Days of Heaven

by Declan Lynch

  And how did that turn out?

  A slightly different narrative there, a subtle shift of emphasis.

  Kerrigan was focusing on the political and economic trends of the time. Sport and culture were getting on with it, as best they could. And as we have seen, their best could be very good indeed — let us remind ourselves that in the opening pages we were looking at The Gate on Broadway and Christy Moore at the Carnegie Hall and My Left Foot and ‘Fairytale of New York’ already out there and U2 the biggest band on earth, and Ireland beating England 1-0 — but slowly, the slovenly beast that is Official Ireland was starting to notice this and to endeavour to use it as best it could.

  Around this time, you could hear the first furtive mentions of ‘U2’ in the Dáil chamber, perhaps validated by their appearance on the cover of Time magazine with the headline, ‘Rock’s Hottest Ticket’, and the fact that they appeared to be making fantastic amounts of money, with aerial pictures of their grand houses in the papers — for Official Ireland, this was the clincher.

  And inexorably, you would start to hear the odd mention of the Boys In Green and Jack Charlton on the official showcase of Official Ireland, our old friend Questions and Answers. They would usually leave the ‘sporty’ topic until the end, the ‘funny’ question. And then, apparently summoning all his intellectual powers in order to read his own handwriting, a member of the audience would quote directly from the card he was holding in his trembling hand: ‘Does the panel think ... that Jack Charlton ... the manager of the Republic of Ireland soccer squad ... should be the next President of Ireland?’

  Well, the laughing that would start ...

  ——

  But in 1987, the year that Ireland first qualified for a major tournament, Haughey did something that would forever change the nature of the discourse on Q&A and every other forum in which the official bullshit was spoken.

  The ‘tough decisions’ he was taking are entirely debatable, but there is no doubt that he was an enthusiastic advocate of the International Financial Services Centre. Guided by the wisdom of his extraordinarily rich friends, Haughey was able to see that the IFSC could bring Paddy into a game he had never played with conspicuous success — the money game.

  Haughey himself had been playing his own version of it for many years, byzantine in some ways, in other ways crudely simple — rich guys would just give him loads of money — but he could see how Paddy, in his off-shore way, might be well-placed to have a crack at the old ‘financial services’ industry and maybe even learn the language in the process.

  Officially, it would go something like this: ‘The IFSC was established under legislation designed to boost activity and employment in the Irish economy. The government had identified the growth potential of the international financial services sector and recognised that Ireland had the capacity to develop in the industry because of its well-developed financial infrastructure, a sophisticated national and international communications system, and a young and highly educated population.’

  All good stuff there, but these things in themselves would not give Paddy the edge. The key to his success, in this new world, was the ‘competitive corporate tax rate of 10%’. And what was described, with a perfectly straight face, as ‘a sophisticated and responsive regulatory environment’.

  Ah yes, a sophisticated and responsive regulatory environment.

  We all know now that ‘a sophisticated and responsive regulatory environment’, when translated into English, means ‘no regulatory environment at all’. It’s the Wild West, baby! But back then, when the slums in the inner city were being levelled and the great towers of the IFSC were being constructed in their place, only members of the corporate class knew such things.

  And there weren’t many of them knocking around, at least not yet. Soon they would be everywhere, speaking sagely about our competitive corporate tax rate and our sophisticated and responsive regulatory environment, and soon they would involve themselves in the success story of Irish football as if they had, in fact, created it themselves.

  But to give credit where it is due, when the Republic had nothing, when it needed the support of the big-swinging-mickey brigade, it was represented mainly by one man and one company. ‘Put de boot in’ would become a sort of national catchphrase, in imitation of Mr Arnold O’Byrne, then head of Opel, who became the official sponsors of the Republic before all the fine madness took hold — though it might be argued that having your brand-name inscribed on the shirts of the Republic at any time before 11 November 1987 was a form of madness in itself.

  It was what we now call ‘counter-intuitive’, to have any commercial association with the FAI, yet through a series of remarkable events it turned out to be a truly great call by O’Byrne. And he was entitled to take all the credit for it, becoming the personification of the Opel brand in Ireland, appearing in all the TV ads himself.

