Memory Man

by Jimmy Magee

  I then had another scare in 1998 while I was walking down Fifth Avenue in New York. I became so unwell that it was impossible to ignore the pain, and an ambulance was called to take me to Lenox Hill Hospital, which is near the top end of Central Park. Even though it was absolute bedlam in the casualty department I received fantastic attention from the medical staff, who never once gave the impression that they were under pressure or stress.

  Again I was told that my blood pressure was sky-high and that I was lucky I had checked myself in for immediate treatment, because it would have been very dangerous if I had ignored the warning signs. Once my condition was stabilised I asked to be released, but the doctor refused. They agreed to phone my specialist back in Maynooth to compare medical notes. After that they reluctantly released me. In retrospect I know I was only delaying the inevitable.

  It came to a head in February 1999 when the pain became so difficult to deal with that, of my own volition this time, I checked myself in to the Blackrock Clinic and was seen by a cardiologist, Dr Peter Quigley, and was given an angiogram. He said they would monitor me and I was to come back early the following week.

  I flew over to London that weekend to cover a game at Chelsea. When I was walking up the steps into the stadium’s broadcasting box I was so out of breath that a man stopped and asked if I needed any help. ‘Yes, thank you,’ I said. I gave him my bag and he helped me up the steps. When I got to the top of the steps with the help of this kind man the bbc engineer on duty looked at me and asked, ‘Are you okay, Jimmy? You look very pale.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I lied. ‘I’m just a bit out of breath from those bloody steps. I’m not as fit as I used to be. Don’t mention this to anybody, okay?’

  He assured me he wouldn’t. I sat down for three or four minutes to catch my breath and then I got stuck in to the match.

  When I got home I had an appointment on the Monday at the Blackrock Clinic. ‘How was your weekend?’ Dr Quigley asked me. ‘Had you any pain during the weekend?’

  ‘No, I had no pain. All was fine, really.’

  ‘I think that’s a lie.’

  ‘Were you not listening to me at the weekend? I’m grand.’

  Not paying any attention to my amateur diagnosis, Dr Quigley said he was making an appointment for me with a specialist, Maurice Neligan, but before that he wanted to do an angioplasty.

  It’s a painful procedure where a narrowed or obstructed blood vessel is mechanically widened. After an angioplasty you have to rest for a few hours, because you might bleed. My son Mark was with me, and when the cardiologist came back in I knew by his face there was something up.

  ‘When is your next game?’

  ‘Saturday.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  He explained that the results of my tests showed that I needed a heart bypass. I tried in vain to explain that I could continue on without such an operation if I simply continued to take my medication. ‘I’m going to do the match anyway.’

  I thought I would have to wait for a bed, and that would take weeks; so when I asked him when the operation would be I was taken aback when he bluntly told me, ‘This Friday.’

  ‘But I can’t have it on Friday. I have the match the next day. I’m supposed to be going to Nottingham Forest v. Manchester United.’

  I left the clinic insisting that I was going to England regardless. The next day the surgeon’s secretary phoned me and said, ‘Mr Neligan wants a word with you.’ There was a pause, and Maurice came on the line. ‘I heard you’re going to the game in Nottingham.’

  ‘Yeah. That’s the plan. I’m determined to go.’

  ‘Where’s the commentary stand in the stadium? Is it at the top of the stands?’

  When I told him they were on the roof of the stands he asked me, ‘How will they get you down from there?’

  ‘What do you mean? Sure they wouldn’t have to get me down. They didn’t have to get me down the last Saturday or the Saturday before. So why this Saturday?’

  ‘Jimmy, I don’t think you realise how serious this is. And you’re still going to go? Fair play to you. I suppose I can’t talk you out of it?’

  ‘No, you can’t.’

  ‘Leave it with me,’ he said.

  He rang me back later that day. ‘I’ve two phone numbers that you have to take down. Have you got a pen handy?’

  I took out a piece of paper and a pen. ‘Fire ahead.’

