The lesson of Alan Farrell and the lost art of saying nothing
Prince Andrew and Maria Bailey could have learnt a thing or two from the Dublin TD, writes Donal Lynch
IT is the most natural feeling in the world: to want, in the face of grave accusations, to give one’s own side of the story. Maria Bailey succumbed to it. So too did Prince Andrew. As we all saw, their interviews were monumentally disastrous and both were punished with removal, for the moment at least, from public life. They had, to use a Shakespearean phrase, been hoist with their own petard.
Would they have been pushed without the interviews? Probably not. There was a steady drip of interest but the stories needed kindling from an indignant, occasionally confused protagonist to really ignite. Both must have been left wondering why they opened their big mouths.
Somewhere in his veritable bunker of silence in North Dublin, TD Alan Farrell must have beheld the carnage of Andrew and Maria, and felt quietly affirmed in his tactic of stonewalling the press on an issue that has come to define him. Even as journalists — including this one — have clamoured for quotes from him, he has remained doggedly tight-lipped, and it appears to be working.
Maria may be gone, but Farrell has the backing of the Taoiseach and it’s been nearly a month since Fianna Fail called for an inquiry into his case. Slowly but surely, he has starved his story of oxygen. He is the greatest modern exponent of an age-old Irish approach: say nothing.
His success in this is all the more extraordinary given the ongoing discussions of sexism in politics — why must Maria Bailey go but he allowed to stay? — and the fact that he, as much as she, has been held up as being emblematic of compensation culture in Ireland.
Farrell took a personal injury case, alleging he suffered neck and shoulder issues which affected his personal and professional life for up to 18 months following a minor car accident in Drumcondra, Dublin, in 2015. When the case came before the court he was confronted with pictures of himself on a ladder, with his hands on a election poster, turning his head.
The judge called the case “somewhat unusual” and said “there is little or no notation to back up a claim of significant whiplash”. He also said Farrell had not suffered a “significant injury” and awarded him only €2,500, which is chump change in personal injury terms.
When all of this came to light, Farrell benefited from a few blessings. The first was that he, unlike Bailey and the prince, did not possess a glamorous image that editors wanted to keep featuring for months on end. More imporcase, tantly, he understood that, to use a grandmotherly expression, ‘a shut mouth catches no flies’. He gave a terse statement saying “liability for the accident was admitted and I am satisfied that the matter is concluded” and thereafter refused all requests for interviews.
The writer John McGahern once wrote that ‘say nothing’ was one of the catchphrases of the Republic in the 1950s and it was also one of the slogans of the Troubles. In the era of social media swarming and cancel culture it has been given a new relevance.
An interview that purports to draw a line under something rarely does that. It instead puts media on notice that the interviewee is prepared, under certain circumstances, to discuss the issue — precipitating a deluge of further interview requests. Both Maria Bailey and Prince Andrew were convinced that they could make a persuasive but both came unprepared to answer basic questions about their behaviour and tone and body language — in the case of Andrew — was also an issue.
It is possible there were other factors, not totally connected to common sense, which drove these fateful interviews. Prince Andrew said his motivations were partly to do with his own mental health. Bailey had a note of desperation in her voice, but this emotion was always going to be heightened during an on-air interrogation. Once both had spoken the feeding frenzy began. Some stories need the tone and colour of their protagonists to really move them along. We knew all along about the chicanery of David Drumm, for instance, but it was only the dismissiveness of his language on the so-called Anglo Tapes that really brought home just how nefarious he had been. With Bailey and the prince, every nuance of their language was scrutinised afterward for inconsistencies. They were wholly unprepared to answer basic questions about their behaviour. They both, at times, appeared to hide behind their lawyers, blissfully unaware that the court of public opinion was already in session. They turned their PR drives into public trials and Sean O’Rourke and Emily Maitlis were careful, methodical prosecutors.
2019 has been, in some ways, the year of the devastating interview. Besides Bailey and Andrew, we also had rapper R Kelly, who thought tears and recriminations would save him during his televised conversation with Gayle King this past spring.
Prince Andrew was reportedly considering a follow-up interview after his disaster last weekend. Even still, he hadn’t learnt the lesson: that sometimes saying nothing really is the best thing.
It’s one that Alan Farrell could have surely taught him.
‘Slowly, surely Farrell has starved his story of oxygen’