  He had this strange accent, rumoured to be a result of having spent time abroad, allied to a natural tendency to mix up his t’s and th’s, and the stiltedness that often comes when a TV amateur speaks for his own product. But all this just made him more endearing, and gave a distinctiveness to that killer line, ‘put de boot in’. And Arnold had an actual product to sell, as distinct from a financial ‘product’.

  Soon the money-men would be buying into the success of the Republic, or perhaps just going to matches, ideally ones that were being played abroad in one of the great cities, in nice weather, but when it mattered, Arnold O’Byrne was out there, on his own.

  In fact, the face of corporate Ireland in the 1980s manifested itself in just two men, Arnold O’Byrne and Maurice Pratt. Like Arnold, Maurice put himself in front of the people, doing the TV ads for Quinnsworth, and himself becoming something of a national figure or, if you like, a national joke.

  Otherwise, one of our better-known entrepreneurs wasn’t even a full-time businessman, at least not officially. Monsignor James Horan had orchestrated the building of Knock Airport which, like the DART, was regarded by many of the more respected economic commentators as a terrible waste of money and a monument to human folly.

  Again, it was perhaps counter-intuitive to be building airports in a country which had a lot of people trying to get out of it, but very few trying to get back in, but Haughey gave it his blessing, for all sorts of reasons, not all of them good, not all of them bad.

  One day in the late 1980s I found myself at Knock Airport in the middle of a scene which demonstrated the growing relationship between Irish business and Irish sport — though in these early stages, the relationship was still somewhat dysfunctional.

  It was the day before Mayo played Cork in the 1989 All-Ireland final, and the Mayo squad had opted to get the plane to Dublin from Knock Airport instead of making the traditional train journey.

  Which was all very sophisticated, except perhaps in the area of media management, because they insisted that no journalists be allowed on the flight itself — only photographers, who would take pictures of the lads at the airport as they boarded the plane and who would get the flight to Dublin with the team, if they needed it ... and that would do.

  Except that would not do the Sunday Independent, who summoned me to a crisis meeting, chaired by Editor Aengus Fanning and Sports Editor Adhamhnan O’Sullivan, and featuring what seemed to be the entire photographic staff of the Independent Group, in a very small, very hot room, in which various solutions were explored. This meeting resulted in an early start for me the following morning and a journey across the country with the photographer Jim O’Kelly (who is sadly no longer with us) with whom I would collaborate in a clandestine manoeuvre.

  Jim would take the official snap of the lads at the airport, getting on the plane, but here was the clever bit: instead of him getting on the plane and bringing the film back to Dublin, he would quietly slip the roll of film to me, and then I, masquerading as a photographer, would get on the plane instead of him.

  Jim would drive back to Dublin, his work done, while I would be e
njoying the view of Ireland below and making notes for the exciting ‘colour piece’ I would write when I got back to the Sunday Indo offices with the precious film.

  So it was that I spent several hours in Knock Airport pretending to be a photographer in order to establish some sort of authenticity for the moment when I would casually step aboard the plane, just another snapper. So it was that Jim gave me one of his cameras, which I carried around for the day, pointing it at things in what I hoped was the style of a professional photographer — unfortunately, I may have aroused some suspicion among my fellow photographers, because, as I would eventually learn, for most of the day, the hood was covering the lens.

  I pointed it anyway at the Mayo captain, Willie Joe Padden, and at T.J. Kilgallon and the rest of the lads as they arrived to continue the journey to Mayo’s first All-Ireland final in 38 years. I followed them out onto the runway where RTÉ’s finest were filming the ceremonial departure with commentary by Jimmy Magee, strenuously avoiding conversation with my colleagues, who all seemed to be very nice and anxious to welcome me to their dark trade with a few kind words. I continued to take pictures of the plane, of the players and of the crowds cheering behind the high wire fencing and of Jimmy Magee and indeed of anything that moved, or was about to move, as well as anything that was nailed down — all with the hood still covering the lens.

