MICHAEL SMURFIT
On life, death & ageing
‘I wasn’t going to be like my dad, with a couple of chins’
DR Michael Smurfit is out of hospital for only an hour when he politely accepts a call on reports circulating about his ill health.
“I’m not in great shape, I’m afraid,” he says.
It’s not a position one of Ireland’s most successful businessmen is used to. He is, by all accounts, what scientists would these days call a ‘Superager’ —the minority that the majority of people are dying to be like.
At 82, he has enjoyed robust health for the last 30 years, with a diet and fitness regime to rival Mick Jagger — more on that later. But that all changed earlier this month when a routine hip operation went awry and Dr Smurfit was hospitalised for several weeks.
“It’s been a tough time,” he says. “I only expected to be there for four days, but I had a severe complication, which has set me back months unfortunately and I don’t know when I can travel again.”
He describes the painful turn of events: “It turns out that my bones were a bit stronger than they anticipated and the unit that was to fit into the hip didn’t fit, so they had to chip away at my bone. And, of course, in chipping away they caused a fracture down the femur, which is a very dangerous thing.”
The complications resulted in Dr Smurfit undergoing another operation within days, which has laid him up for months and forced him to hire a 24-hour nurse to care for him, checking his vitals every one to two hours.
With his typical good humour, he jokes: “It’s not inexpensive, I can tell you.”
He says the setback has reaffirmed life’s true priorities: “It puts things into perspective pretty quickly when you see the other patients who are in much worse condition. A very close friend of mine is the head of the emergency department at the hospital, and what he has to go through in the course of a day with motorbike and car accidents is just horrific. What I had is nothing in comparison.”
Any man worth his salt will think of life’s bigger questions at some time or other and now laid up in his eighties, Dr Smurfit has no doubt contemplated his own mortality more of late. His mindset is stoical.
“We are all on a one-way street. The only question is when it ends. I don’t worry about mortality or death. My attitude is ‘whatever happens is going to happen and there is nothing I can do about it so why worry?’”
On his faith, he says: “I believe that there seems to be something definitely out there. What it is, I don’t know. Many religions in the world believe they are right — I just hope that ours, Catholicism, is the one. If I got the chance, going down in a plane, I would be saying my Our Fathers, I’ll put it that way.”
He adds: “I have learned the older I get the less I know” and quips that the best part about getting older is “the fact that I did get old”.
As for the worst: “Seeing too many of my friends disappear off the checkerboard of my life. I would say of my top 10 friends, five of them have left now. They know who they are and they know how much I love and miss them. Seeing so many friends disappear is the real tragedy of life.”
Of the worst moment of the last few weeks, he says: “My ability to walk in a normal way again was under threat” and “that, in itself — for somebody as fit as I have kept myself — is quite a debilitating thought process. I am hobbling around with a walker now. I can move a bit but not very much and I tire easily.”
Known for his jet-set lifestyle, Dr Smurfit will have to put the brakes on his air miles now that his doctors have warned him he can’t fly for months: “I can’t stretch my leg out on a plane. It’s going to restrict my travelling up to the end of October.”
In the meantime, he remains upbeat. “I am looking forward to the next 10 years and enjoying myself.”
Dr Smurfit is known for his audacious soirees — the legendary party-giver has earned a reputation as the best host in town. For his 60th, he brought 100 friends on a cruise around the Mediterranean, dressing for the main event in an exact replica of the uniform worn by General Patton at the Battle of the Bulge.
His 70th saw him charter another luxury yacht — complete with marblelined bathrooms and a golf simulator — and last year’s 81st consisted of a weeklong bash on board the Golden Odyssey II for over 100 close friends, family and VIPs. It began in Venice and included a theatrical masquerade ball in the world-famous Belmond Hotel Cipriani.
Now, he says: “My 14 grandchildren have persuaded me to do an 85th, so maybe that will tell you something. We are going to have the bash of all parties.”
How will he top all the others? “Watch this space,” he laughs. “Now that I am lying on my back, I’ll be able to plan it with a lot of detail.”
So what then is his secret to staying young while getting older?
“I must, I can and I will,” he says. “The discipline in my health has always been my fitness. I never let myself go beyond a certain weight. I watch my diet — not my drinking red wine too much, mind you, but certainly what I eat.”
His meals consist of: “A lot of fish, though the doctors tell me now that I need to eat more meat because my bloods aren’t working out the way they should be — and I stay clear of junk food. I also eat a lot of cereals and eggs in the morning.
“I would suggest to anybody to work on their fitness as a matter of life and death. It is what has kept my heart and body and bones strong.”
“At 40, I made up my mind that I wasn’t going to be like my dad. He was quite heavy and let himself go with a couple of stomachs and chins.
“And so when I was a young chap in Smurfits there was one thing I was very strict on — every day I had a set time for my body. No matter what happened or where I was in the world, that was my walking time. In Mexico City, Colombia, Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, London and Dublin, I always went for my walk. Sometimes I got off an airplane and would go straight to it.”
He has walked for two hours every day for the last 40 years and plans to be back pounding the pavements by Christmas. Tonight, however, it is time to put his feet up. And for a man renowned for his extravagant wine tastes, for once the label doesn’t matter: “There is no point opening a very good bottle because I can’t taste it with the drugs — just as long as it’s red.”
Something tells me that the tipple will still be a long way from a bottle of Blue Nun.