I made it my business to find her... I brought her milk in
And 44 years, six children and a menagerie of animals later, Phil Coulter and Geraldine Branagan are still together
wouldn’t change a second of it but it was lonely, under no circumstances think otherwise,’ she says, of those eight years as a stay-athome mum in London.
She and Phil spent the time apart ‘running up big phone bills’, he remembers. Au pairs came and went through the years and ‘though we could have afforded it’, Geraldine chose to be a hands-on mother in lieu of leaving the kids with a nanny to be her husband’s glamorous plus one at functions around the world. It wasn’t easy for him either.
‘There’s one time I can vividly remember pulling away from the house, heading for the airport, Geraldine at the door with a couple of the kids around, thinking, “This is tough”, knowing you’re going to be gone a long time, especially if you’ve got young kids. You’d miss the normality. Which makes the way we work now all the more palatable and civilised, in that we can travel as a couple.’
Much has happened in the meantime, not least Coulter’s extraordinary success, including twentythree platinum discos, thirty-nine gold discs, fifty-two silver discs, five Ivor Novello Awards, three American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers Awards, a Meteor Award and a Grammy nomination. In the Eighties he launched himself as an artist in his own right with his hugely successful Classic Tranquility and Sea of Tranquility records. In the Nineties he produced albums for Boyzone and Sinéad O’Connor. In the Noughties he enjoyed sales in the millions with Celtic Thunder, a male version of Celtic Woman. His favourite of his own songs is still Town That I Loved So Well.
The family moved back to Ireland from London in 1993 when the youngest was a few months old, settling in Bray when they found Killarney House and St Gerard’s School.
Their sprawling, nine-bedroomed home was full of noise and fun both inside and out. This was when Geraldine had a chicken coop built and began to keep dozens of foul and chipmunks – and allow unlimited sleepovers.
‘Saturday mornings used to be fun. You’d go down the stairs and you never knew who you were going to meet there,’ smiles Phil, who enjoyed the chaos of family life.
‘I’d always keep about eight or nine sleeping bags,’ says Geraldine. ‘I’d always do two huge cas- seroles or spaghetti bolognese, feed the multitudes. I adored it.’
Phil lists what the children are doing now: Daragh is a sea captain in New Zealand, his twin Alexandra is working in Australia, Ryan is a soccer player, Danielle is in London in special events, Dominique works in high tech security, Georgina is in the airline industry. ‘People say to me, “How many of your kids are in showbusiness?” and I say, “None” and they say, “That’s a shame” and we say, “No, that’s a relief”.
‘You’ll find that it’s more an exception than a rule that children of people in the music industry follow them into the music industry. Because I think growing up in the business kids understand that it’s not the glamour that people outside think it to be.
‘They can see that it’s a lot of hard work. I think the whole breed of stage mother who push their children onto the stage are people who have never been in showbusiness.’
CHILDREN vie every year to get on the Late Late Toy Show, but the Coulter clan were horrified at the thought of appearing on the iconic chat show after providing backing vocals on a track for their dad.
‘When Gay Byrne got a hold of it he said, “We’ll have you on the Late Late Show”. Well, the kids were kicking and screaming at the thought of being on television. They didn’t want to be,’ says Geraldine.
Phil despairs of big-headed stage school kids on TV talent shows.
‘There’s a sense of – don’t get me started – of that generation of aspiring performers, a sense of entitlement. Because someone has told them they’re talented they naively believe the world owes them a living. It’s almost like it’s their turn, that they’re entitled to a career. You’re not entitled to anything.’
‘Writing a good song is ‘not a shaft of light that comes out of the heavens as you’re strolling along the beach in Bray.
‘It’s sitting at that piano there or sitting at that desk there. I’ve got to turn up for work on Monday morning and sit at that desk at ten o’clock’.
Not only is he spending hours on his craft, but Geraldine confirms that he also ‘puts the bins out like any normal person every week’.
Phil adds: ‘I met a wee woman in Tesco a few weeks ago and she said, “Phil Coulter, I didn’t expect to see you in Tesco!”’
Now that they have reared their family and downsized to a smaller home nearby - only the youngest, Georgina, 25, lives with them these days - the couple is enjoying a new lease of life.
Last year they spent six weeks living in an apartment in New York, playing nine concerts a week together at the Irish Repertory Theatre. Phil appreciates ‘the fact you can still find those experiences and adventures together at this advanced stage in the career’.
Geraldine, making up for lost time, enthuses, ‘I absolutely love putting on my professional cap and working with Phil’.
As he talks me through some of the discs on the walls, Phil says: ‘What concentrates my mind is that there is still space for more. We’re not finished yet.’
Perhaps Geraldine will get her wish of another hit song written in her honour.