Acclaimed Sunday Independent humorist, and former Hot Press scribe, Declan Lynch has just published Days Of Heaven – a wonderfully witty account of the Irish soccer team’s haphazard progress through Italia ‘90, and of the unrestrained national hedonism of the Charlton years. Although ostensibly a book about soccer, it’s also a sporting, social and autobiographical memoir of the Irish nation 20 years ago. We asked Lynch about the major differences between the Irelands of 1990 and 2010. Have things changed or have they stayed the same?

SPORT
“Italia ’90 was probably the last time you could enjoy sport without the overwhelming presence of corporate cunts. That would be a major change. I’d cite the example of The Three Tenors, who were first heard at the Baths of Caracalla on the eve of the last day of Italia ‘90. They did this awful version of ‘Tonight’ from West Side Story. It was truly awful, but the corporate cunts love that kind of shit. And I think from then on, they really got into soccer. By the time of the 1998 World Cup, their victory was complete. The opening game in France was a match between Brazil and Scotland, and the atmosphere there was terrible. It was dull and dead. And it was because there were no real people there – it was all corporate cunts! They basically didn’t know anything about the game so they couldn’t respond to what was happening on the pitch.”

SEX
“In 1990 sex was a great political issue in a way that doesn’t really exist anymore. A great deal of your time as a journalist was spent writing about, and arguing for, things like the legalisation of homosexuality. Which just seems completely preposterous now! Younger people today would be baffled at the notion that someone like Fr. Michael Cleary was something of a power in the land, and could be heard on his nightly radio programme arguing against the availability of condoms.”

DRUGS
“Of course the king of drugs for the Irish is alcohol – it was then and will always remain in the number one position. I remember a charming tableau I spotted in the People’s Park in Dun Laoghaire in the middle of Italia ‘90, whereby three generations of a family – a grandmother, a young couple and two small kids - were having a picnic. The grandmother was holding what can only be described as a very large bottle of whiskey.
“On a personal level, something I realised while writing the book is that I only gave up the drink a month after Jack Charlton resigned as manager of the Republic. Maybe on a deeper subconscious level I realised that it was all over. It was time to acquire some level of maturity. I’ve an increasing sense that I got out at the right time.”

POLITICS
“I think it was always very revealing that the last question – i.e. the “funny question” - on a show like Questions & Answers was usually about sport. Some fucking eejit in the audience would tremblingly hold a piece of paper and, trying to understand his own handwriting, would ask a question like, ‘Does the panel think that Jack Charlton should be the next president of Ireland?’ And there’d be great laughing. Hilarious stuff! At least three members of the panel would say, ‘Well, I don’t know anything about soccer’. And the other two would say something unbelievably unfunny.
“It was just so revealing that they didn’t know that what they do is actually a morass of trivia, and that sport, largely speaking, is the most important thing in the lives of many people. Genuinely important. For the previous 55 minutes they’d have been discussing Fine Gael’s position on neutrality or some such fucking nonsense. And they get the last question, the genuinely interesting question, and they’ve nothing to say, they just laugh at it.”

MONEY
“Italia ‘90 kicked off this thing of people borrowing money – but it was from the Credit Union rather than Mastercard or Visa. Everyone was just laughing at the idea of borrowing money for an ‘extension.’ People like Haughey had always understood the pleasure of living off someone else’s dime, but, before that, any borrowing was something that the Irish felt deeply guilty about – in retrospect, maybe rightly so. But there was almost a philosophical shift happened. People suddenly realised that it made them feel good to borrow money, and they didn’t stop feeling good afterwards. They had got something out of it – even if they had technically wasted it.
“One thing I recall when I was starting out in journalism, and writing a television column, was that my TV was rented. I rented the TV and I rented the flat that the TV was in. Everything was rented. The idea of actually buying things was such a major deal There was such a sense of impermanence in the 1980s. Everybody was just trying to get through the week. And so even the most basic things were rented. At a very deep level, buying a TV genuinely seemed like putting down roots.”

MUSIC
“When we started out in Hot Press, the stars in our world were people like Rory Gallagher, Thin Lizzy and Van Morrisson – people who had become huge international stars due to the fact that they were great. They were hugely talented, they had charisma, and they were able to entertain the world. And they had somehow emerged from this island. We thought this would go on forever. We had this sense of history as a kind of a linear narrative. Little knowing what was waiting for us up the line, we would allow ourselves the occasional luxury of criticising something like a Rory Gallagher album – or one track on it anyway. What we didn’t see coming was a scenario where we’ve wound up sending out people who are actually no good at all. People who became famous, became successful, became celebrities – without being any good. It’s astonishing, but we never saw that coming. We thought things would get better... and we got Boyzone!”

Declan Lynch’s Days Of Heaven is published by Gill & Macmillan