Let’s face it, Brendan O’ Carroll is a dirty little bollix. Backstage at the recent premiere of Riverdance he was seen swanning around with a blonde babe who obviously, eh, out-proportioned him in every sense. “She’s too tall for you,” shouted some woman, which led a beaming Brendan to retort “not on her back, she’s not!”

And if that’s not evidence enough, during his own, current show at the Tivoli, The Jolly Roger, he jokes about how his guitarist “lost his glasses this evening. (pause). He was kissing his girlfriend goodbye. (pause) And she crossed her legs.” Then, to make matters worse he pauses again, before adding the, er, punch line: “The bastard. That’s no way to talk about his own mother!”

Surely one must ask, in all seriousness: how, in the name of Jesus, Mary and holy saint Joseph can we foist such filth on this nation? Of course I’m only joking. And so is Brendan O’ Carroll. This, after all is the man who used to preface his early shows by warning that his act was rude, filthy and disgusting. “And if you don’t like it you can fuck off,” he’d conclude.

Obviously, no such scruples bother the bulk of the sell-out audiences attending his current show. Walking out into the lobby of the Tivoli on opening night, a true blue Dub was heard saying “Jaysus, me jaws are sore from laughing! I just loved that song Wank Your Blues Away and can’t wait to get home to Peter to tell him to learn the fuckin’ thing and stop wankin’ into me!”

His popularity notwithstanding, there are those who, though they may not find Brendan O’ Carroll’s act either rude, filthy or disgusting will dismiss it as cheap, patronising, sexist, racist and irredeemably boring after a matter of minutes. It can be all these things, whether he is losing the run of himself while describing in seemingly endless detail the bout of diarrhoea he suffered in the Canaries during his holidays, playing down to his audience, talking of “geebags” or slagging “chinks.”

That said, the man is obviously Ireland’s most successful comedian, a “mad cunt” (to quote a fan) running riot in an arena that, until he arrived, was dominated by the mainstream humorists such as Hal Roach, Dermot Morgan and Sean Hughes.

In just two years, following a legendary Late, Late Show appearance in February 1993, he has already extensively toured Ireland and Britain, produced two gold albums, two videos and a best-selling novel, The Mammy, which has recently been sold to Disney and will be filmed in the near future. He also has written his own filmscript, Sparrow’s Trap, plus a ten-part TV series, Lebanese Outpost, and will be appearing in his own play, The Course, during this year’s Dublin Theatre Festival.

You may love him or hate him but, obviously in 1995, Brendan O’Carroll will be hard to avoid. More to the point, though he’s introduced as “here, hot and horny” during the show, is the man walking round with an endless hard-on fired by the fever of his own success? Has fame gone to his head? And finally, even more importantly, who was that blonde, Brendan, and does Doreen, the wife, know about such dalliances? And don’t try tell me ‘that was no blonde, that was my mother!’

Joe Jackson: You heard me, Brendan. Who was the blonde?

Brendan O’ Carroll: The blonde is engaged to a friend of mine and that night at Riverdance was my treat to her, him and a lot of people who were very good to me down through the years. But I got Deirdre and her boyfriend a suite in the Burlington that night and the fella arranged a treat for her the next morning – they flew to Paris for the weekend. Then when they came back they found that she and her family had just won 1.5 million in the lottery. So if I had been with her that night it woulda been the richest ride I ever had!

So, as someone who is “here, hot and horny” do you ‘ride’ around, behind Doreen’s back?

No. The kind of girl I attract is middle-aged and thinks I’m cute, huggable rather than fuckable, I’m afraid! C’mon, Joe. I have a mirror and I look in the mirror and I think ‘any girl who’d want to ride me, can’t be well!’ The woman I want to ride is unfortunately the woman who doesn’t want to ride me, and even more unfortunately, I married her! But the most I get is girls coming up to me and saying ‘Howareya Brendan, can I give you a wank?’ A girl did that in front of Doreen one night and Doreen looked at me and said ‘well, what d’ya think?’ What I usually say is ‘I appreciate the offer, but no thanks.’ I’m not going to say ‘fuck off, ya scumbag’. And seriously any woman who’d come up and ask me if I want a wank makes me think she must have been with an alsatian the night before!

