Month: November 2020

• 

It has just been announced that the Scottish comedian, Billy Connolly is to be honoured with a one-hour TV special to mark his retirement from stand-up comedy. According to the promo, his A-list fans will share their memories of Billy, send personal messages and pick their all-time highlights and Billy will react to their choices.

They promise it will make us laugh and may even make us cry and they say it will be a fitting send-off for a stand-up megastar. It probably will but I’m not sure I want to see it because I think it will be difficult to watch. I don’t know the man and I’ve never met him, but I’ve followed him since the seventies, and I feel like we’re buddies.

Billy revealed that he will no longer be doing stand-up due to the escalation of his Parkinson’s disease. The 77-year-old comedian made the comments while talking to Sky News, saying: ‘I’m finished with stand-up – it was lovely, and it was lovely being good at it. It was the first thing I was ever good at.’

If you’re not familiar with him, then you have been missing out. Billy started out as a folk singer who told a few yarns in between songs but as he says himself, as time went on the songs got shorter and the yarns got longer. He ended up in comedy by default.

He is arguably one of the greatest story tellers of all time and one of the few people who can give me a real belly laugh but he’s not everyone’s cup of tea. He’s different. His appearance is like nothing you’ve seen before, and he has a quirky dress sense. He swears a lot too but for many of his followers, his swearing isn’t offensive, it’s just funny.

He has an unusual style, constantly moving about the stage, with arms and legs going in all directions. He usually starts telling a story about one thing and goes off on a tangent about something else for a while before coming back to finish his original story.  

Phil Coulter is one of his oldest friends and produced some of his earlier records but when he worked with Connolly in the early days, he told him he needed to finish one story before moving on to another or they would never finish an album. We know how that worked out.

I first came across him in Scotland in the late seventies when I was visiting my brother in law in Fife. Pat and I were sitting in the front room one day when he told me he had a cassette tape of a comedian that he thought I might enjoy.

Before I go any further, I should explain for the benefit of anyone under fifty, that back in the 1970’s we played cassette tapes on recorders for entertainment. It wasn’t always straightforward either because the tapes were troublesome and young people should be very grateful they no longer have to use them. They regularly took on a life of their own.

Every house had a drawer for storing tapes and it wasn’t unusual to open the drawer and find a tangled brown mess looking back at you. Fixing a mangled tape required a pencil and some patience while winding it back into the cassette. This even sounds strange to me now and I lived through it.

So anyway, Pat played this tape of Billy Connolly and to be honest, I didn’t understand much of it at first. Billy is from the heart of Glasgow, so his accent at that time was very strong. It has mellowed over the years as he became more widely known and maybe he deliberately toned it down for the sake of his international audiences but initially I had difficulty getting to grips with it. As soon as I got it though, I became a life-long fan.

Billy is 77 now, and still has a mane of long scraggy grey hair and matching beard. He still swears a lot too but it’s his talent for taking ordinary every-day activities and turning them on their head to make them funny is what sets him apart.

I had the pleasure of seeing him perform live in Connolly Hall in Cork many years ago and during that visit he came to Cobh for a walkabout. My sister, Deb, was out walking her baby and she took a seat in a local viewing spot overlooking the harbour. She was there for a while when this tall man with a load of hair sat down beside her and started chatting. She soon realised that she was talking to Billy Connolly.

Afterwards, she said he was a really nice guy and very down to earth. And that’s the thing you hear very often about the man. A friend of mine met him in a hotel in Dubai years ago and he said the same thing, they just had a regular chat.

He was diagnosed with prostate cancer a few years back and had surgery for that and now he is battling Parkinson’s disease. I saw him on a BBC documentary recently and his slow movement was in complete contrast to his normal manic behaviour as the Parkinson’s was obviously getting a grip on him. He has retained his speech and his sense of humour though.

While filming the documentary, he was forced to take regular breaks because the effort was draining him. It’s sad to think of him ending his showbiz days this way but he doesn’t want the disease to define him, so I prefer to remember him for his humour.

Of his beloved hometown, he said the great thing about Glasgow is that if there is ever a nuclear attack it’ll look exactly the same afterwards.

