Six months later Paddy returned to London, where her exploits were published in the Daily Mail and Sunday Express, making her one of the first female SOE officers to receive publicity. Public acclaim is terrible for the spying business. Her superior spies were understandably upset.
In June 1945 she was sent to Calcutta in India, where they imagined she wouldn’t be widely known, as an agent with the French. Her story again appeared in the local press. In September 1945 she was back in London receiving a Most Excellent Order of the British Empire medal (MBE). Paddy disappeared from history around 1950. Perhaps she went deep undercover.
*
In the past the outbreak of war was usually celebrated with a street party. Wars aren’t the cause of celebrations anymore. Even tourists tend to avoid them. War, what is it good for? Well, a career in the army actually – and a chance to go down in history.
4
The Sporting Irish: From Wrestling to Chess
What sporting ambitions can Ireland’s fat children have? The tug-of-war ceased to be an Olympic event in 1920. Contemporary Olympic Games discriminate against the sedentary. There are just a few sports left in which the fat can excel.
In the past, a fat child who didn’t have the face for chess could have listened to sports commentators on the radio. For decades in the twentieth century, Irish childhood Sundays were spent in the following way. Accompanied by your parents, siblings and perhaps a surviving grandparent, you would climb into the back of a Ford Cortina, probably green, to be driven to a sand dune by the sea or any other godforsaken spot. A collective of Cortinas would park within hailing distance of each other and the occupants would get out, leaving all the doors open. Your father would prepare himself for the coming ordeal by tying a knotted handkerchief around his head, while your mother spread a Foxford rug on the damp ground beside the car. Your mother would then hand around the tea and ham sandwiches to the adults, and the Fanta and banana sandwiches to the children. Naturally, it was either raining or freezing or both, but memory has the power to add sunshine and blue skies to our worst recollections because otherwise we would all go mad.
Your father would close his eyes in meditation on the rug beside the open car door and listen to a GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) match on the car radio, which would be turned up to maximum volume. Michael O’Hehir (1920–1996) would narrate the events of the match, while you sat in the epicentre of the commentary coming from all the car radios simultaneously. Ah, the good old days.
I loathed them. I liked the banana sandwiches but I hated Michael O’Hehir. On those Sundays I wished that I were dead. Then I wished that Michael O’Hehir was dead instead. But I was too young to appreciate his special gift. He had the unique ability as a sports commentator to make the world appear to move faster, which was something the bored adults appreciated. Balls would fly like meteors from one bronchial player to the next. The most sluggish overweight fullbacks in the history of football would run on varicose-veined legs as fleet as Apollos.
O’Hehir was born Michael James Hehir in Glasnevin in Dublin. He added an “O” to his name later because it is easier to get on in the GAA with it. In his final year in school, he began to broadcast commentaries on GAA games, having entered a broadcasting trial when he was eighteen. He went to UCD72 to become an engineering student, but, in traditional fashion, he used his time in engineering to concentrate on higher things.73 He left in first year to become a broadcaster.
From 1938 his commentaries helped boost the popularity of Gaelic games across the country. He had an ability to add drama to the most banal passages of play, which constituted the majority of the action. He quickly became the most recognised voice in Ireland. In the 1940s and 1950s people gathered around radios in kitchens and pubs just to hear his voice. Even missionaries in Africa paused in their beating of African children in schools to gather around longwave radios to imbibe his nostalgic accent from Ireland.
From 1945 he began to comment on horse racing. He was able to make the slowest horses appear unimaginably speedy, and every race seem to have an extraordinarily close finish, even when there was half a mile between the horses. He was offered the job of commentating at the Aintree Grand National by the BBC, which he did for twenty-five races. His big break came in 1967 when most of the field fell, allowing a 100-1 shot, Fionavon, to climb out of the heap of horses and jockeys and win by a mile to the sound of O’Hehir’s apocalyptically excited commentary. He also read racing tips for the Hospitals Trust,74 sponsored by Vaseline hair tonic. There is no data available on how many heart attacks he may have induced in his listeners.