But, are you ever tempted, when Doreen’s not there? Does she have to worry about such things?

No, she doesn’t. But, I suppose it’s not fuckin’ right of me to say Doreen doesn’t have to worry. Because Doreen will do whatever she has to do. And I’m not going to say ‘no, I would never . . .’ because I don’t know what the fuck is going to happen tomorrow. But, in general, I’m not a fella who goes lookin’ for me hole.

You leave it to the lads in the band to go “muff-diving” after gigs.

Yeah, they love it! We’ve got one single guy in the band and he gets all this kind of shit thrown at him.

Is he the guy who lost his glasses when his girlfriend crossed her legs and who gives his mother head, according to your joke the other night? That’s a bit over the top isn’t it?

Whatever comes into your head, say it! That’s what happened that night.

But a lot of people would be offended by that, and not just tight-assed, middle class puritans, surely?

The further you get away from the working class the less you find people who are offended by that. People who are in situations where they have been placed, socially, at a disadvantage, take a high moral ground because it’s all they have. And I understand that. But if somebody seriously looks at me and says ‘that’s a dirty little bastard’ and someone else says ‘he’s a terribly funny guy’, I think they’re both right. And my show is not for everybody, so those who will be offended should fuck off!

Including the “chinks”? Don’t you think Chinese people could be offended by some of your jokes?

But they’re not! They’re some of my biggest fans, thanks be to fuck! Some guys hit you with a mallet; these guys use a meat cleaver!

As in that incident in the Universal restaurant in Dublin a few years ago.

Fuckin’ right! And it’s called ‘The Friendly House’ now! Where somebody hopped over the counter with a meat cleaver and said ‘your soup’ll be ready in a minute’ and your fingers will follow! Me bollix! That was a row between the Cork triad and the Dublin triad! Chop Suey, how are ya? But, no, they don’t mind those jokes because I also take the piss out of the thick Irish guy going in to order a take away too!

But don’t you walk a dangerous line when you do jokes about sons having any form of sex with their mothers? This could hardly be funny to children who have been sexually abused by their parents.

But that was just a throwaway line. I wouldn’t touch the subject of incest, though down the country I sometimes say ‘Dave hasn’t had a ride for nine months – from someone who’s not related to him.’ Though overall I don’t find subjects like sexual abuse, paedophiles, Northern Ireland or racism, in general, funny. But I have made some faw paws and when I do I regret it.

What’s a faw paw, Brendan? Sounds a long way from where we were raised.

I don’t know what it means but me ma’ used to say it all the time and I know you get a kick in the ear when you try to repeat it. I think it’s German for fuck up, as in ‘faux paus’! But one of me worst faux pauses was at a gig about three years ago, when I made some comment about ‘like three Germans up in the park’ and then realised that fucker had been killed in the park! Another time, which was slagged to fuck in Hot Press was when I introduced one of the band members, who used to be in the Miami Showband, as ‘one of the ones that wasn’t shot’. I was saying it to him more than anyone else because we’d always joked about how, even though he wasn’t even born when the original Miami guys were shot up North, people used to come looking for bullet holes in the van! But I regretted that. Yet another thing that guy, Damien Corless, said in Hot Press that gutted me, was the suggestion that I was a real cunt because I was sexist. I gave the article to Doreen to read and she said ‘You’re not sexist, Brendan, this guy doesn’t know what it means.’ But I wrote to Corless, thanking him for pointing out where I fucked up and explaining I was only starting out and you cunts in Hot Press never even acknowledged the letter! I’m not saying this in an up-your-hole sense, but that article was important to me and I did learn something from it. (The article in question was actually written by Liam Fay. Perhaps this confusion explains why the letter went astray and was never published – Ed.)

But aren’t you being sexist when you call a woman a “geebag” or describe another as ‘Godzilla with a fanny’? Doesn’t all this reduce woman to little more than a “gee”?

No, just the girl I’m talking about when I tell that story about a particular woman coming at me and what she looked like. That’s what she was, but I’m not saying all women are geebags.

