The Sultan of academia
QUESTION Is it true that the lead singer with the Sultans of Ping was a history academic? THE lead singer in The Sultans of Ping was – and is – indeed an academic, Dr Niall O’Flaherty.
Formed in Cork in 1988 as a punk indie band, the Sultans of Ping FC were active up until 1996, having dropped ‘FC’ from the band’s title in 1993. Two years later, the band became simply The Sultans. They split in 1996, then reformed in 2005.
In the years since the band was formed in Cork, vocalist Niall O’Flaherty has often been known in musical circles as ‘Noff’, but apart from his vocalising with the band, he also decided to embark on a serious academic career.
He got his PhD from King’s College, Cambridge, having received his MA and his BA from Queen Mary University of London.
He then taught the history of political ideas at the University of Cambridge and Queen Mary University of London, before becoming a lecturing fellow at King’s College, London. His field of study involves putting political philosophies into their historical context and those political studies involve such great names on the European political stage as Marx, Machiavelli and Rousseau.
On occasion, he has invited along some of his university colleagues to some of the band’s gigs and some of his students have been bemused by his double life.
But he has always said that he has tried to keep his musical life and his serious university work separate, as far as is possible.
But while he has had increasing academic success, in recent years O’Flaherty has expressed doubts as to how long the band will continue. The band performed at Christmas gigs in Dublin and Cork in 2008 to much acclaim and still do occasional gigs.
In 2015, they played at Electric Picnic and staged a sell-out concert at the Soundhouse in Leicester. Last year, they performed in Whelan’s in Dublin. The band also has a substantial discography.
However, Dr O’Flaherty wasn’t the only academic to have had a connection with the Sultans of Ping. Morty McCarthy was the drummer with the band from 1991 onwards and he stayed for five years, until they broke up in 1996.
Then he went off to Stockholm, not to play music but to teach English. In his days with the band, he had also written a book of Cork slang called Dowtcha Boy. So while the Sultans of Ping had lots of success as an indie band, with the members clad in PVC, both here in Ireland and in Britain, continental Europe and the US, they also had an underlying academic undercurrent, primarily Dr O’Flaherty. He had returned to full-time academic studies in 2000 and since then has built up a seriously substantial academic reputation that has nothing to do with his skills in vocalising with the Sultans of Ping.
But his remains an unusual talent – high-flying academic by day and indie rocker vocalist with the Sultans by night. The combination must be working, as The Sultans have been performing for close on 30 years now.
Peter Johnson, Meath. QUESTION Timothy Treadwell, who claimed he loved bears more than humans, was killed by one. What other ironic deaths have there been? FURTHER to earlier answers, Jim Fixx was a guy who’s credited with helping start the America’s fitness revolution. He also wrote a bestselling book on the benefits of jogging. But at 52 years of age, he died of a heart attack doing what he loved the most, jogging!
Zishe Breitbart was a Polish performer who was known as the strongest man in the world during the 1920s. He was famous for performing feats such as climbing a ladder while carrying a baby elephant, supporting enormous weights, such as automobiles carrying up to ten people etc. But as luck would have it, he died after getting stabbed by a small nail.
That’s right, he accidentally stabbed himself in the knee with a small nail and the wound became infected, which led to his death.
Garry Hoy was a lawyer in a Toronto law firm. One day, in an attempt to prove to a group of students that the glass in the Toronto-Dominion Centre was unbreakable, Hoy threw himself through a glass wall on the 24th story. The glass did not break, but unfortunately, the window frame gave away and Hoy fell to his death.
Though Jerome Moody wasn’t a lifeguard himself, there’s no denying the irony in his death. He was a guest at a party for lifeguards celebrating their first drowningfree swimming season. His body was found at the bottom of the pool after the party had ended.
Michael Anderson Godwin was a convicted murderer who was at first sentenced to an electric chair but later his sentence was overturned to life imprisonment.
But ironically, one day Michael accidentally electrocuted himself while sitting on a metal toilet seat in his prison cell.
Opera singer Richard Versalle died on stage at the Metropolitan Opera during the company’s premiere performance of The Makropulos Case when he suffered a heart attack while standing on a sliding ladder attached to a file cabinet. He was stricken after singing the line, ‘Too bad you can live only so long.’
While proudly riding his roaring Harley down the road with his unhelmeted head exposed to the whistling winds of freedom during a 2011 protest ride against helmet laws, New York biker Philip Contos was flung over his handlebars and onto the sidewalk, where he died of a fatal head injury. A State Trooper claimed that a medical examiner told him Contos would have lived if only he’d been wearing a helmet. Nicola Colohan, Drumcliffe, Co. Sligo. QUESTION Have any production motorcycles had a reverse gear? A REVERSE gear is unnecessary on most motorcycles as you can usually push one backwards if you need to – and it is difficult to ride a motorcycle (or bicycle) backwards. The steering geometry is designed for stability driving forward.
Some large motorcycles, such as the 800lb Honda Gold Wing, have an electric reverse to help back out of a parking space. This isn’t a genuine gear and it is limited to low speeds. It was incorporated into their design because they weigh too much to handle easily.
Russian motorcycle company Ural provides a genuine reverse gear. They have specialised in sidecar bikes since World War II. Their models incorporate a fourspeed gearbox with a reverse gear. Charles Dale, Derby.