  ‘This first phone number,’ he began in his dry way, ‘is for a friend of mine, a heart surgeon in Nottingham.’

  I jotted down the number, starting to get where he was going with this conversation.

  ‘I also want to give you the number for the Cardiology Unit in Nottingham General Hospital.’ As he was reading it out to me he said, ‘I think you’ll need both of these.’

  I’m only stubborn up to a point. I’m stubborn up to the point of no return, and then I de-stubbornise myself. If I make up my mind I stick to it; I don’t think things on impulse. But this time I sighed and replied, ‘Okay, Maurice. I’ve got the message now. I won’t do the match.’

  ‘Get yourself in here. We’re going to have to do this operation as soon as possible.’

  Petrified, I checked myself in to the hospital the following morning.

  I was unbelievably nervous on the days leading up to the operation. I hate hearing the gory details of operations and other medical procedures, so the thought of somebody cutting me up—even if it was to save my life—had me frightened. I suppose it was because deep down I feared the unknown and hated having no control over what was about to happen to me. I didn’t allow myself to think this was going to be the end, but I was nervous, because I didn’t know what was in store. I didn’t know what to think.

  But I got some great moral support from my friends. Father Brian D’Arcy came into the hospital on the day before the operation to see me, and Bill O’Herlihy, who had also had a heart operation, came in to visit me. ‘There’s no use telling you that you’ll be a new man tomorrow,’ he said. ‘This is not like cutting your toenails.’ But he added that with my will power and general health I would get better, though it wouldn’t happen overnight. I was glad he told me the truth, rather than feed me with rubbish.

  Years later I did the same when Larry Gogan was having a heart operation. I went in to see him the day before it and he too was a wreck. I told him, ‘I know what you want now: a big needle full of stuff to knock you out.’

  He asked me, ‘Will I be able to walk around like you in time?’ And I reassured him that ‘of course’ he would. ‘And sure I was playing football after mine.’

  He tried to tell me I was different, but I wouldn’t allow him to think like that and told him that within three months he would be better. He often says to me now that I was ‘dead on’.

  Ironically, I had the operation on the same day as the Nottingham v. Manchester United game. Before the operation I was told, ‘We should warn you about this. You’ll have a very strange kind of dream in the recovery room. This is a very serious operation, but in the recovery room you’ll have some unusual dreams, to say the least.’

  ‘What kind of dreams will I have?’

  ‘It will be a mixture of fantasy and reality, but you won’t notice the difference between them. Unlike normal nightmares, they won’t be nightmarish but a mixture of reality and fantasy, but mixed seamlessly into each other.’

  I certainly had post-operation dreams that seemed real and have been etched in my memory. The most unusual was one in which I was invited to an event in London and I arrived in a wheelchair with all the nuts and bolts sticking out of me. As I was wheeled into the room I recognised most people at it as being nearly all Irish celebrities from both the sports and the entrainment spheres. While I didn’t know them all personally, I knew them from the screen, either television or films. Suddenly somebody screamed, ‘Who let this smelly Irishman in here?’ pointing at me.

  And then two Manchester United players, Roy Keane and Denis Irwin—both
of whom would have been playing in the match I was supposed to be doing on the day of the operation—along with the rugby legend Keith Wood, rushed to my defence. ‘Don’t you speak like that about Jimmy!’ they said in unison.

  Then Wood went up to the guy and they had a maul. Shortly afterwards the police were called and they fingered me as the ringleader of all this commotion.

  I was trying to plead my innocence with the constable. ‘How could I be the ringleader of anything? God! Just look at me!’

  And then a voice appeared out of nowhere and said to me, ‘Do you know where you are?’

  ‘Indeed I do. I’m in Her Majesty’s Theatre in the Strand and me and the boys are going to raze it to the ground!’

  ‘No. The operation’s been a success and you’re alive.’

  I realised that it was Maurice Neligan speaking to me. His was the first voice I heard in my new existence, my new life.