Ironically, your audience the other night was made up mostly of women and they certainly seemed to see the joke in what you were saying and not be offended.

70% of my audience are women and they do get the joke. Women have a much better sense of humour than men. And it’s harder to offend a woman than it is to offend a man, in terms of jokes about sex. The bottom line is this. Take an average woman married with four kids. If she’s 35 then for at least 20 years she’s menstruated monthly, bled through her crack once every four weeks. And that’s something she can only do alone, and deal with alone. Not just the pre menstrual tension, the mental strain, the putting appliances on but the whole fucking shot. She’s also got four kids, which means that on at lest four occasions strange men have put their fingers up her crack, felt her chest and she had to stand naked, with a file under her arm, to get weighed and measured and all of that is degrading. Then when she has the baby this man will put Vaseline on his finger and stick it up her crack again, then up her back passage to check for piles and all of that is part and parcel of being a woman. Now, how the fuck can I offend that woman with a joke?

Whereas her husband, if he’s extremely unlucky will have been in hospital twice, end of story. Unless he wanted them to, no-one will have seen his prick. He will never have to look at it himself other than when he’s pissing or when he’s shoving it up some young one’s quare thing, or whatever. And, he doesn’t even have to look at it then. That’s the fucking fundamental difference between women and men. And, the ironic thing is that it’s the fucking men who get offended when I joke about periods. Even with me mates, I say ‘When’s your wife’s period due?’ and they say ‘Will ya fuck off Brendan, don’t be disgusting. I don’t fucking know when her period is.’ But I guarantee you that if he had a dental appointment, she’d know when it was. So it’s mostly men who can’t deal with those “disgusting” jokes, not women.

Nevertheless, in your show you slag off women for being useless when it comes to wanking men. Why not slag men for not even knowing where to begin masturbating women, for example?

It’s not my place. I’m not a woman. I’ll leave that to Joan Rivers. And, to tell you the truth, I wouldn’t know how to say something like that. There’s a way of saying women are terrible wankers, when it comes to pulling a guy off, but I can’t figure out a way of saying ‘Aren’t fellas terrible when they’re licking your clitoris’ without it sounding dumb. And that’s because I don’t have enough experience of it.

Of what? ‘Cunnilingus’, as they call it in Killiney?

Yeah! And ‘eating horse’ as they call it in Cork. ‘Capall-eatin’ – eating a horse! But, yeah, I don’t have as much experience of that as of trying to get some woman to wank me – which is probably true of most men, if they could admit it. But then many guys, when they see photos of the vagina just before it expands when a baby is born, probably say ‘Jaysus, I never ate that, did I?’ If it was put on a plate you wouldn’t eat it. But I love it. I love eating pussy. And it seems to be the safest way, because sexual diseases are changing every day.

Does that worry you deeply? Particularly because you do have teenage children, including Fiona, who is fourteen?

Yeah it does, big time. But Doreen and me have done our best to stress the love vibe and how important that is in relation to sex. But I’m not a fucking moron and I know Fiona will not go through her life without casual sex. And that’s what I want her to do, because I don’t want her to allow me to be her judge and jury.

In one of your shows you joke about young guys today packing condoms in every pocket before they go out. Any problem with the idea that Fiona may do the same?

I’d applaud her for that, fucking sure. Or if she’d go to her mom and say ‘I think I should go on the pill’. But at the same time I have to admit I’d be gutted because she is my little girl. She’s the girl I held in my arms. But having said that I accept there is a time to be a dad and a time to be a mate. And hopefully I’ll be as good a mate as I was a dad. I’m goin’ to try, but it’s gonna be fucking hard, Joe, I can tell you that. Because I’m nuts about Fiona.

But you can’t accept the thought of your little girl making love with young guys, or whatever?

No, I can. And you’d want to see her. Then you’d understand why I can accept why most men would want to make love to her. But one thing I know is that she’ll be warm and loving when that is taking palace. She’s not going to be a ‘do-it-for-the-sake-of-letting-the-guy-have it’ type. She’d have to feel something for the guy. But my son is different. He’d probably fuck anything that moves!