• 

I was listening to a doctor on Morning Ireland recently and he was suggesting that hospitals would struggle with bed space for patients if the second surge in Covid-19 continues on its current path. When it was put to him that the HSE has insisted they would have sufficient bed capacity to cope, he gave a sigh.

He went on to explain that while the HSE was technically correct, they would only cope if they turned post-operative recovery rooms and other spaces designed for different purposes, into general ward space. I got the impression the HSE were playing with words.

Politicians do this all the time. They answer questions in such a way as to convince us they are on top of their game. They use a form of words to disguise the real issue and provide an answer that sounds convincing and then move on to the next topic. That happens everywhere because I experienced it in An Garda Siochana too.

The shortage of manpower in that organisation has been an issue for decades. Back in the eighties, the then Minister for Justice Gerry Collins promised more gardai for Cork after calls for extra resources. It was a never-ending call and it still continues today.

Sean O’Riordan reported in the Irish Examiner some time ago that the Garda Representative Association (GRA) complained that single-officer patrols, which regularly occur in stations such as Douglas, Ballincollig and Blarney, are “a health and safety issue.”

On one night, according to the GRA, just a single patrol car containing two gardaí was operating in the city centre at a time when thousands of people were spilling out of nightclubs.

More recently, Independent councillor Kenneth O’Flynn said he was deeply disturbed by media reports about an increase in violence in the city centre and Fine Gael senator Jerry Buttimer said there was a “perception that Cork is becoming a lawless city.” I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s lawless, but I would imagine the gardai would welcome extra resources. Show me a police force that wouldn’t.

But it’s more difficult to make a case for extra gardai or more hospital beds if those running the show won’t admit there is an issue in the first place.

For example, there was an incident in Cork many years ago in the early hours of the morning as revellers were heading home after a night out in the city centre. A person was injured after a nasty assault and it attracted some media attention. It was suggested publicly that only a handful of gardai were on duty that night and the city generally lacked an adequate police presence at the weekends when the pubs and clubs were closing.

A senior garda officer, long since retired, was interviewed on local radio the following day and he rejected those claims. He insisted there were sufficient resources on duty the previous night and mentioned a specific number.

It sounded so convincing that it ended the conversation about resources and his account was accepted. Nothing to see here. The problem though, was that while he wasn’t lying, he was certainly playing with the figures.

The Cork City Garda Division covers a large area. It stretches from Ballincollig to Gurranabraher and from Carrigaline to Mayfield and includes every station in between. That amounts to a considerable number of gardai and many of those would have been on duty that night, so he was technically correct. The reality was somewhat different.

The actual number of gardai on outdoor duty in the city centre on that particular night was about six. That wouldn’t have been unusual and there were times when that number would have been even less. I know, because for a few of those years, I was responsible for deploying them.

Part of my responsibility in those days was to prepare the duty detail for the working gardai on my shift. It was never easy trying to cover all the positions because of the shortage of manpower. It was the miracle of the loaves and fishes’ kind of stuff.

People were required to fill many positions; patrol cars, personnel carrier, motor bike, the custody suite in the Bridewell, the communication centre in Anglesea St, the courts, prisoner escorts and more. And that was before anything out of the ordinary happened like a murder or some other serious incident which would further drain resources.

Gardai also needed time to deal with their paperwork and there was always lots of that. When you considered the people on annual leave, sick leave, and on training courses etc., it wasn’t unusual to be unable to provide a garda to walk the beat in the city centre. In fact, it was a regular occurrence.

I remember one occasion, after I had briefed the garda members for duty, they went off about their business. I was alone in the briefing room when I was challenged as to why there was nobody on the beat. The senior officer wanted gardai to be visible in the city centre.

I explained to him that in the absence of a magic wand there wasn’t much I could do about it. He would have been better employed making a case to the powers that be for extra resources.

All our front-line workers have been playing a stormer in recent times. Understaffed and underequipped they battled on and continue to do so. The least they deserve is a bit of honesty from the top.

• 

I was out walking in Cobh last week, when I came across a couple on the quayside, leaning on a railing. They were watching a navy ship preparing for departure. There was lots of activity taking place as the sailors untied ropes, heaved to, raised gang planks and shouted, ‘splice the main sail’ and ‘have at ye me hearties’.

I made up that bit, but you get the picture. They were doing what sailors do to get moving and as I watched the scene unfolding, I wondered if the crew members knew who the spectator was.