In 1961 he set up Radio Telefís Éireann’s (RTÉ) sports department, where he was head until 1972. He provided the commentary on Roger Casement’s (1864–1916) reburial in Glasnevin Cemetery in 1965. I imagine he made the cortège appear to move like a Grand Prix race. He was popular in America, dating from his famous broadcast of an All-Ireland football final from the Polo Grounds in New York in 1947. Subsequently, he provided a five-hour emotional commentary at John F. Kennedy’s funeral in Washington. He was offered jobs in America based on his Kennedy commentary, but sadly he declined, choosing to remain in Ireland for the rest of his life.
He broadcast ninety-nine All-Ireland finals during his career. On the eve of the one hundredth, he suffered a stroke, having been responsible for countless strokes up and down the country over the years amongst over-excited fathers listening to their car radios. He was able to make two flies crawling up a wall sound like the ultimate struggle of life and death. He made GAA games, and thereby the players, seem interesting. Something I am not able to do.
Throwing Your Weight Around
A traditional Irish approach to athletics was to not develop one’s potential. Not training at all, avoiding exercise or movement as much as possible, smoking or being paid by advertisers to smoke, drinking and developing a generally contemptuous attitude to fitness could achieve this. It was essential to rely only on one’s natural attributes. Being big was a major advantage. You are either big or you are not, and small people know that stretching exercises will only achieve so much. In the past, if you were big you might have been inclined to throw things. Big Irish people liked to throw stuff at the Olympics. Wrestling75 and throwing stuff, including your opponent, were popular athletic distractions.
Edmond Barrett (1877–1932) is the only Irish man to win both an All-Ireland GAA hurling medal and an Olympic gold medal. Barrett, from Kerry, worked in a quarry to build up his muscles before emigrating to London in 1902 where he joined the police, amongst whom wrestling was popular at that time: that is, wrestling each other and not the public in general.
Barrett won an All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship medal with the London Emmets, who beat the Cork-based Redmonds in the 1901 GAA final, which was actually played in 1903. In 1901, for the purposes of hurling only, Britain was designated a fifth province of Ireland. The winners of the British Championship would meet the Irish provincial winner to decide the overall All-Ireland title. This was the only time a hurling final was won by a team outside of Ireland. In 1908, Barrett won the British heavyweight freestyle wrestling title. He was then included in the Olympic team for shot put, javelin, wrestling, tug-of-war and freestyle discus. The latter is an event where you are allowed to throw the discus any way you like but, for spectator safety, not where you like because this was a time before nets. At the London 1908 Olympics, Barrett won a gold medal in the tug-of-war, and a bronze in the heavyweight freestyle wrestling. He was knocked out of the first round of the Greco-Roman wrestling. In the first round of the shot put he was in excellent form. He threw a lifetime best to put him in fifth place going into the second round. However, one of his competitors cannily dropped his shot onto Barrett’s foot, forcing him to retire.
The “Irish Whales” were a collection of Irish athletes who were adept at being large. One of these Whales was Con Walsh (1881–1961), who was 6 feet, 4 inches
tall, weighed 15 stones and had enormous physical strength. A fellow Whale advised him to take up step-dancing lessons to improve his agility in hammer throwing. This was as far as his formal training went.
He represented Canada in the London 1908 Olympics, where he won a bronze medal in the hammer behind fellow Irish Whales John L. Flanagan (1873–1938) and Matt McGrath (1875–1941), who were both representing America. This was the only time in history when Irishmen made a clean sweep of Olympic medals in an event. Flanagan, from Limerick, became the first man ever to win three successive Olympic gold medals in a track and field competition. McGrath, from Tipperary, was eccentric because he did believe in training. He won silver in 1908, giving rise to a two-week community drinking session in Nenagh. At the 1908 Games, McGrath threatened to hospitalise the American team flag carrier if he dipped the flag as he passed the royal box. This gave rise to the tradition that the American flag is never dipped at an Olympic ceremony. He won gold in the hammer at the 1912 Olympics.
