Joe’s personal experiences makes him a true broadcaster of the people

THE man has approached me on the streets of Dublin on a number of occasions, looking for me to stop to chat.

It can be hard to get a word in; he is not just very chatty but very well informed too, often talking to me about items that I have broadcast on the radio or pieces that I have written, looking to add his extra.

He offers bits of gossip. He sometimes has looked clean and healthy, other times he was clearly dishevelled and the smell of stale alcohol was present. On one occasion a couple of years ago his arm was in a sling and he looked very shook. He told me that he had been beaten up in an alleyway off Grafton Street where he was sleeping rough. He said that he had objected to a late-night reveller going to the toilet very close to where he was sleeping. The bouncers at a nearby nightclub came to his rescue to save him from an even more savage beating. He is not slow to ask for a few euro and on occasions I have given it to him, although I suspected that it would not be used to buy tea or a meal, but for alcohol. There are times though when I have avoided him, when he is clearly the worse for drink. Instinct has told me that there is something of a menace about him when he is under the influence, that the cheerful chatty man has a nasty and aggressive streak that comes to the surface easily enough. The man, by the way, introduced himself to me the first time he approached not just as Brendan, but as Brendan, Joe Duffy’s brother. He wanted me to know that.