The man in question was Adrian Gebruers and while that name might not mean much to people outside Cobh, many will be familiar with his work. He is the Carillonneur attached to Cobh Cathedral. For the uninitiated and musically challenged among us that means he is the guy who plays the tunes on the Cathedral bells. That’s a simplistic description of what he does but there’s nothing simple about playing this instrument. It’s nothing like a regular piano.

Adrian hits the keys with the side of his hand almost as if he is trying to give each one a karate chop. He slides from side to side on his chair to reach the various keys so it’s physically demanding and before he even starts playing, he has to climb a couple of hundred concrete steps just to reach the instrument. This is no mean feat for a man no longer in the first flush of youth.

I approached him and I was delighted to see that both he and his wife are in fine fettle. Adrian has made a significant musical contribution to the town of Cobh over the years and that shouldn’t surprise us because his father before him did the same thing.

Staf Gebruers was originally from Antwerp in Belgium. He came from a musical family and by the age of 16 he was already showing promise. He was conducting his own youth choir by then and went on to study at the Antwerp Conservatoire. In 1922, he was appointed carillonneur of his own parish church and Assistant City Carillonneur of Antwerp Cathedral.

Bishop Robert Browne of Cloyne offered him the position of Carillonneur, Organist and Choirmaster of St Colman’s Cathedral in Cobh, and thankfully, he took up the role in 1924 and he held onto that position for over forty years.

He was a gifted conductor and was director of numerous choirs, including the Irish Naval Service Choir, the Verolme Cork Dockyard Male Voice Choir, and the Cork City Choral Society. But it is probably an unlikely piece of music that the majority of the people of Cobh associate him with.

Laurel and Hardy paid a visit to Cobh in 1953. They were coming to the end of their great careers and the famous comic duo was heading to Cobh to begin a tour of Ireland and the UK for one last fling. On September 9, that year, the liner, SS America, dropped anchor in Cork Harbour that morning and they boarded the tender to come ashore.

It was reported in the Cork Examiner at the time that Stan Laurel gazed in awe at the many thousands of people who had gathered on the quayside to welcome them. They were amazed at the sight of hundreds of boats blowing whistles and fog horns and people screaming. They weren’t expecting it because the trip to Cobh was supposed to be a low-key affair.

As they landed in Cobh, they were blown away when Staf Gebruers, began to play the Laurel and Hardy theme tune, the Cuckoo Song, on the Cathedral bells and the sound boomed out across the town. They were so impressed with the welcome that they insisted on being taken directly to the cathedral to “thank the bell-ringers” for the momentous welcome.

Adrian was only ten years old at the time, but he remembers the day the stars arrived. “When Ollie went to take my father’s hand to thank him, the accumulated emotion of that whole morning seemed to suddenly spill over the poor man and words failed him. Tears began to roll down his cheeks as he engulfed Dad in his not inconsiderable embrace.” Hardy was over 22 stone in weight.

I know how Ollie felt because I was overwhelmed too when I first met the great Staf Gebruers and the memory of that meeting has stayed with me for almost fifty years.

For as long as I can remember, I have been a punctual person. I hate being late for anything, so I always turn up to every appointment long before I need to be there and then hang around until the appropriate time. It’s obsessive and it annoys me but there’s nothing I can do about it.

It makes no difference whether it’s a serious engagement or just meeting someone for a pint, I have to be early. I have never understood where this hatred of being late originated, but I had a revelation recently that may shed some light on it, and it came to me after that chance encounter with Adrian Gebruers.

Back in the late sixties when I was a young lad in primary school, we were encouraged to join a junior version of the Cobh Cathedral Choir. I took myself off to the Cathedral one dark, winters evening to sign up.

I got my times confused and when I arrived, I came face to face with Staf Gebruers, the choir master. He wasn’t impressed with my timekeeping, and he promptly sent me home. That has stuck in my mind and I reckon it’s why I’ve never been late for anything since. It’s all down to Staf; The man who played the Cuckoo Song for Laurel and Hardy.

• 

Defending solicitors regularly offer excuses on behalf of defendants in court to mitigate the offence in the hope of achieving a better outcome for their client. Some have a familiar ring to them like drunkenness which is one that features often. “My client has no recollection of the incident Judge. He was drunk at the time but apologises for his actions and is mending his ways.”

