Author interview: Roddy Doyle on the unexpected side-effect of working with Roy Keane

Doyle's new book 'The Woman Behind the Door' revisits the unforgettable character of Paula Spencer who has appeared in several of his novels

Roddy Doyle: 'Paula is the same age as myself, so there’s that affinity. I know her well at this stage and her geography is very close to mine.' File picture: Getty

• The Women Behind the Door 
• Roddy Doyle
• Penguin, €16.99

Roddy Doyle has come in on the bus from his home on the northside of Dublin to meet me in the city centre. On one level at least, the 66-year-old author is happy to be reaping the benefits of reaching pension age.

“I would never drive into town. Nobody wants to get older, but the one thing I think is brilliant is the free travel. 

“It’s not the money, it’s just the freedom of it, really. It’s like a present from the State. Granted, we paid enough tax to merit it.”

That pay-off line is one befitting Ireland’s greatest chronicler of the working classes, who has created many memorable characters in his books, from Jimmy Rabbitte Snr in the Barrytown trilogy to the titular young protagonist of his Booker Prize-winning novel Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. 

Now, in The Women Behind the Door, he is revisiting another unforgettable character, Paula Spencer, who first made an appearance in the groundbreaking 1994 TV series Family, and later featured in the novels, The Woman who Walked into Doors and Paula Spencer.

A visceral portrayal of domestic violence featuring outstanding performances from Ger Ryan as Paula and Seán McGinley as her violent and controlling husband Charlo, Family had a huge impact, sparking an intense debate on an issue that previously had been very much kept behind closed doors. 

Doyle was initially commissioned to write Family by the BBC, before RTÉ came on board. He refers to the influence of British social realist dramas such as Cathy Come Home by Ken Loach and Boys from the Blackstuff by Alan Bleasdale.

That type of realistic drama was largely absent in one-channel land in Ireland in the '60s and the '70s. So it was a shock [when it was screened].

“That wasn’t occurring to me as I was writing it. On a creatively personal level, I had written  The Commitments,  The Snapper, and  The Van, about an emotionally successful family [the Rabbittes].

“I had gone back into the past to write  Paddy Clarke, Ha, Ha, Ha and I was finishing that when the invitation to write for the BBC came.

“It struck me that I would write about the Rabbittes’ neighbours, on the same street, where the father isn’t as benign a figure.”

In The Women Behind the Door, Paula is enjoying life on her own terms, having reared her children and reclaimed her independence. 

She has remained sober, and is in a relationship with a kind man called Joe, although the voice of a dead Charlo continues to intrude on her thoughts. 

It’s clear that Doyle has a particular grá for the character of Paula, and he brings her to life brilliantly and fluently.

“Paula is the same age as myself, so there’s that affinity. I know her well at this stage and her geography is very close to mine.

“I rarely had to hesitate about what Paula was thinking or saying. Nothing is easy, but the first draft certainly flowed, you know, flowingly,” he laughs.

The book takes place during the pandemic, but that is not what unbalances Paula’s newfound equilibrium.

Driving the narrative of the book, and the plural of the title, is the arrival of her eldest daughter Nicola on her doorstep, having left her own family. 

Between Nicola, Paula and her friends, the female voice clearly resounds in this book, and there is no doubting the authenticity of these women in the expert hands of Doyle.

What would he make of suggestions that as an older male writer, he should perhaps ‘stay in his lane’ and stick to writing from his own perspective?

“‘Cop on’, is what I say. Fiction is fiction. Somebody who writes stories constantly comes up against life that isn’t familiar, and the challenge is to make it familiar. 

“There was a doctoral thesis written about The Woman Who Walked into Doors, and the conclusion was that I had done a good job, but I wasn’t entitled to do it.

“And that, to me, is an oxymoron. I don’t want to be critical or cranky. If they can keep coming up with new ideas by just staying within their own lane, grand. But don’t tell anybody that they can’t write a certain thing.”

The question is, can you do it well? Ultimately, I think I’ve done a reasonably good job with this book. It’s other people who are going to judge it.

The book begins with Paula getting her first vaccination for covid at DCU — the pandemic also provides the perfect excuse for Paula and Nicola to take refuge behind the door and drill down into the shared trauma of their past. 

For Doyle, the timing was key when it came to writing a novel set during the pandemic.

“It’s no coincidence that I got my first vaccination on the exact same day and in the exact same place as Paula.

“And that’s where I had the idea for the book, but I didn’t write it immediately because I wanted to be sure in my head that we were coming out of covid. 

“I had spent a year writing short stories as I didn’t want to write a novel because I didn’t trust the present day, it was changing so much and so quickly.

