Fancy a Swiftie?
Banshees’ publican has enlisted Niall Horan to ask star Taylor to come to his bar
TAYLOR SWIFT has been invited for a pint at the rebuilt Banshees Of Inisherin pub – via her good pal Niall Horan.
Swift expressed interest in visiting JJ Devine’s – the fictional pub built on Achill Island just for Banshees – even before it was reassembled behind Mee’s Bar in Kilkerrin, Co. Galway last year.
On unveiling the rebuilt pub, owner Luke Mee told the Irish Mail on Sunday the first free pint was reserved for the pop superstar. And this week he confirmed the invitation has been sent, ahead of Tay Tay’s three Irish shows in June.
‘There’s still the hope that she may come,’ Mr Mee told the MoS. ‘She did say that if it was rebuilt she would come to visit it.’
During a joint interview with Variety in December 2022, Swift told Banshees writer/director Martin McDonagh, ‘The pub that you built, it just blew my mind that that was something you built. It looked like it had been
‘She could probably take a helicopter’
there forever’. When McDonagh suggested Devine’s could be rebuilt if the film did well enough, the singer replied that she ‘would like to float that idea’.
And Mr Mee, who did more than float the idea by bringing the flat-pack pub to Kilkerrin, said he believes Swift has received the invitation through a pair of Mullingar brothers.
‘I’d be very good friends with [singer] Niall Horan’s brother Greg,’ he explained. ‘And I got Greg to pass it on through Niall to Taylor Swift, so the message was passed on to her.’
Mr Mee admitted that ‘whether or not she’ll arrive will be another story’, but added: ‘You’d never know – she does do some things like that.
‘She flew back a long way to her boyfriend’s American football [Travis Kelce playing in the Super Bowl]. And she did turn up at different events to surprise her fans over the years. So it made me think she might.’
While all three of Swift’s June concerts are in the Aviva Stadium in Dublin, the logistics of getting to Kilkerrin shouldn’t prohibit a visit, Mr Mee said.
‘Where there’s a will there’s a way. It’s the other side of the country but she could probably take a helicopter’. A jaunt to Kilkerrin wouldn’t be the first time the 34-year-old has ventured off the beaten tourist track in Ireland. She made several visits here when dating English actor Joe Alwyn and posted photos from Portsalon
Beach in Co. Donegal in 2021.
Mee’s Bar is currently up for sale after 20 years in the family. ‘The potential is so vast with the Banshees pub there’s so much to offer,’ Mr Mee said.