I suspect that, because of the nature of your stage act, your son and daughter obviously feel they can talk to you about these things, or anything?

Yeah, we’re great friends. And don’t forget they have to put up with a lot because I am their dad.

Like what?

Prejudice in school, from adults who’d say ‘Oh, he’s your father, I see.’ Most working class people are fine, say ‘So, Brendan O’ Carroll is your old man, good on ya’ but others can be cruel bastards. For example, Eric, our baby, was a special kid because he was born when Doreen was getting chemotherapy and had breast cancer. At least, he was media-ised as a “special kid” when he was born a couple of years ago. But after he was born one kid came up to Fiona in school and said her dad had told her ‘Of course he’s special, sure the other two are adopted.’ When Fiona said that I said ‘but you know you’re not adopted, don’t you?’ And she said ‘Of course’. But we got in the car and drove into Lombard Street and I filled out a form to get her birth certificate. She said ‘Daddy, this isn’t necessary’ but I said ‘It is for me. do this for me.’ So she got it and said ‘I knew, daddy’. But all it takes is a seed from a comment like that to set someone on the wrong track. So it’s obviously not all fun an’ games being Brendan O’ Carroll’s children.

Didn’t some guy also make disparaging remarks about single mothers the other night, when you were on the radio?

Absolutely, the cunt. I was doing a talk show after the budget and they were talking about single mothers getting money etcetera and this fucker rang in and said ‘You’re talking about single mothers getting money, well I have one living down the road from me and she was only home from having the baby and the social welfare gave her a cheque to get a cot. Six months later they gave her a cheque to get a buggy. Now, whatever about the money they’re getting, nobody’s mentioning these perks they get’. I said ‘cmere sham, d’you regard a cot and a buggy as a ‘perk’? People like him don’t only want unmarried mothers to get less, they want them punished. And the other point is that whether the figure now is one out of every three children being born out of marriage, three out of every three are Irish and we must take responsibility for that. And if we don’t accept that then fuck articles two and three because then this country belongs to the rich – not to you and me and the kids.

Where do you stand on the issue of abortion? What if Fiona says ‘I have to get an abortion, da’. Could you go along with that?

I’d hope she’d say ‘I’ve decided I have to have an abortion’ and though I’m against abortion I’d respect her decision. But being anti-abortion is just a decision Doreen and I made in our own kitchen. We’ve no right to make that decision for anyone else. But we took the decision against abortion because we never had to face it. No, let me say something to you. We did think of aborting Eric.We went to the chemotherapist, who I know to be anti-abortion. And from the beginning I knew that one thing I wanted was Doreen. We didn’t care if they’d to take a breast, an eye, nose, leg, whatever the fuck they liked, as long as they got the cancer. But I knew that I was dealing with a man whose beliefs might make him compromise my wife’s treatment.

So I said to him ‘I want to know what the treatment is for Doreen, pregnant and non-pregnant and if you say the treatment will be different in both cases then we’ll look after the pregnancy ourselves, because I’m not having Doreen short-changed.’ He could have said they’d leave out a certain drug in the chemotherapy treatment if she’s pregnant and I would have said ‘No way, if she needs the drug, give it to her.’ But he said ‘We’ve two things here, a woman with cancer and a baby and I’m telling you we can treat one without touching the other.’ I said ‘Let’s do it’ so we did. And fair play to him that’s what happened and the question of abortion didn’t arise.

But didn’t Doreen then almost have a spontaneous abortion?

Yeah. On Christmas Eve she lost all her waters, fore and hind waters. And that night she started to spontaneously abort. Yet she begged me not to let the doctors do an internal examination, saying ‘Because once they introduce them two fingers it’s an infection, it’s over.’ And I said ‘okay’. And I told the doctors to hold off and they did. And at six o’clock the next morning it had ceased and Doreen was sitting having a fag in bed. And she held her hand like this (clutching between legs) for four months to hang onto this fucking baby. I, as a man, don’t have that kind of courage, I don’t have the courage to go and try get me hole. But for her to hang onto that baby highlights what I said to you earlier. Women have the real strength, we’re only wimps when it comes to things like this. And I respect women so much, in this respect, that I can only say ‘fuck you’ now when anyone tries to tell me I’m sexist.