“Normal things were becoming abnormal. I lived close enough to the city centre, so that when the restrictions loosened and we went from 2km to 5km, I walked into O’Connell Street. 

“And it was like walking through a post-apocalyptic landscape, because there were so few people, and the sound of an engine coming up behind you was quite a shock.”

Then I got covid myself, and again, it was largely Paula’s experience in the book.

“So I was using bits and pieces from my own life but I knew ultimately, the book was about this conversation between mother and daughter, and it had nothing to do with covid.

“The brilliant thing that it allowed in the book was Paula’s idea to tell everybody outside the house that the two of them had the covid, so they were stuck in there for two weeks.”

Reading the book served as a reminder of how time lost all meaning during lockdown. For example, Paula gets her first vaccination in May 2021, and it is hard to fathom that it was over a year between the onset of the pandemic and the arrival of the vaccine.

He agrees that we have yet to fully process the experience of covid and lockdown. As a former teacher, he also laments the effects on the younger generation.

“I remember talking to someone of the same age and we agreed that we were glad when it happened that we didn’t have young children and, on a darkly comic but true note, we were glad our parents weren’t alive because we didn’t have to worry about them, as an awful lot of people had to.

“So in a way, one of the things that allowed me to write the book is the fact that Paula was much the same. 

“I didn’t have to think about children being deprived of friendship, of exercise, the vital social side of school, which often doesn’t get a look in, particularly at secondary level, because it’s all about exams and results, that nonsense.”

In a nod to his previous career as a teacher, Doyle continues to work with the Fighting Words initiative which provides free creative writing programmes to young people, and adults with additional needs. 

He also has more freedom than ever as a writer and he intends to enjoy it for as long as he can. He may have the free travel but he assures me that he has no intention of slowing down, or, god forbid, retiring.

“I have as much energy and urgency as ever. The will to write is still very, very strong, and if that stops, I’ll assess it. I’m still totting up the words and working away and lots of ideas, but the notion of retirement just means nothing to me.”

The unexpected side-effect of working with Roy Keane

Not many sportspeople get to have a Booker Prize winner as a ghostwriter on their autobiography but Cork footballer Roy Keane had that privilege in 2014, when Roddy Doyle collaborated with him on The Second Half.

Doyle went on to work with Dublin boxer and Olympic gold medallist Kellie Harrington on her autobiography, Kellie, which was published last year.

For Doyle, writing an autobiography was a different kind of beast to fiction.

“With Kellie, it was more flexible because we both live in Dublin, so it was a bit easier.

“With Roy, I think we finally signed the contract in January and we had to deliver it in May. It was very intense. 

“That’s the big difference between those two books and the way I normally work — it was really intense, seven days a week.”

Doyle would fly over to meet Keane in Manchester and sometimes the footballer would come to Dublin.

Roy Keane, with author Roddy Doyle, at the launch of his autobiography, ‘The Second Half’, in Dublin in 2014. File picture: Paul Mohan/ Sportsfile

The author also transcribed all his sessions with Keane himself, with entertaining consequences.

“A big part of the job for me was getting Roy’s voice on paper.

“So I was listening to him constantly. My father was in hospital at the time and I remember having worked all day just transcribing.

“I went down to my mother’s house to bring her to the Beaumont Hospital.

“We were chatting away, and she said to me, ‘are you speaking with a Cork accent?’, I was because I had been listening to bloody Roy, more than I was listening to anybody else.”

Working with Keane and Harrington was a hugely rewarding experience, says Doyle.

“In the case of those two books, they were professional highlights. Roy and Kellie are brilliant communicators, and users of the language, they both have a brilliant sense of humour, and know how to use it, not just for a laugh. 

“Both of them are so intelligent and they were really eager to do the job. You could tell they were bringing the single mindedness that makes them brilliant sportspeople to the job.”

They wanted the books to be as good as they possibly could be. It was such a pleasure and we became great friends.

On a personal level, it was a tough time for Doyle whose father died when he was writing the book. However, the author was grateful that his tales of working with Keane gave a much-needed boost to his father’s spirits when he was gravely ill in hospital.

“My father loved Roy. I remember Roy telling me about the early days when he was managing Sunderland, and the kit man was in charge of the music — he put on Abba’s Greatest Hits and he said Roy just watched his team running out on the pitch while listening to ‘Dancing Queen’.

“The way Roy told it, I was listening to it again and again, tears were coming out of me, it was just so funny.

“And I remember telling my father in the hospital. He was in bits at the whole idea of 11 warriors running out to do battle listening to ‘Dancing Queen’.”

• The Women Behind the Door by Roddy Doyle is published by Jonathan Cape and is available now. He will be in conversation with Donal Ryan on November 10. Tickets available from dublinbookfestival.com