A variation of that is for the defendant to blame his indiscretion on the fact that he was on strong medication and when mixed with alcohol, it caused him to act in a manner that was completely out of character. ‘He is extremely remorseful and gives an undertaking to the court that he will never appear in front of your honour again.’

If you want to witness this yourself, just wander into your local courthouse and you will hear these excuses first-hand. I thought I had heard them all but this one is new to me, even though it is sixty years old and I found it in a court report in the Cork Examiner from 1960. I’ve made some slight changes just to make it more readable.

The defendant in this case was described as a menace to the community, by Judge J. Feran at Ballybunion Court. He imposed a fine of £50, to be paid forthwith, on the 29 year-old Kerryman, for assaulting, resisting and obstructing Garda Thomas Dunne in the execution of his duty.

The defendant who was described as a commercial artist working in England, was fined £1 with £7 17s. expenses and disqualified from driving for two years, for dangerous driving.

Garda Dunne told the court he was walking towards the strand in Ballybunion at about 7.15 p.m. in civilian attire when he saw a car travelling at a very fast speed. It braked hard and swerved over to its incorrect side of the road. The car stopped and then continued on the road to the strand and braked violently again.

When Garda Dunne heard the screech of brakes a second time, he ran towards the car. He produced his identification card to the driver and told him he was a garda. The defendant refused to give his name and address and told Garda Dunne he wouldn’t take him and then drove off.

Garda Dunne asked a passing motorist to follow the defendant and soon came across the empty car parked on the side of the road. He found the ignition key and took it, thinking the car might have been stolen and abandoned. Shortly afterwards the defendant returned to the car, and when asked for his driving licence and insurance he declined and again refused to give his name and address.

The defendant got into the car, but realised the key was missing. He approached the garda and demanded the key and when it wasn’t forthcoming, he struck Garda Dunne on the jaw. They struggled and Garda Dunne knocked the defendant down. They were both on the ground when the local sergeant and another garda arrived on the scene.

Sergeant Cummins caught a hold of defendant and took him away. At one stage the defendant got truculent and said: “Let me go or I’ll kill you.” Sergeant Cummins said the defendant was very excited and resisted slightly.

Mr. O’Reilly, solicitor for the defendant said it was a most regrettable occurrence but asked the Judge to take into account that Garda Dunne was not in uniform on the occasion. He submitted the question of assaulting a garda in civilian clothing was not as serious as assaulting a garda in uniform. It was, he agreed, a very serious offence to attack a garda, but the defendant was terribly highly strung and erratic.

“The defendant has an artistic temperament and cannot bear to be provoked”, said Mr. O’Reilly, who added that defendant completely lost control of himself and tried to beat up the garda.

The Judge remarked that the defendant was very fortunate that Garda Dunne restrained himself when struggling with the defendant because he believed the defendant would not have had a chance against the garda in a free for all.

The judge was obviously impressed that Garda Dunne wasn’t as easily provoked as the sensitive, artistic defendant.

Another court report from the Examiner around the same time showed that not all criminals sixty years ago were masterminds. At Cork District Court in October 1960, before District Justice D. P. O’Donovan, a serving soldier pleaded guilty to a charge of breaking and entering a house in Cork city with intent to commit a felony.

Garda J. Nolan, who investigated the case, said that the defendant had admitted taking an apple tart, a key and some small change. Mr. Goldberg, solicitor, who appeared for the defendant, said that he was a native of Limerick and had previously had a good character both at home and in the army. The Judge imposed a fine of £5, but there’s no mention of what happened to the apple tart.

It was drink and not food that caused a problem for another defendant. “It is with great reluctance I am giving you another chance, but I warn you that if you ever come before me again for assaulting the guards I will give you twelve months in jail,” said Justice J. M. P. Buckley at Rathmore court in Kerry. He imposed a suspended sentence of six months imprisonment on the Rathmore native.

He was convicted of assaulting Sergeant T. Bowen in the execution of his duty. Mr. C. Healy, solicitor, said that his client took excess drink at the races and apparently the brew was potent. He expressed regret for what had happened.

That was sixty years ago, and the potency of alcohol is still being blamed for indiscretions today.