EARLY DAYS

a wife Bernie, she did her best to get Paddy to talk to a young up and coming singer who was in the same bar as them watching Ireland playing in a World Cup game. Bernie pleaded with Paddy to talk to the young lad who had done well in “some of those TV singing shows”.

Paddy of course politely told his beloved to let it be as he was watching the match and enjoying a beer.

Turns out the ‘young fella’ was called Niall Horan who was on his way to music stardom.

Paddy admits: “He was mad to chat, and I know I would have got a scoop out of it. It is not the first time I should have listened to Bernie!”

When working Paddy was always resourceful, the story of how he once lost his trousers in payment for information best sums up his out of the box thinking when needed: “I lost my pants - literally - for the sake of a story. I was short of readies when a source who tipped me off about a good story in Belfast tapped me for some reward. “He explained that he didn’t have a decent suit for his child’s first communion the next day.

“We were about the same size and all I could think of offering him was the pair of trousers I just had returned from the hotel dry-cleaners.”

For all his exploits and travel during his career, Sligo remains a huge part of his life and Paddy trips through the town naming old friends, shops, businesses, and characters who were part of his childhood.

A life-long Sligo Rovers fan, his fondness for the team is only second to his admiration for a man called Cyril McDermott, known as ‘Max’ who covered the Bit O’Red’s exploits for the Sligo Champion when Paddy was a kid.

“In those days no one got their name on a story - a byline as we call it - but Max did. I read every word he wrote and when I started, aged 18, in the Champion Max had moved on to the Irish Independent and then to Fleet

Street. He got a job with the Press Association and that was a big deal. “I remember Tom Palmer, the then editor of the paper saying to us all in the newsroom how Max had ‘made it’ but added ‘I’m not too sure about the rest of you’. I quietly said to myself, ‘I’ll get there, don’t you worry’.”

The Clancy family lived in various areas in the town, on the Strandhill Road, then Bridge Street. Paddy was born in Old Market Street, but the family lived there only for a year at most. His father, Tom Clancy, a Tipperary native, opened a shop on Bridge Street while the family home was on the Strandhill Road, before a move to Bridge Street where the shop was. A drapery shop, it later became a second-hand clothes shop, Paddy believes it was the first such shop in Sligo.

Tom and his wife Bridie had nine children. Paddy was the eldest, his sister Mary passed away in November of last year. His other siblings are Tommy, Francis, Ann, Catherine, Bernadette, Michael and Nuala.

His early education was at Scoil Fatima on Pearse Road, where he was taught by the Mercy nuns. Forced at that early age to write with his right hand, despite being naturally lefthanded, he recalls how teachers “beat the shit out of me to make me use my right hand. I was only six years old.” To this day it rankles with him. “They told me I shouldn’t write with the devil’s hand. I remember that specifically. My handwriting is bloody awful as a result.”

He then went to the Marist Brothers in Temple Street, St John’s School. He got a County Council scholarship to go to Summerhill College from there. “People were surprised at that. I was lazy, but I was mad into books, loved it. Frank Reidy, a local engineer, and a friend of my dad, did evening classes with me and that helped hugely. My dad got him to do that,” he says remembering that helping hand from his father fondly. His father and mother, at critical times in his life, played important roles in opening doors for their eldest son and it’s clear from listening to Paddy how grateful he remains to both of them.

He went to Summerhill College as a