  And when Jim had taken the actual picture, of the players standing on the steps of the plane, the ‘switch’ was done and apparently no-one was any the wiser. I boarded the plane, fooling them all — my face would not have been well-known in GAA circles, at the time — I took my seat near the back of the plane with my newfound photographic brethren, down there with the selectors, the mentors and various members of the county board, all oblivious to the stroke that had been pulled, and I got it done, more or less as had been planned in that hot little room the previous afternoon. I made the dash by taxi from Dublin Airport to Middle Abbey Street and wrote the piece which would appear in that Sunday’s paper, which hit the streets on the Saturday night.

  Mayo lost the match, by 0-17 to 1-11, which may be unrelated.

  But the day’s work on the whole prompts a few observations: on a personal note, it was another difficult situation for me at an airport in the company of an Independent photographer; and in general it demonstrates that in the run-up to Italia 90, Irish business and Irish sport were getting closer, without quite getting it right.

  Clearly it was a coup for Knock Airport and the airline involved to have these iconic images out there, of the first Gaelic team to go to the All-Ireland on a plane — images that would be out there for all time, if Mayo had managed to win — but with their bizarre ban on journalists, they had managed to take the good out of it. They thought they were being smart, but they were only annoying us. If they’d been really smart, they could have had me or someone suitable ‘fluffing’ a piece by Willie Joe Padden about this remarkable event, with all the proceeds going into the ‘pool’ for some end-of-season trip to Los Angeles, or maybe Singapore.

  The Boys In Green would become increasingly wise in these ways of the world, as Italia 90 loomed, but there was another party involved on that day in Knock, which would eventually get the hang of the art of self-promotion. Back then, that particular party could only do its best within the confines of what the GAA would allow.

  I refer to the airline which brought us from Knock to Dublin in a plane which, as I recall, was named The Spirit of Connacht. It was just a modest outfit, and it was no surprise to see it operating out of an obscure venue such as Knock — in fact, I remember feeling a bit sorry that day for all involved in this struggling operation called Ryanair.

  Nobody had heard at that time of Michael O’Leary, Ryanair’s Chief Executive, we had only heard of Michael O’Leary, the socialist who had been a charismatic leader of the Labour Party. Indeed few had heard of any business leader except that man Arnold O’Byrne, who remains the only one of his kind who took a punt on Irish football before it went mega-platinum, not afterwards.

  Afterwards, they were all heroes.

  I think it’s time that we called in Bono.

  You may recall our living arrangements at that time, the basement flat in the old Geldof place in which I lived with Jane and the newborn Roseanne and the flat on the next floor occupied by Liam Mackey, the one that had the phone in the hall.

  Jane and Roseanne and I went up there one day for coffee, just as Liam arrived along, accompanied by Bono.

  Through all sorts of Hot Press-related contacts over the years, Liam had come to know Bono (a lot better than I did, to tell the truth) and on this occasion he had just bumped into him down the road in Dun Laoghaire. Now, I’m only telling you this because, by the late 1980s, most people in Ireland had sat down and chatted with Bono at some stage. So if we’re trying to convey the spirit of that time, we should observe this formality. And there is a direct relevance to our project in the sense that U2, represented by Larry Mullen, had cranked up the build-up to Italia 90 with arguably the best football record ever made, ‘Put ’Em Under Pressure’.

  So it was a very Irish occasion, with Bono sitting there by the fireplace drinking his mug of coffee. He spoke movingly about the startling new direction in which the latest album was going (this would be Achtung Baby) before embarking on a series of anecdotes about various legends of Irish life and culture, especially in the showband realm.

  In particular he recounted tales of a man called Jim Hand, one of the famous Hand twins from Drogheda, the other being Michael the journalist, a former Editor of the Sunday Independent — Michael indeed, got his start in journalism with The Argus newspaper in Dundalk, after a job interview for which Michael’s place was actually taken by Jim, the interviewer being unaware that the wrong twin had turned up to fool him — or if he was aware, it didn’t trouble him.