The chances of Doreen having that baby, after losing her waters were, apparently, remarkably slim.

The gynaecologist told me she held on after saying to Doreen ‘I’m a long time a gynaecologist and nobody has ever successfully delivered a baby without fore and hind waters’ and Doreen said ‘Does that mean it can’t be done?’. And she said ‘The chances are .0001%’ and Doreen said ‘That’s about the same as the lottery and every week someone wins the lottery’. And the gynaecologist said: ‘I stuck with her because she told me she was going to win this lottery and she did.’ That’s the kind of woman Doreen is and I’m not fucking kidding you, or exaggerating, when I say I’m blessed that she’s my wife. And I know it. And I know her spirit has been passed on to Fiona, in particular. That’s why I know that when she gets involved with someone sexually it probably won’t be casual, unless she’s stroked after a few jars. But I do try and explain to her that’s why I don’t let her go to certain discos yet, on her own.

Are you also worried about drugs like ‘E’, even though it’s claimed that a new pattern in working class life now is that Ecstasy is not just being used in discos at the weekend but in a ‘let’s get a video, a takeaway and an ‘E’ and stay in’ capacity.

Yeah. By kids and, in some cases, their parents. And you’re fucking right that worries me. It also worries me that they may be able to get Ecstasy in school.

Though you joke about one of the guys in your band smoking dope after a show you also say you’re totally anti-drugs. So which is it?

We’re totally anti-drugs. Gerry probably did a bit of smoking, playing with rock bands and all that but he doesn’t with us. But we’d be anti-drugs which is the statement we make before going into ‘wank your blues away’. There has to be levity when you speak of this problem and I even believe you can help get people off drugs by making them laugh, by letting them see the lighter side of life.

I thought you were going to say ‘by making them wank’?

Maybe you could, by putting the coke on the top of your knob and see if you can get it up your nose from there!

Ever try that?

I will, tonight!

Or someone will try it for you! Wasn’t that a scene in some movie? Where a woman put a line of coke from some guy’s belly button down to – presumably – the tip of his prick, though you just saw her tongue disappear downwards off camera.

(Starts imitating wanking) Jaysus, Joe, tell me that again, slower! (laughs) But, seriously, we all are Dublin-based and because we are we’ve all been touched by the drugs problem. somewhere in our families. My family has been touched by it, Gerry’s family has been badly touched by it. As in people being totally fucked up by drugs and going through a one way door even though, now, they may be off the drugs. What they’ve done has made them marked people for all their lives. They’re criminals now. They can never be clean again. It’s like me and the financial problems I had. I paid all me debts but I can never get a loan again. I’m still a little cunt, as far as the financial institutions are concerned. But, fuck them. I don’t need their money now, they can stick it up their arses. But with people who were involved in drugs it’s also a one-way door. But let’s not kid ourselves into thinking it is only working class people who are shooting up heroin again,these days. Here, upstairs in the Westbury Hotel as we speak, there’s probably somebody doing drugs. It’s not just a working-class thing and too many people in the media try to pretend it is. The real junkies are in Foxrock and Killiney, where they can do drugs in comfort, not just in Finglas.

But drugs was never a temptation for you?

No, I’d no bottle, never had the nerve. But then I learned me lesson the hard way in that I got really drunk one night eighteen years ago and lost three hours of my life that I couldn’t recall the next day and that lesson left itself indelibly marked in my brain. I was just married and Doreen said I came home and when she said ‘What the fuck happened to you?’ I said ‘You shut your fucking mouth. One more word and you’re out of this house’. Now, Jaysus, Joe, that isn’t me. But from that moment I decided I will never lose time out of my life again, not for drink or drugs. It’s like if I hadn’t been caught robbin’ and sent away to remand school when I was nine then at 24 I’d have been a bank robber. I was in an environment that evolved that way. First of all, when you’re nine the fella who’s the leader of the gang is the fella with the biggest mickey. Then when you’re 12 it’s the fella with the hardest punch. When you’re 15 it’s the guy who robs most and when you’re 24 it’s the guy who can plan the bank robbery. You’re not picked by election, you’re picked by assertion. And I’m a competitive bastard, I would have been in there robbin’ banks.