  ‘Do you know where you are?’

  I opened my eyes and struggled to smile.

  I was later informed that my whole system broke down and my kidneys and other organs were failing. Usually after such an operation you’d spend about three days in intensive care, but when I woke up I discovered that I had been unconscious for about a week.

  They were clearly nervous about me, which came through loud and clear when I woke up to discover that my sister Mary had flown over from America and was holding a vigil with other relatives at my bedside. I remember thinking, ‘There must be something up here.’ I’m open to correction on this, but I believe a priest may even have been summoned to give me the last rites.

  They later told me that I was singing in my sleep in the intensive-care unit. A nurse asked Paul one day, ‘How many songs does your father know?’

  ‘Ah, sure you wouldn’t know; he has a massive repertoire. Sometimes he likes to sing “Summertime” and then he might do “Blueberry Hill”.’ I’ve no idea how I was doing all this singing while I was knocked out.

  Paul had some funny stories about me when I was unconscious in the hospital. He told me that somebody had wanted to visit me and I told them, ‘I don’t want any visitors. Unless it was the president they weren’t allowed in.’

  ‘The president of where?’ Paul asked.

  ‘The USA.’

  I would then break into song again.

  ——

  When I was in hospital DJ Carey came in to see me. I recounted a story to him about what Eddie Keher said about him. I did a quiz one night in the late 80s in Kilkenny with Eddie Keher, who appeared in six all-Irelands and was one of the most prolific scorers of all time. We were talking about the greatest players and he said, ‘You love names, Jimmy. There’s a young boy in Kilkenny and if he keeps at it and doesn’t get ill and stays in love with the game he’s going to be the greatest of them all. His name is DJ Carey. You should remember that name.’

  DJ couldn’t believe that Eddie Keher spoke so highly of him. He thought that was some tribute. ‘I’m going to give you one now, Jimmy. There’s another young fella coming along now who’ll be better than any of us. So remember the name. The name is Henry Shefflin.’

  Ten years ago I went into the Kilkenny dressing-room after they had just won the league and I went over and sat beside Shefflin and told him, ‘I’m going to tell you a story about DJ Carey and Eddie Keher.’ As I began to tell him I glanced over to the other corner and saw that DJ and Henry were actually in the room. After I’d finished Shefflin said, ‘Did DJ Carey say that about me?’

  ‘He certainly did.’

  DJ was right too about Shefflin, who has just become the first player to win ten All-Stars, as well as eight all-Ireland medals, which is going to be an almost impossible feat for anybody to repeat. (In fact by the time this book comes out he could already be the only player to have a ninth all-Ireland medal.)

  On another occasion I asked Ollie Campbell, one of the best out-halfs to play rugby for Ireland, ‘When you were a young fella who did you want to be?’ He told me he was always pretending to be Mike Gibson when he was playing as a young lad. The amazing thing was that his first cap for Ireland was against Australia.

  It turned out that Gibson heard the story and either wrote to him or spoke to him to say how nice it was that he thought that much of him. I think it was great how they got to play as equals after Ollie had him as a boyhood idol.

  I have a good story about when Ollie Campbell and Tony Ward were vying for the position of out-half for the Irish rugby team. They were probably the two best out-halfs in Europe at the time. Ward had a long stretch, and then Campbell had a stretch. Campbell, who owned a tie business, was driving in Co. Mayo one night coming home from work. There was a woman on the side of the road who had either missed her bus or was waiting on her bus, and he gave her a lift. They got talking about everything and anything and then sport. She said he looked like a young man who played sport, and he replied that he played rugby. She wasn’t familiar with rugby and she told him the only thing she could say about rugby was ‘I don’t know why they don’t play that chap Ward instead of your man Campbell.’ What could Ollie say except ‘I suppose you have a point’!

  ——

  I cried bitterly after my heart operation. I had remained strong when both my wife and my son died by not crying—even though I was a broken man on the inside—but after the operation I broke down, because the sorrow came flooding back to me, and everything hit me at the one time.

