Terry Prone: UL honour mitigates the shame of being a dropout

Terry Prone who received an Honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Limerick. Picture: True Media.

When the president of the University of Limerick telephoned from America, it was a surprise. The chancellor and governing body of the university had resolved to confer on me their highest honour, a Doctorate of Letters, she stated, and waited for my reaction. I couldn’t work out how to respond.

“Why?” seemed ungrateful. “Jasus!” seemed inappropriate. I went with inappropriate. Kerstin Mey sounded baffled but amused. Her people would be in touch with me, she promised, to take care of the details.

And so it was that last week, fully briefed, I arrived at the UL campus to receive something that might mitigate the lifelong shame of being a dropout. 

Now, fine, I do have a reasonably good reason for dropoutery. As a member of the Abbey Theatre company, I got the offer to perform in the West End for four weeks in Boucicault’s The Sheachraun, starring Cyril Cusack. This would entail staying in Dame Sybil Thorndyke’s Chelsea apartment and shopping in King’s Road, the clothing Mecca of the late 60s. Or do my UCD first-year exams. Four weeks in the West End won.

The guilt of being a dropout was profound, however, especially since I had to follow my big sister Hilary, who not only was the first computer programmer in the Irish civil service, but has promiscuously gathered degrees and diplomas thereafter.

Then along came Fr Tom Savage, BA., BD., Dip. Soc Stud., QUB. At first, I thought QUB was a degree, until he told me that he was the only Catholic priest ever to study in or graduate from Queens University Belfast. He had to cycle to the university through a rampant unionist area wearing his black suit and Roman collar, which greatly enhanced his fitness due to the turn of speed required for survival.

When, a few years later, Tom Savage and I were plighting our troth, he suggested a two-strand pre-nup. The first strand was that we should split our degrees/diplomas down the middle and share them that way. Since I didn’t have any, that was an easy one. The other strand was that we pool and share our weight, which, given that he was extremely thin and I was extremely the other way, was even easier to agree to.

You might think, accordingly, when our son was admitted to TCD, that I’d have paid more attention to his academic career, but I learned only after the fact that, three months into reading English, they came to deconstructionism, and Anton, who had attended religiously to that point, went: “Nah, you’re grand”, and found himself an informal apprenticeship in a garage, hitting the books three weeks before each exam and earning his degree that way. 

His informal apprenticeship continues to be useful. You know when one of those weird hieroglyphic icons lights up on the dashboard of your car? When that happens me, I take a shot of it and WhatsApp it to him. He comes back with a response varying in urgency from “Pull in to the hard shoulder, get out of the car, and run” to “Not a problem — light bulb broken, will fix during the week”. 

I can’t honestly say I have ever felt the need to consult him about deconstructionism.

Against that background, being gifted a degree by UL was like getting a knighthood, without being smote with a sword. Chancellor Mary Harney is a warm, funny, kind woman, but when she silently looks at you from under her brow, it feels like she’s considering how best to head-butt you. You definitely don’t want her to smite you with a sword.

Then the vice chancellor — Rose Hynes, the aviation regulator — telephoned. Rose Hynes is a woman so formidable, you tend to miss the content of what she’s saying in your effort to survive the existential threat she poses. 

Had I, she demanded, seen the robes I would be wearing on the day? I confessed that I hadn’t. A silence fell with an audible thud. Clearly I should have asked to see them. She sighed and sent me a photograph. Red, white, and gold. I might eschew checks and florals, she added severely, because the combination wouldn’t be great. 

I mail-ordered a black dress without any ornamentation whatever, which took conscious restraint because I have no taste. Normally, I’d pick ruffles, frills, scattered crystals, and a dusting of sequins.

Then Aelish, the events person, told me there would be a procession between buildings on the day. Five hundred yards or so. I haven’t walked 500 yards in 40 years, am held together with metal after a traffic accident, and live in four-inch heels. 

Aelish said John Kelly, the corporate secretary to the university, who’d be reading the citation, would be walking beside me. The implication was that he would catch me if I stumbled. I wondered if the corporate secretary had been briefed on his pedestrian management responsibilities.

On the day, I was formally robed in a gown heavy with crafted detail. Then came the hat. The hat had a flat black rim the size of a cartwheel, over which sat a black velvet tam o’shanter as big as a cowpat. This was circled by a gold cord with a tassel hanging down the side. 

Because (as the vice-chancellor unhelpfully and audibly observed) I have a huge head, within five minutes the rim of the hat functioned like a garotte across my forehead. The tassel would suddenly assert itself every now and then like a personal wasp, causing me to shy to the right, where the corporate secretary stood his ground, which meant we collided our way through the procession. He was surprisingly affable about it.

Then it was the ceremony, with Mary Harney handing me a scroll and standing with me for photographs.

Sean Donlon, former secretary general at the Department of Foreign Affairs, former ambassador to the US, later warned me to be careful about using the “Doctor” address. Especially when booking air tickets. Should someone keel over mid-flight, you might be called on to exercise medical skills you didn’t have. 

That hadn’t occurred to me. But even outside of flight, it’s generally considered naff to deploy an honorary doctorate. So I won’t, after today.

Thirty years ago, Bill Murray made a film called Quick Change, playing the leader of a small gang breaking into a bank to hold customers and staff hostage. Murray, dressed and made up as a clown, coming through the door of the bank just as it closes for the evening, is accosted by a security man shouting: “Hey, Bozo!”.

Murray turns, points his pistol at the bank’s man, and says: “That’s MR Bozo to you, OK?”.

After this bank holiday weekend, I will get over myself and my doctorate. But for the rest of today, nobody should greet me as just ordinary me. I’m unarmed, but the line will be similar.

“That’s DOCTOR Terry to you, OK?”