‘The days we had cops on the streets, and The Beatles...’
I’M sure you may have gathered by now that this is not a weekly column. Weakly, maybe, but not weekly. (That’s just a little joke I threw in there to lighten your Sunday morning, and now I’m sorry — I should have thrown it somewhere else.)
A weekly deadline would not suit me in my present state of health, so this is known as “an occasional column”, the arrangement being that I write whatever occurs to me, I send it to Mary O’Sullivan, and if she considers it worthy of publication, fine, and if not, that’s fine too. Many years ago, during my eight-year stint as chairman of the Road Safety Authority, I was driven home from one of our many conferences by a young garda — sharp, smart, well-turnedout and articulate. I wish I could recall his name for you but even if I could, I wouldn’t. I thought he was destined for good things in the force. And in the course of the conversation, I said that in my various meetings with the top brass on matters of road safety, I had formed the opinion that An Garda Siochana was really not very well managed.
To which my young friend replied: “It’s not that they’re not very well managed, they’re not managed at all.”
And I thought, well now, there’s a zippy, smart-alecky comment from someone who is young enough to be full of selfconfidence, and you only hope he knows what he’s talking about. Boy, did he ever! Let us not relive in detail the horrors of the McCabe/Charleton inquiry, but many people seem to have missed out on a sort of addendum which Judge Peter Charleton voiced after the inquiry finished, which basically asked just one question: where are all the cops? (Not that he would have used such appalling slang as “cops” — that’s just me showing my regrettable poverty of vocabulary.)
The judge said he’d only seen a garda once in the hundreds of journeys he’d made between the Four Courts and Dublin Castle during the tribunal. “It is extraordinary how much time gardai spend isolated in garda stations and in patrol cars. It is extraordinarily rare that gardai are seen in uniform on our streets.”
That’s a direct quote from the judge. And, of course, he’s right. Think, when was the last time you saw a garda or two walking — repeat, walking — your street/ road/area/parish? It’s called, or used to be, when I was a young fella, “on the beat”. Just strolling, meeting people, having little chats and observing. It is extraordinary how consoling and comforting, especially to older people, is the presence of gardai, and forces all over the world will say it is equally amazing how much information — they call it intelligence — they pick up on such innocent-appearing excursions.
When there are a few highvis vests around, topped by a cap, people tend to mind their manners. When the cops are absent, behaviour tends to deteriorate and tolerance and understanding disappears. The place goes to hell in a handcart.
There is a lot of merit in Shane Ross’s impending legislation to award points and fines on a sliding scale, although I don’t like the bit about you always having your driving licence with you. Most people will leave the licence in the car, against the day and the handiness; then the car is stolen and, with it, your licence. You cannot even hire a replacement car without a licence, so therein lies acres of angst for a lot of people. Anyway, the minister can bring in 49 new laws at 9am tomorrow and they’re damn all use if they’re not enforced.
And who is to enforce them? Back to the judge. Judge Charleton is echoing the thoughts of so many people when he asks: where are the gardai?
I’ve always been an admirer of An Garda Siochana and I’m sorry it is going through a bad patch at present. Maybe it is just badly managed. That nice new manager from up north, maybe he’ll be a better manager.
Of course we had the garda Christmas blitz, and that was to be welcomed as a warning signal to all the gang who never get the message. But I believe there’s more than a Christmas blitz required — it needs a sustained, unrelenting campaign.
That’s enough about that. Well, I am a Freeman of the City of Dublin. So when the nice people in the City Council asked me to come and help the Lord Mayor pull the string on a little reminder of The Beatles at the Adelphi Cinema in 1963, I could hardly refuse. And, they said, if you’re saying the cupla, would you tell them again how Paul McCartney asked you to become their manager. God! Not again! But they were a lovely crowd and far more than expected, and they were in high good mood and the whole thing went far better than we could have hoped.
The council hopes to put small memorial plaques on a selection of buildings around the city as a reminder to people of historic happenings which otherwise might be forgotten. The Beatles at the Adelphi in 1963 is a choice example: a little reminder that, once upon a time, there was a very nice cinema on this site (now part of Arnotts) and visiting performers of all kinds appeared there.
I saw Louis Armstrong and his All Stars there, long before The Beatles were heard of, and just three minutes down O’Connell Street, in the Carlton, I saw Duke Ellington and his band and, subsequently, Charles Aznavour. And I saw Kenny Ball and his chaps in the boxing stadium on the South Circular Road, as well as Don McLean.
The point of this litany is that those were the only venues we had to accommodate visiting stars. Two cinemas and a boxing ring. Grand places in their own right and doing their own thing, but not really suitable to take some of the world’s leading stars. They always seemed to be a makeshift affair — which they were.
There was no Bord Gais Energy Theatre, no Conference Centre, no 3Arena, no National Concert Hall. Vicar Street didn’t come on stream until the 1990s. And it was the vision and foresight of Harry Crosbie about that end of the city which delivered those buildings. We lost a great number of the best shows because we had nowhere to put them. Now, they are all available to us. And I think the City Council is perfectly right to gently remind us that it is so. Hate to do this to you, but...
At the time of writing, I’ve just seen Alastair Campbell on the news, and he reckons the only way out for Theresa May is to go back and have another referendum, presumably in the hope that this time round the British people will come to their senses and vote to remain.
Two days before that, the leader in The Irish Times was promoting the same notion.
Well, way back last February 18, in this newspaper, in this space, I gave the same advice. Just so that I could say: told you so, yah boo.
If only people would listen to me, life would be better all round. Not a lot, but better. In all of the interviews which Kathleen has done on radio and television in connection with her book Happy Christmas, Pigin!, she’s been asked how is Gay?
And she gives the answer which I guess every cancer sufferer in the country gives: there are good days and bad days, and we continue with the treatment and hope for the best. For so many, the bad days are very bad indeed and the good days are few and far between.
But for this cancer guy, the good wishes continue to roll in from all parts of the country, from people I know not and from places I’ve never heard of (and I thought, after 60 years of broadcasting to the people of Ireland and getting their responses, I’d heard of everywhere, but I was wrong).
The good wishes consist of Mass cards and general greetings, notes and letters, and sometimes just a sentence. But each one a prayer for my well-being and a wish things will be good for me, each one a little bouquet of kind thoughts and remembrance of good times on radio and television through the years.
And they tell me that they are smiling in the memory.
I am truly grateful for each and every one, and just because I simply cannot reply to each and every one — an utterly impossible task — that does not imply I take it for granted. I do not.
A letter which arrived just this morning says that I’m known in their house as “burnt toast” because so often they were so busy listening to me on the radio they forgot about the bread they’d just put on the grill until the place filled with smoke and the neighbours were about to ring the fire brigade.
I’ve been called many things in my time but “burnt toast” is a first. (I’ve just remembered a good friend told us he’s known in the family as “Sky News”, because he repeats himself so much.)