Pat O’Callaghan (1905–1991), from Cork, was also big but not a member of the Whales. He developed an interest in the hammer while studying medicine in Dublin. At home during his summer holidays, he made his own hammer using a cannon ball from Macroom Castle, as you do. Practice led to the Olympic Games in Amsterdam in 1928 where, as a complete unknown, he won the gold medal. In 1932, he successfully defended his Olympic title in Los Angeles, winning the gold with a final throw of 176 feet, 11 inches, becoming the only Irish person to successfully defend an Olympic gold medal. After an accident with a hammer in which a child was killed, he went to America to pursue professional wrestling. Sam Goldwyn offered him the role of Tarzan in the Hollywood blockbuster – a role that needed no acting abilities because even Cheetah the chimp managed – but he turned it down. The role went to Johnny Weissmuller, the former Olympic champion swimmer. O’Callaghan returned to Ireland.
If not throwing them yourself, it was handy to be able to jump out of the way of javelins, hammers and discs. Tim Aherne (1885–1968), from Limerick, represented Britain in the 1908 Olympics in the long jump, the standing long jump and high hurdles. He entered the hop, skip and jump event against a strong field of nineteen competitors, including hot favourite Eric Larsen from Norway. In second place before the final round, he hopped, skipped and jumped to an Olympic gold and a world record of 48 feet, 11.25 inches. He was the only athlete representing Britain to win a gold medal in a field event until they could find one of their own, Lynn Davies, to win the long jump in 1964. Tim’s younger brother Dan beat his world record in New York in May 1911 with a hop, skip and jump of 50 feet, 11 inches.
Large Irish people didn’t have to go to the Olympics to throw things. They could do it on our roads. William Bennett (1877–1967) was a champion road bowler, which is a sport still popular in Cork and Armagh. Before the bowling organisation Bol Chumann na hÉireann was founded in 1954, there were no formal recognised rules. Basically, it was anarchy in the road bowling world. There was no official national champion until 1963. But “Bennett the Bowler” is credited with five championships. His main rival during his heyday was “Red” Crowley. Bennett is believed to have been the first to loft a 28-ounce bowl over the 91-foot viaduct on the Cork to Bandon road. Be careful if you are ever driving that way because bowlers are still trying to emulate his great achievement.
Breaking through the Glass Jaw
We now know that exercise is actually good for us. While the sport of wrestling has declined in popularity, our interest in boxing remains constant. We always enjoy a good fight, even when we are not in it.
William Dempsey, the American heavyweight boxing champion of the 1920s, fought as Jack Dempsey as a tribute to the lesser known Irish-born world middleweight champion of the 1880s. The original Jack Dempsey (1862–1895), from Kildare, boxed under both the London Prize Ring Rules – with bare knuckles or tight leather gloves and a round ending when a boxer hit the ground – and the Queensberry Rules,76 using padded gloves and with fixed three-minute rounds. Several of Dempsey’s early fights in New York were interrupted by the arrival of the police. These were declared no contests. By 1886 he had thumped his way to undisputed middleweight champion of the world, beating Jack Fogarty, George Le Blanche and George Fulljames, amongst others, along the way.
Throughout the 1880s he was the second most famous athlete in America behind the boxer John L. Sullivan.77 However, Dempsey was handsome, personable, well mannered and relatively urbane. You could invite him round for tea, which you couldn’t do with John L. because the latter’s only social accomplishment was beating people up. Still, Dempsey would probably have preferred to drink all of your available booze rather than the tea. Women loved him. He was a technically gifted boxer and remained cool under pressure. He out-boxed his opponents when he could but also slugged it out if he had to. He enjoyed the moniker “Nonpareil”, which meant that he was unique.
From 1884 to 1887 he remained unbeaten in fifty-two fights. On 13 December 1887, he fought Johnny Regan on the Long Island coast. After eight rounds, the rising tide engulfed the ring, forcing a halt to the contest. The opponents, together with their entourages and supporters, travelled twenty-five miles by tugboat to another venue on higher ground. Regan’s spiked shoes had already opened a gash on Dempsey’s shin at the first venue. Regan had been observed sharpening those spikes before the fight. In the new venue, when it began to snow, Regan kept hitting the ground to try to slow the match because, according to the London Prize Ring Rules, a round ended when a contestant was down. But Dempsey managed to knock him out in the forty-fifth round before the venue was snowed out.