  When I finally got out of hospital I was determined to recover—and recover in time to be at the Olympics in Sydney in 2000. I walked around RTE with Noel Coughlan, who was the producer in charge for the Olympics, and told him, ‘I’m going to the Games, and I don’t want to be ruled out.’

  ‘You won’t be ruled out. I promise.’

  RTE were very good to me then, but they were always good to me. They were trying to tell me to take more time off, but sure I wouldn’t listen. In the end I went to Sydney. If you want to do anything you have to be determined.

  I don’t want to frighten anyone who is facing an operation such as mine, because these things can be cured, but it does take time. It took me three or four months to recover. I was in hospital for about a month. My family were very worried, which I can understand. I went back to work as soon as I could, which was about three months afterwards. I couldn’t be lying around feeling sorry for myself.

  I was supposed to do exercise, but I’m very poor at keep-fit regimes, though I did the occasional bits of walking. One of the places where I walked was UCD. I was walking there one day when away in the distance I saw a boy of about twelve kicking a football at the Gaelic posts and running back after it. Eventually the ball got stuck in a tree. I got up as far as him and he was throwing twigs and stones at the ball. I told him, ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll get the ball for you.’

  I was still holding myself, because I had the layman’s fear of the stitches bursting open. Without thinking, I jumped up and flicked it out of the branches. The young lad thanked me and I walked away. If I walked towards him at two miles per hour, that episode inspired me to walk away at six miles an hour. In one fell swoop I felt so much better. From then on I didn’t allow it to become a ‘lie down and feel sorry for yourself ’ issue.

  When I was leaving the hospital I had asked Maurice Neligan what I thought was a perfectly natural question. ‘How long will this last?’

  ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘sit down there. When I had you opened up like the swing doors in a Western saloon you were at my mercy. And I got this piece of paper and I wrote on it, “This man will survive for ever”.’

  He paused as we both laughed and he continued: ‘I stuck it into your chest, but I put the writing facing the back so that if they opened you up again they wouldn’t be able to read it. In the unlikely event that you don’t live for ever all the rest of us will be dead and gone, so they won’t be able to blame us. So get out of here.’

  As I was leaving, he told me he didn’t want to see me again. That was thirte
en years ago. Unfortunately he himself is now gone, and the fellow who did the anaesthetic is gone also. Maurice Neligan’s funeral was a sad day for me, because I believe he gave me my life.

  Chapter 17

  | TIPS AND SLIPS

  It’s funny, but recently I was on a cruise and I got chatting to an Englishman about sport. He said, ‘I bet you can’t recall who won the FA cup in 1949.’

  ‘I can. It was Wolverhampton Wanderers. And not only can I tell you that but I can give you the names of all the players,’ and I proceeded to list the team and their positions.

  This man, who didn’t know me from Adam, said to me, ‘This is amazing! You know what? They should call you the Memory Man.’

  I didn’t tell him that they already call me the Memory Man (whoever ‘they’ are)!

  For the record, I don’t get every question right. I have made an odd slip up and forgotten a name or date. Thankfully, however, even as old age creeps up on me I have retained this gift for sports trivia.

  I haven’t got a good memory at all: what I have is a memory for things I like, such as music, geography, travel and sports. Don’t forget this was all pre-Google and all that, and if I didn’t know something I’d have to look it up in a book.

  People ask me if there is any secret or tricks to the Memory Man. Well, the answer is no. What you need to have is interest in the subject. If you have that you want to learn more about it. This applies to anything, like completing a Rubik’s cube—whatever you are interested in.

  I was always interested in names and still interested in people’s names to this day and trying to get them right. Pronunciation is very important: I often ask the person themselves how they pronounce their name. Memory Man is a thing that I think anyone can do if they apply themselves in any field: you have people who can tell you all the Beatles’ hits, or how many number ones Elton John had.