The prison sentences are minor. It upends so many people!
TV star Eoghan McDermott feels lucky compared with others whose lives were marred by random violence and makes this cri de coeur...
EOGHAN McDermott sits back in his seat and takes a bite out of a particularly spicy chicken wing. I watch for a reaction but he barely breaks a hint of a grimace. It has been two years since the radio and TV presenter permanently lost his sense of taste and smell and he has managed to come to terms with the consequences.
In an effort to turn a negative into a positive the Dubliner made a documentary for TG4 in a bid to highlight the worryingly frequent amounts of random yet brutal attacks that take place every weekend throughout Ireland.
‘It was a documentary with TG4 called Tabu, Random Acts of Violence’, he says.
‘I wasn’t the focal point but I guess my story was the jumping-off point. Christmas two years ago, St Stephen’s night and I was leaving a pub in Clondalkin and two lads ran across the road and sucker punched me in the head. I fell down and suffered a fairly bad concussion. I lost my sense of taste and smell and then after that happened I did a quick interview with Joe Duffy about it.
‘I didn’t really want to talk about it but he asked and Joe has been very good to me over the years so I went on.
‘On the back of that I started getting all these messages of support on Facebook where people had similar stories or worse. And it was over 100 messages from all over the country saying a similar thing happened to a friend or family member or even themselves. So we used that as a jumping-off point to explore people who have had far worse outcomes from random one punch attacks.’
Eoghan’s attack left him initially hospitalised and before long he realised that two of his senses had been extinguished. He initially struggled to cope with the outcome but after about six months he made his peace with the fact that he would no longer be able to enjoy the pleasures of food or his beloved Irish whiskey.
‘I haven’t got a ‘woe is me’ feeling about what happened and I have learned to deal with it’, he says. ‘But you only have five senses and I have lost two of them and that is a pain in the ass. But if I am honest my dayto-day life is great and this is like a pain in the ass inconvenience in comparison to what some of these people have to deal with.
‘I met the mom of this guy in Mullingar and he was leaving a chipper and got a box in the head and he died. And the sentence handed down to the lads that did it, I think was five years with some suspended.
‘It was minor for the damage they caused. I found that variant interesting. The only difference between these guys who faced manslaughter charges and the guys who hit me was luck. They were just lucky that I didn’t fall the wrong way. That was the thing I probably grappled with most.’
Tabu explores how events like these have changed people’s lives forever and will try and attempt to understand what makes people act in such ways.
In the documentary, the 35year-old met with Good Samaritan Sasha Delaney, who helped him on the night of the incident. The 2FM DJ travelled to the spot in Clondalkin, Dublin where it happened with Ms Delaney.
He said it didn’t feel weird being there. I ask if he believes he was attacked because he was a celebrity but Eoghan is adamant that this was simply a random attack; a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
‘I saw the CCTV and I don’t think they recognised me. I believe it was just a random act of violence. I just happened to be the person in the way. It was harrowing to see those personal stories but also, the other night I walked from a pub just off Grafton Street to Harcourt Street. And that is probably less than a kilometre and in that space within five minutes I saw three separate fights.
‘There was blood all over the foot path and the poor guy was slumped up against a wall and the Gardaí were talking to two other guys. And then up a laneway there was a full-on brawl going on amongst four guys. That was just one snapshot of Dublin on any one night.
‘‘I just can’t un-derstand that need to seek out aggression as almost a form of entertainment. Like these people are going out for a night looking for some argy bargy. It is not good and there is some underlying current of aggression, or apathy or whatever you want to call it. The documentary didn’t solve anything or come up with a solution. All we did was shine a light on the s*** state of affairs that seems to be going on in Ireland.’
The incident happened in December 2016 when he was attacked from behind as he was walking for a taxi after a night out with friends. Eoghan spoke about the incident in the documentary for TG4. And he says that the whole process was both shocking and cathartic and he hopes that it will help start a conversation within Irish society.
‘The reaction to the documentary was mad because we didn’t provide any solutions so that meant that more people were getting in touch with more stories. I grappled with that a bit as well.
‘A young lad was featured in the documentary called Shane Grogan and he was hit on the head with a brick. Someone had said something to his girlfriend and he was defending her honour and someone hit him over the head with a brick.
‘This was a guy who had Hollywood good looks and now he is going to be confined to a wheelchair for life and he needs around-the-clock care. And they have to rebuild their house to care for his needs. That is every day for the rest of his life.
