School Daze with Owen Curtin: 'I was too busy playing cards to go to lectures'

"As a child, I was the quiet little guy in the corner who was ignored — until I was selected to play Oliver in the Irish premiere of the musical, at 13."

Owen Curtin.

Free second-level education was not introduced in Ireland until 1967. My class entered second-level in the last year where fees were required to attend secondary school. I grew up in Prosperity Square in Cork and went to school at O’Sullivan’s Quay CBS, then Deerpark Secondary School.

In those days, access to education was frighteningly rare. There were about 55 pupils in our classroom in primary school and there was only a certain number of scholarships in the city. At school, they picked some of the fifth class and some of the sixth-class guys to sit a test. We wouldn’t leave school until 7.30pm. We would be there from 9am to 1pm on Saturdays, all in a prefab in the yard. We were the elite.