Some would suggest that the logical conclusion of what you’ve just said is that the fella with the biggest mickey also can become Taoiseach of this country.

That’s absolutely true. The biggest prick in the country always ends up as Taoiseach. So Dick Spring has it made, with a name like that!

Do you get angry at the fact that some of the guys you grew up could now be dealing heroin and killing kids because of that?

They wouldn’t be my friends if they were involved in that.

Would you disown them if you knew old friends now were dealers?

I hope I’d do more than that.

So you empathise with the Parents Against Drugs groups?

Absolutely. And I can understand how some groups were infiltrated by paramilitaries, because it gave them a little bit of courage they mightn’t have had by themselves.

But to do what? To give dealers a hiding or threaten their lives if they don’t get to fuck out of an area?

Yes. I don’t agree with giving those guys a hiding. I’d rather go to the guards. But then I’d also have to say, immediately, that although I don’t advocate violence, if somebody touched Fiona or fucked her over with heroin, or whatever, I’d probably fucking kill him. What’s the alternative? I go to the Guards and they arrest him and he goes to prison? I would rather do the time. I would rather eliminate him and serve the sentence. For purely selfish reasons, it would make me feel better. I wouldn’t be doing it to rid the world of another drug-pusher, I’d be doing it to make me feel fucking better.

You mentioned earlier your financial problems, as in being left with debts of nearly £100,000 when a business venture failed. How did that effect your attitude to money.

It makes you determined never to go back there again. Again, my major thought at the time, if I’d caught that partner of mine who disappeared, was that I’d do him in, if I could. We had a pub and I was away on holidays, came back and he was gone. The fucker. He’s dead now. Committed suicide. He had AIDS, so at the end of the day he’s welcome to the money. But I only finished paying off the banks two weeks ago. They fucking crucified me, the cunts. Y’know they settled on three grand three years ago and I borrowed from everywhere to get the three grand yet when I went in to pay it the guy said ‘We changed our minds, I think you’re going to be the new Billy Connolly.’ The original debt to that bank was nine grand, but I paid them over £17,000 because they kept adding interest on every time I couldn’t pay them. But I owed £96,000 in total to AIB, Lombard and Ulster, Tennents, Guinness, C & C, Coca Cola – the lot. But, in the end, I beat the bastards and I really hope that in every sense there’s some cunt in Finglas looking at me and saying ‘If that little bollix can do it, I can do it’. Because he fucking can. There is so much creativity and energy in Finglas that it’s just waiting to gush out.

In ways the whole Brendan O’ Carroll organisation is Finglas in microcosm, isn’t it?

Fucking right it is. The best thing about being successful is that you can employ your mates! Gerry, for example, is me mate since we were kids and he’s come through for me in so many ways. I went into such a fucking depression when the pub thing fell apart and finally Doreen said ‘Brendan, get off your arse and do something or we’re fucked.’ I then went out and got a job delivering papers to newsagents but finally, knowing I could do what I’m doing now, I went to a friend and asked him to give me a gig in his pub. He gave me £75 and I got Gerry to work for me for £25 but when it started to really take off I knew I needed about £10,000 to start the whole operation. So I asked Gerry for the money, he gave it to me and we’ve been 50/50 down the line ever since.

So, despite what you say in the show, you didn’t have to give him a blow job to get started?

No. But I tell you, I would! I maintain that in all relationships everyone will let a relationship go as far as they possibly can. If you love someone then you love someone. And the only reason Gerry doesn’t let me give it to him up the pipe and I won’t let him give it to me up the pipe is because I’m not prepared to cross that line, and neither is he. But I couldn’t love that man any more than I do.

And you don’t mind saying that, despite the fact that some people will read what you’ve just said in a homosexual sense?

I couldn’t give a fiddler’s fuck!

Weren’t there times in your marriage where you also had to lift Doreen from deep depression, such as after your first child died?

