Patriotic? Hardly! Eejits wrapped in the Tricolour at every Irish gig just leave me mortified
FUNNY how time flies. For reasons that hardly need to be spelled out in black and white, my thoughts over the weekend drifted to the one and only time I witnessed U2 live in concert.
I’d have been tempted to say it was pretty much exactly 30 years ago, considering that they were on the original Joshua Tree tour back then. But the magic of the internet means I can actually be more precise than that.
It was June 15, 1987, when I saw Bono and the boys performing at Le Zénith, a huge barn in the wilds of the grimmer Parisian suburbs.
Just to be clear, I hadn’t gone to the French capital specially to see them in action. No, I was supposedly there with three fellow teenagers on a working holiday. We’ll draw a discreet veil over the reasons why that didn’t work out and how we ultimately ended up spending the summer on a campsite in Munich instead.
Before we left Dublin, one of our travelling party managed to talk us into getting tickets for the gig. Quite why we went along with it is something that I still don’t fully understand.
I can remember the four of us sitting over a few beers we could barely afford in the hours before the concert. Given that it was a sell-out show, I made the entirely reasonable suggestion that we should flog our tickets and use the incoming revenue to (a) continue the night’s drinking and, perhaps more importantly, (b) keep body and soul together until we managed to find jobs.
To cut a long story short, I was overruled and we duly ended up going to the gig. While I don’t remember U2 being particularly dreadful, the only bit of their set that sticks in my mind is Bono turning a spotlight on the crowd and delivering a semi-coherent rant about the Reagan administration’s policy in Central America. I seem to recall Lone Justice, the support act fronted by future solo star Maria McKee, being much easier on the ear (and the eye, for that matter).
But my principal recollection of the evening is that the instigator of the entire episode – we’ll call him Barry, for reasons that may become clear – produced an Irish flag and started waving it ostentatiously as soon as the music started.
It goes without saying that I would have been mortified under normal circumstances. But there were other issues to be taken into consideration. Given that plenty of chic Parisiennes had turned up to see a group of Irishmen on stage, it occurred to me in my naïveté that they might have been impressed to meet some of their compatriots in the audience.
True, they could probably have guessed where we were from due to our freckled complexions, poor dentistry and tragic tailoring. But it all turned out to be academic in the long run.
The bottom line is that they expressed absolutely no interest whatsoever either in us or, for that matter, our Hibernian credentials. Even the fact that we were all from Dublin, just like U2 themselves, failed to cut any ice.
Mind you, we didn’t get off to a good start. It is perhaps unsurprising that the Tricolour wasn’t as recognisable as an emblem of Ireland as it is nowadays.
Embarrassing
Meanwhile, such was the level of our pidgin French that whenever we tried to explain to nearby females that we were indeed Irlandais, they misheard it as Hollandais and took us to be Dutch.
What a disaster. But what baffled me was that the ludicrous Barry – with whom we were all on non-speaking terms by the end of trip, incidentally – wasn’t even thinking along the same lines as the rest of us. He hadn’t brought the flag along as a prop to chat up the sophisticated Gallic ladies; it was instead an overblown show of patriotic fervour.
I can fully understand why people would want to wave their national flag at a sporting fixture involving rival countries. Even a non-believer like me can see the logic in that.
But why is it that Irish people in particular feel the need to wrap the green flag around them in totally inappropriate circumstances? Only a few short weeks have passed since Coldplay frontman Chris Martin was seen performing at Croke Park with a Tricolour sticking out of the back of his trousers.
Due to the fact that I have more to be worrying about, my knowledge of Mr Martin’s sartorial habits is limited. But I am willing to hazard a guess that he doesn’t normally leave the house with a full-size national flag hanging from his trews, regardless of what country it is from. I can only assume that somebody in the audience lobbed it in his direction.
Nor is this a once-off incident. Practically any large-scale, open-air gig that I have attended in this country has involved at least a smattering of the green, white and orange fluttering in the breeze. It has also become perfectly normal to see Irish flags on show at the annual Glastonbury festival, even when there are no acts from this country on the bill.
It is anyone’s guess as to why this should be the case. My own theory is that it is somehow linked to a post-colonial insecurity or national lack of confidence.
At the very least it smacks of a craving for approval on the global stage. I’ve always reckoned that also explains our claim to be the friendliest nation on the planet or, even more preposterously, to have the best-loved supporters in international football.
Consider it for a moment. Do you routinely see other nations’ flags being waved about with gay abandon at pop concerts? I don’t think so.
The only time I have ever witnessed a Union Jack brandished at a musical event is when they play Rule Britannia at the Last Night of the Proms. Even the notoriously jingoistic Americans can’t be accused of bringing out the Star-Spangled Banner at every available opportunity.
It is an entirely different story when it comes to this country, though. I should say at this juncture that I have absolutely no problem with our national flag being produced in the right circumstances. But waving it around at a pop show makes about as much sense as turning up at an acid-house party in top hat and tails.
I’ve no idea whether Barry was in Croke Park on Saturday or, for that matter, whether he still carries his Tricolour around for company. Myself and the other two chaps could barely bring ourselves to acknowledge his presence by the time we returned to these shores.
From my perspective, it would be an exaggeration to say my decision to blank him was because of his embarrassing carry-on with that flag. But it certainly didn’t help.