Tommy Tiernan Show recap: Kieran Donaghy on his father’s addiction and death
Kieran Donaghy on the Tommy Tiernan Show
Kerry football legend Kieran Donaghy spoke openly to Tommy Tiernan about his father’s struggles with addiction and his conflicted feelings after his father passed away.
Donaghy said his father had alcohol and gambling addictions and after his parents split up he had a difficult relationship with him.
“I didn’t talk to him for two years before he died,” he told Tiernan. “He had a lot of issues but there were good sides to him.”
He said he was angry at his father for missing his teenage years when he was struggling with addiction but said as he grew up he considered what his father must have been going through.
“I felt I always had anger for him for missing that part of my life when you need your dad the most, that 12 to 18 age group.
“The funeral was tough. A few years after I was thinking, there was probably more going on with him,” he said, noting how differently his father would be treated today.
“The more you think about it and the more older you get, I kind of think, ‘Could I have done more to help?’”
Donaghy said his involvement in GAA and basketball has been a healthy outlet for some of his frustrations.
“It’s enjoyable and it’s a good outlet for me to get some of the frustrations that I probably would have in my life. I would never quit, no matter what way the game was going.”
Tiernan was also joined by language rights activist Linda Ervine who spoke about learning Irish later in life as a Protestant in Belfast.
Ervine said she was the focus of much hate locally and online for her interest in Irish, but that attention also drew most people to the language.
“At the time my husband Brian was the leader of the Progressive Unionist Party. So this was seen as being something quite strange that his wife was learning Irish, and it ended up in a couple of newspapers,” she said.
“When other people saw they decided that they wanted to learn Irish too, so we started early classes. We are now one of the largest Irish language providers in Belfast.”
‘If you don’t have a knowledge of the language, you don’t have a knowledge of what’s all around you’
— RTÉ One (@RTEOne) March 16, 2024
Linda Ervine explains why she chose to learn Irish #TommyTiernanShow @tommedian @ErvineLinda pic.twitter.com/YzhuqT9w6C
She said upon learning Irish she quickly realised how it was part of local names, placenames, and phrases and this gave her a deeper understanding of her surroundings.
“Why would you not want to learn that? Why would you not want to be a part of that?”
Ervine is studying Irish in Queen's University and said she speaks the language with her friends and coworkers.
Finally, Tiernan met writer, spoken-word artist and pharmacist, Dagogo Hart, who described his art and how he balances his professional and creative lives.
“It’s a lot of long hours. Essentially. I work about 45 hours as a pharmacist,’ he said. “I do a lot of my writing on my off days, weekends, after work. Then my performances would be taking days off or swapping shifts, things like that to fit in my other life of being an artist.”
“Poetry I think is something that is really in my veins.”
— RTÉ One (@RTEOne) March 16, 2024
Tommy meets poet and spoken-word artist Dagogo Hart#TommyTiernanShow@tommedian pic.twitter.com/cbYk3GJWcY
Hart said he explores masculinity in his writings and performance, particularly since becoming a father.
“The most common theme in all my pieces is masculinity, what it means to be a man. ’It’s something I've struggled with for going on two decades now,” he said.
“If I'm trying to still figure out what it means to be a man for myself, how do I raise one?”
He said his day job directly influences his writing too as he meets so many different kinds of people.
“You have to experience life. I love my experiences working in pharmacy. Being a public-facing job, it influences my writing directly, straight into my veins,” he said.
“You come across a whole scope and range of human and it's it's great inspiration when it comes to like writing about that stuff.”