‘This has upended so many people yet this fella only did a couple of years and he is out now and getting on with his life.
‘It wasn’t a pleasant documentary to make and we didn’t have a happy ending but it was important to make people aware that this is happening.’
Eoghan though is someone who refuses to let circumstances rule his life.
He would have been forgiven for taking time away to come to terms ith his assault or the fact that nobody was ever caught. But instead he chose to move on with his life and before long he landed what was probably his biggest television show to date.
EOGHAN is the resident narrator on Love Island Australia, a show which proved a huge ratings hit when it debuted earlier this year.
‘Love Island Australia’, he says breaking out in a smile. ‘Yea, that was fun. It is no Love Island UK but it certainly did well over there. They are unbridled, and out there definitely. What was funny was that it was the first season of Australian Love Island and not everyone had seen it. And for the first week, and the one question I keep getting asked is if the producers ever intervene? And the answer is no.
I just can’t understand that need to seek out aggression as almost a form of entertainment
‘In Week One, they were all so good looking. There is a little bit of diversity creeping in to the UK version, they definitely could do better, but the Australian version only had calendar pin-up worth contestants. So outside of Love Island they have always been the best-looking person in their friend group. So they have never really had to try I don’t think. So you put them all in a room together and nobody was talking to anyone.
‘So the producer had to come in about Day Six and tell them to talk to each other or else they were going to have a s*** show. The guys were a bit macho but I have heard that is a thing in Australia. It is a broad brushstroke but it is one that was echoed in the lads in the villa. There was one big bust-up that went viral around the world and two guys went for each other and this wasn’t for entertainment.’
While the British version of the show is going from strength to strength it appears that TV network executives in Australia fully believe that Love Island has the potential to follow suit. So will Eoghan be reprising his role on Series Two?
‘I don’t know if I am coming back. I hope so. I haven’t been contacted yet but what I do know is that last year it was January before they got in touch. I do know that it is probably moving out of Europe regardless. I did think it was weird that they would fly all the way to Spain when they have all these beautiful places and beaches in Australia. But they said that Spain to us, we are blasé about it but that it was really exotic for the Australians. But I imagine it was very expensive when they have Fiji and Bali near them.
‘It made for a tricky conversation with 2Fm the last time. But I did the show from Mallorca the last time which, fair play to them, they made it happen. It wasn’t ideal but then what’s the alternative? You don’t do it and everyone is resentful? Look I hope we will make it happen again and everyone hopefully will be happy.’ THE Limerickman is currently winding down his drivetime radio show on 2FM for the festive season and spent Christmas with his girlfriend Aoife and his family, He also plans to go skiing with Aoife in the New Year.
‘Christmas is a fun time and it is the only time the whole family get together,’ he says. ‘It is good fun and there are no kids or nieces or nephews and it is all about us. It is great and I am in that lovely space where my mam and dad have stopped being my parents and are my mates now.
Eoghan immediately recalls his best ever Santa present, when the Big Man brought him a pair of roller blades. This gift would ignite a spark that would end in a Cool Running’s style story where Eoghan played Ice hockey for Ireland while getting a drubbing at the hands of the Dutch.
Yes when I was 11 I got my first pair of Bauer FX 3 roller blades which were unbelievable and they were the Ferrari of roller blades. On the back of that I got really into roller blading and roller hockey.
And where Dundrum town centre is now there used to be the roller dome and I used to play hockey there all the time. That led me to play ice hockey and I got into that quite seriously. I ended up on the first ever Irish ice hockey team that went to Sofia in Bulgaria for the European championships.
‘Oh my God we were so s***. We didn’t even have an ice rink. There was this basement in Des Kelly Carpets and some lad came in with a generator and flooded the basement. It became our practice rink. Then suddenly we were sponsored by Nike and on our way to the European Championships.
‘Our first game was against the Netherlands who should not have been in our division. A game lasts 60 minutes and an average score in a game in the American National Hockey League might have eight goals a game. They beat us 46-0 in our first-ever game.
That is like a goal every 80 seconds like it was bad. Imagine the devastation for the goalie but then a year later we drew with Iceland so we got much better.
‘We had this pro player for the States who injured himself and he came over to the College of Surgeons to study. And he happened upon our motley crew and turned us into a better outfit. He was our John Candy.’ ÷Tabu can be viewed on the TG4 player.