Celebrities pen some timely advice... to themselves

IF, as George Bernard Shaw put, youth is wasted on the young, the pity of it is that it takes so long to find that out.

So what if you could go back to your teenage years or invent a time machine and observe what you were like as a teenager — say a gawky, unsure, awkward 16-year-old on the cusp of adulthood?

That, in a way, was the task set a number of well-known Irish figures when they were asked to write a letter to their younger selves. The result is a book, With Love from Me... to Me, published this week in aid of the Irish Youth Foundation, an organisation that assists disadvantaged youth.

Why 16? As Miriam O’Callaghan, who contributed and wrote the foreword, says, it is a particularly awkward age — neither childhood nor adulthood, but a frothy mixture of both.

“At 16 everything is possible,” she writes. A clever young girl, she was studying law at University College Dublin at 16 but had no clue of how her life would end up.

“But I was lucky, because I was given the opportunity of a fine education from my hard-working parents, and that’s a gift I am eternally grateful for.”

The book has contributions from such luminaries as Adi Roche, Nell McCafferty, Charlie Bird, Maeve Binchy and Brian Kennedy.

The results range from funny to thoughtful, to moving, to poignant.

For Victoria Smurfit, actor and heir to one of Ireland’s great fortunes, the age of 16 was dominated by her parent’s divorce. She remembers the guilt she felt at the time.

Addressing her younger persona as Darling Heart, she writes: “I know you are livid. And crushed with guilt, but it was nothing to do with you. I promise. Parents split for a host of reasons that I will talk you through when you are old enough to comprehend the grand spectrum of desire and disappointment.”

She goes on to inform her 16-year-old self that she will find happiness in adulthood and have “a handsome husband, three creative and happy kids and a career as an actress.”

John Waters remembers a “gauche, gangly youth with long hair who had certain clear ideas about things” and feels compelled to tell his younger self that “almost everything you knew was wrong”.

As well as looking back, he looks to the future and his “best expectation is for a gauche, gangly, long-haired 70-year-old who will look back at both of us and laugh himself to death.”

Former Miss World and model Rosanna Davison finds that, despite the awkwardness of youth, she likes her former self. “You are just the right side of naughty,” she says. “Happy to skip school in favour of balmy days on Killiney beach, snog spotty teenage boys at sweaty discos and take swigs of cheap wine in somebody’s back garden, yet the idea of getting completely plastered, taking anything illegal or having sex with a stranger are utterly outside your realm of consideration.”

Radio host Ian Dempsey likes to poke fun at his alter ego. “This disc jockey business is great fun but you’ll never make a career out of being on the radio. You need to listen to your career adviser and maybe take up accountancy or try for the civil service.”

He also warns his 16-year-old self to stop “hanging on every word that David Bowie says... you probably won’t even remember his name in 10 years’ time. Why not try someone more wholesome — like Johnny Rotten?”

Businessman Bill Cullen remembers having his hands full at the age of 16, the eldest of 14 children living in a Dublin tenement.

Cullen writes with the assuredness of someone who has achieved most of his teenage ambitions: “Did you ever dream you would have a multimillion business empire? Did you ever dream you would be a big TV star? Did you ever dream you would dine with presidents in the White House and with royalty at Buckingham Palace? Yes, of course you did and you worked your butt off to make those dreams come true.”

David Norris offers some tongue-in-cheek retrospective advice to his former self: “Don’t worry about the zits. They’ll pass and leave not a trace behind. The same with the hair, by the way. It will pass, too, and leave very little trace except on your behind.”

With Love, From Me... To Me — A Letter To My 16-Year-Old Self is available at Eason or online for €13.99, with a proportion going to the Irish Youth Foundation.

For more information, log onto www.iyf.ie