  And though they would eventually conquer Dublin in their chosen fields of journalism and showbusiness, Jim would tell John Waters that he had never got on a bus in Dublin, ‘because you’d never know where they’d be going’ — an observation which, with the passing of time, seems wise in a Beckettian way.

  Launching into an extraordinarily accurate rendition of the Drogheda accent, Bono shared his favourite Hand line, in which Jim Hand is introduced to someone at a social function and tells this person that he would very much like to get to know him because he seems like a very nice fellow, but that this is out of the question because unfortunately, he already knows enough people.

  Bono told this story not in the superior tone of the rock star making fun of the boys of the old brigade, but with relish, admiring the fine clarity of Hand’s vision, the originality of the statement. Psychologists may feel that Bono, here, was subconsciously identifying with Jim Hand because of his own desire not to have any more human relationships of a meaningful kind, having already reached his quota. And since the record shows that he still had about fifty million people left to meet and to empathise with between then and 2010, his current state of mind in this regard can only be imagined.

  Interestingly, Larry Mullen’s aforementioned ‘Put ’Em Under Pressure (Olé Olé Olé)’ also seemed to embrace the heroes of another time and to celebrate this interconnectedness by blasting off with the riff from ‘Dearg Doom’ by Horslips — you will recall that a member of that group, Eamon Carr, was present on that night that I agreed to write Paul McGrath’s autobiography.

  And to complete this great Celtic circle, Liam Mackey was also an indirect contributor to ‘Put ’Em Under Pressure’, because a filmed interview which he conducted with Big Jack was used on the record, supplying those rousing lines about going out there to compete, to put ’em under pressure.

  Jack had been talking to Liam in an interview for a feature-length video called Que Sera, Sera made by Billy Magra, a manager of rock ’n’ roll bands, a founding father of Irish stand-up comedy and later a TV producer. But Billy was a man ahead of his time in other ways. I remember an interview he did for Hot Press
in which he said that one of the things he liked least about Ireland was the amount of private pain caused by alcohol. It was such a strange thing to read at the time from a creature of rock ’n’ roll, that it stuck in my mind and has never gone away.

  Ah, the fates are sending us these messages, but we do not receive them.

  Billy’s film, which I watched innumerable times while experiencing the private pain caused by alcohol, and which tells the story of how we got to Italia 90, was a brilliant piece of work. It captured all the rising fever of the campaign and the anticipation of what was to come.

  As we prepared for Italia 90, it seemed as if so many strands of Irish culture were coming together, U2 allied with Horslips allied with Big Jack allied with many other worthy contributions in the national interest. And mercifully, the involvement of the rockers, as distinct from the usual old showbiz hacks, would mean that Ireland’s ubiquitous anthem for the tournament, would actually be good.

  ‘Put ’Em Under Pressure’ was more than good, it was outstanding, it was powerful. There was ‘Give It A Lash, Jack’, by Liam Harrison and the GOAL celebrities, which actually wasn’t bad at all. It had a thing almost unknown in the long and unhappy history of the football record, it had charm.

  And The Pogues got involved too, with ‘Jack’s Heroes’, accompanied by a video starring Tom Hickey, himself a seminal figure in Irish theatre and television drama: ‘And the shout goes up / When the World Cup / Is raised on Stephen’s Green’, it went. And while it didn’t quite establish itself in the hearts of the people, it confirmed our status as a nation with some gravitas. England could call on New Order and Keith Allen for their beguiling Italia 90 anthem ‘World in Motion’, and now here we were, with mere football songs being put together by the likes of U2 and Shane MacGowan, while these supposed aristos from Holland and Italy and Spain would be represented by ... who? Certainly no-one from the top drawer, or even from the fourth or fifth drawer, probably some cabaret act trying to get himself noticed for next year’s Eurovision. A sore point there, perhaps, because we ourselves had not yet risen above that particular weakness. And even in the fat years to come, we would gorge ourselves on several more Euro-romps, becoming serial winners of this thing, just because we could.