll, they were glam, but they’d give guys lifts home from gigs. They were “of us”. It signalled that we could be glamorous, with the nerve to wear those clothes, to perform full-on.

Brown cardigans and leather jackets 

Up until a certain point, all of us in my hometown Enniskillen wore the clothes you got at Christmas. It's a line that I've used a lot: I went to a Thin Lizzy concert in 1980 wearing a brown cardigan, but I came out in a leather jacket. I remember a few punks appearing in town. We used to sneer and laugh: “Look at the state of them.” We didn’t think they were cool. 

We were very conservative, closer to our parents in lots of ways. Some of the lads had denim jackets with names of bands embroidered on the back. I did get a cheap biker’s jacket, but there's nothing worse than a cheap one because they don't fit you properly. I wasn’t anyway culturally literate until I went to university.

Music-lending library

In Enniskillen, there was a very good library; part of it was a music-lending library. I took records out of there, largely based on the covers or maybe I had heard the names somewhere. Because I was listening to people like Rory Gallagher he would have mentioned Muddy Waters or Hank Williams. 

I would pick up the records from the library and sort of follow that web. I enjoyed the method of discovering music, following down all these little wormholes, finding connections, one thing leading to another, listening to Blondie as well as jazz.

All that jazz

I listened to jazz at home. I wasn't coming into the guys at school and saying: “You gotta listen to John Coltrane,” because I knew that wasn't going to wash. Listening to that was my version of going out and drinking cider in the graveyard. That’s how I got kinda high on a Friday night. At that stage of my life I had given up on my hometown – and this is no disrespect to my hometown; I love it now – but it is common to some people: you know it's time; you want to move on.

The Troubles 

The North in the early 1980s was utterly dysfunctional. There were attempts on television and culturally to pretend it was “a wonderful wee place”. It was full of wonderful people, but the place was a mess. People who were sectarian were to be pitied. That didn't mean you didn't have your politics – that's a separate thing – and it didn't mean you weren't affected by what was going on, and there was a lot of bad stuff going on. 

You thought about it rarely enough except at very heightened moments like during the Hunger Strikes. That was a very tense time. That takes its toll on anybody living in it – whether you're thinking about it – because it’s in the walls.

Seamus Heaney chats to John Kelly at the funeral of broadcaster Ciarán MacMathuna in 2009. Picture: Mark Stedman/Photocall Ireland

Seamus Heaney

I wasn’t a massive reader growing up, but I remember the syllabus for A-level English included selected Seamus Heaney poems. Even though I lived in a town, we were a hair’s breadth from the country. All the things that Heaney talked about I would have had some sense of, even though it wasn't the life I was living. 

It was important that he was a local voice, at the top of his game. It was encouraging. Most successful and famous people were very exotic creatures like David Bowie. Heaney spoke the same language. I was taken by his use of words – the way he could put things together.

Meeting John McGahern

In my early days with the BBC, I was given this arts programme. I didn't really know what I was doing or how to stand up for myself. When you're working in broadcasting, presenters sometimes get criticised, often correctly. Especially when you're younger, there are other people working on the programme, powerful personalities. They're telling you what to do sometimes. 

I remember interviewing John McGahern. There was a grant enthusiasm for me asking the question: what's the difference between the short story and a novel? It’s a dumb question. I asked John that question because I was told that’s how I should start the interview. Of course John replied: “The short story is much shorter than the novel.”

Melvyn Bragg 

I like the legacy of Melvyn Bragg: the stuff he will leave behind is useful, which is my only ambition in this lark. I interviewed him once. He was a perfect gentleman and a thorough professional. When the interview started, he fixed his hair and put on a tie: I’m going on stage. I admire that in people. 

Elvis Costello wears a suit. He goes to work. You could see him on stage in 90-degree heat and he’s still wearing his three-piece suit. I admire people who go to work. I inherited that from my father.

James Cagney

 I like old James Cagney films, like Angels With Dirty Faces. Cagney was a real working man. He turned up on set and said, “Right, let’s go.” There was very little palaver with Cagney. He came out of vaudeville. He was socially and politically aware. His Irish background is attractive, but also the swagger, the attitude. A real fizz came off him on screen, much more so than Humphrey Bogart or any of the others.

Field Day

The Field Day play I liked most was Double Cross by Thomas Kilroy in 1986. Stephen Rea and Kate O’Toole were in it. Stephen Rea played two characters: Brendan Bracken, Winston Churchill's secretary. Bracken had an Irish background. The other was William Joyce – “Lord Haw-Haw”, also of Irish background. 

The whole double-crossing thing going on was brilliant. I got to know that Field Day gang. A lot of them are gone now: David Hammond, Brian Friel, Seamus Deane, Heaney. It was quite an enterprise. They broke taboos, crossed lines that needed to be crossed. They pushed things along.