Absolutely. And after her mastectomy. The loss of her breast is a big thing to a woman. I rode her in the lift two nights after the operation because I knew her sexuality would be important to her and I had to show her nothing had changed. And I loved it. It was fucking great. And when our first son died Doreen did go into a very deep depression and we nearly had a falling out after six months of her depression. I had to say ‘If I come home tomorrow and the house is not cleaned and I have to make my own dinner and do all that again, I’m going.’ And I had to explain that I was feeling that way because I’d lost a son too and I, finally, also wanted the right to mourn, to focus on my grief. The very next day she snapped out of it, for both of us.

There’s always been that double edge to your life, such as the night you made your breakthrough on the Late, Late Show when Doreen was in hospital having her mastectomy.

But that’s what makes the good times all the more glorious when they do finally arrive. And that’s why I really have this tendency to pass on positive messages in everything I do and hope that, above all, the show I do is uplifting to people. I’m not saying I’m on a crusade. I’m not. My main aim in life right now is to provide for Doreen and my kids, to make the dosh. But when you find you really have helped someone as a result of what you do it really is an added bonus. I met a woman in Cork who told me how she was so depressed about her child and the way her mother and father were treating her because she’d had that child out of marriage that one Friday night she pinned a note to the child’s cot and was going to kill herself with an overdose of aspirin. But then she said she heard me on that Late, Late Show talking about the loss of our child, going bankrupt, Doreen’s mastectomy and all that and she suddenly snapped out of her depression, thinking, ‘What the hell am I so down about? If they can rise above all that, so can I’. When I hear stories like that then all I can say to people who just see me as a ‘dirty little bollix’ is ‘Fuck you’.

You also, apparently, believe you may inevitably transfer those positive feelings into politics – particularly in terms of working at developing the full earning potential of the entertainment industry, whether you are part of Democratic Left or Labour?

Absolutely. For example, I believe I should need a licence to gig. Because then I’d have a legitimate claim to tax-breaks, to buying a guitar and being an artist. And, if you don’t have a licence you shouldn’t be allowed gig. It also means if I have a licence and go to gig for you, then I’m registered and must pay, and can claim back VAT. How many wedding groups are registered and pay tax and VAT? Likewise people who play local gigs and lounge girls who get paid lousy wages because they’re getting paid under the counter. This all needs to be legitimised, not to nail everybody, but to make the music business operate above board and do away with all the shady deals and characters that give it a bad name. Including those guys with turned up collars who fuck bands over, who take the money and run. All that has to go if the Irish music business is to realise its full potential. And the leisure industry is where the money is going to be made after the working week comes down to 25 hours. We’d be gobshites not to tap into that market as much as we can. Even if we have to get the Americans over here to show us how to put in the infrastructure. And even if that means we’ve to give them a piece of the action.

All this means that you yourself, of course, will have to declare all your earnings and can’t be doing the odd gig for the thousand pounds in the back pocket.

I do declare all my earnings. For the simple reason that I never want to have to look over my shoulder again and because I’m tax exempt! It’s a cunt, isn’t it? I’m tax-exempt because of me “cultural contribution to the country” and I think that should be extended to include as many artists as possible. We can’t be the banking or sporting centre of Europe but U2, Eurovision and all that have shown us we can be the musical centre of Europe, maybe even of the world.

And why, finally, would it be Democratic Left you’d join, you say, maybe by the year 2,000?

Because they’re the nearest thing to socialism left in this country. Labour has lost its socialist base along the way, though they may be able to swing back in the future and I hope they do. Then I’d consider joining Labour. But I probably will end up in politics either way, because my mother, who was a TD, always had those aspirations for me, making me join the Labour Youth Movement when I was just a kid, and so on. I’m not saying I’d do it for her, but I will do it. That’s where my future lies and is something I’ll probably go for around the year 2,000 when I hit 44. By then I’ll have done enough work for Doreen and the family and maybe it’ll be time to start doing something for other people.

And would you give De Rossa, Rabbitte or Eamon Gilmore a blow-job to get into politics?

I wouldn’t give anybody a blow job to get into politics. In fact, I’d give some of them a blow job if they’d get out of politics!