Paddy Games founder forced to emigrate

THE creator of last year’s Paddy Games has told how the joke turned sour after the zany event left him penniless and forced him to emigrate.

Colin Carroll said he was initially confident of attracting the backing of Irish businesses and even public funding to stage the wacky contest.

But after making commitments to stage the event, hiring a 10-man team and securing the Mardyke arena in Cork for the competition last August, he had to raid his €50,000 life savings to fund the contest after failing to attract a sponsor.

Mr Carroll, 37, had earmarked his savings to help set up an online clothing company which he launched in tandem with the Games, but was also forced to ditch the fledgling venture.

The flamboyant former solicitor from Fermoy, Co Cork, who once represented this country at sumo wrestling and led an Irish team to victory in the world elephant polo championships, has now relocated to Lisbon, one of Europe’s cheapest cities, because he can no longer afford to live here.

“I don’t have much money now. That’s the main reason I came to Lisbon, because the cost of living is so low.

“I no longer had the means to stay in Ireland and came over here last December. I put my life savings into staging the Games and I’ve no regrets about that because it was a fantastic day. But I’m still baffled that no sponsors came on board.

“But I’m not down about it. I see coming here as a positive move.

“It’s a great place to live. Fortunately for me I don’t own any assets or property, so all I had to do was pay off what I owed for the Paddy Games and I was free to come here. I took redundancy at the family solicitor’s firm, gave my car away and all I had left was my €500 motorbike, which I came over here on. It’s a new chapter in my life and I’m looking forward to it.”

Even though official Ireland, as Mr Carroll describes them, failed to see the funny side of the games, the day was a huge success with more than 2,000 people watching 270 competitors from 37 different nations make spectacles of themselves in events such as the backwards 100m and a loudest roar contest.

Although snubbed by Irish TV stations, networks from the US, Holland and Japan travelled over to film the day’s festivities.

However, the upbeat Fermoy man, who starred in TV series Colin and Graham’s Excellent Adventures, has vowed that the games will continue.

“The Paddy Games will be back and hopefully in Ireland.

“But people need to lighten up about the games. For whatever reason people in authority and with influence thought it was paddywhackery and were terrified of the image it would give us abroad.

“Well, the point is, they loved it abroad and the only place it didn’t go down well in was Ireland.

“Everyone who was there had a huge smile on their faces all day. I want to host it again in Ireland, but this time I need sponsors to come on board.”