Dempsey was defeated only three times in sixty-eight contests. He was the first modern middleweight world champion. He is probably the greatest Irish-born boxer and pound-for-pound fighter, ever. He died from tuberculosis before the booze could kill him in 1895.
James “Lugs” Branigan (1910–1986) was a boxer and a policeman who originated the Dirty Harry approach to Dublin’s street crime. He became an apprentice fitter at the Great Southern Railways when he was fourteen but he hated the experience. He was regularly bullied and beaten by his colleagues because he was so wimpy. He joined the Garda Síochána in 1931, barely meeting the chest measurement requirements. To beef himself up, he took up weight training, rowing and boxing. He quickly became a physical fitness fanatic.
In the 1930s he started training every morning at 5.00 a.m. He regularly fought in Garda Boxing Club bouts. He fought at cruiserweight, light heavyweight and finally heavyweight class between 1936 and 1939. He lost as many fights as he won. He was a dogged rather than a skilful boxer. In 1936, after many beatings along the way, he eventually won the Leinster heavyweight title.
At a boxing tournament in 1938 in Berlin in Germany he was knocked down nine times by a vastly superior opponent, staggering back to his feet each time before he could be counted out. His was the original Rocky performance. The crowd, which included Göring and Goebbels,78 went wild. While he was not anti-Semitic, he did keep a scrapbook of Hitler’s life and times and shared the Nazi obsession with physical fitness. A Garda doctor told him, perhaps too late, that the kind of beating he took in Berlin could lead to brain damage. He retired and became a boxing referee. He refereed more than 16,000 fights.
From 1936 he was a Garda on the beat in the Kevin St “A” district. He cycled his beat and specialised in preempting potential trouble by causing the trouble himself. He earned a reputation for dispensing instant justice with his fists on Dublin’s mean streets. He was an efficient public servant because his normal practice was to spare the courts the time, and the paperwork, by beating up a considerable proportion of those he caught breaking the law. A 1940s Dublin criminal gave him the nickname “Lugs” because of his big ears, but he beat up anyone he overheard calling him that. Approaching the likely troublemakers, he would pull on a pair of tight-fitting black leather gloves while muttering something about the thugs “making his day”.
He liked to have the first arrest of each New Year in the station, so he would usually have a few criminals who he caught earlier lined up so he could charge them when the clock struck midnight. To control the violent excesses of Dublin Teddy Boys in 1957, he was obliged to attend the film Rock Around the Clock at least sixty times. He hated the film.
He often defended young offenders or tried to get them jobs to keep them out of trouble. One mother of a family of offenders said, “Mr Branigan always got a cup of tea in this house before he lagged (beat) one of me boys.” He sorted out marriage problems by beating up husbands who beat up their wives. He also served as a state bodyguard to visiting dignitaries, including Elizabeth Taylor, Cliff Richard and the second greatest footballer ever, George Best (1946–2005).79 He was promoted to sergeant, and given a van called “Branno five” to help round up criminals. When he retired, he received a canteen of cutlery and a set of Waterford glass from Dublin’s prostitutes, who he liked to call “pavement hostesses”.
He carried many scars from knives and bottles, and was once bitten on his backside when sitting on a suspect to subdue him. In court he referred to the biter as being “worse than the Balubas. At least they cook you first.” While the Balubas are one of the Bantu peoples of Central Africa, the name appealed to popular Dublin imagination as a term to describe any so-called primitive peoples, including themselves. At that time Dubliners would have relied exclusively on Tarzan films for their ethnographic understanding of native Africans. The term “Baluba” was also used with reference to someone who had done something foolish, like allowing themselves to be apprehended by Branigan.
Poet, Madman, Scoundrel Page 12
