At home with Cormac Battle

With an illustrious career with Kerbdog and Wilt under his belt, and now working at RTE’s 2FM both in front and behind the studio’s glass wall, Cormac Battle has plenty to talk about. But like most first-time buyers in Dublin, he’s only interested in one thing: house prices.
“Through years and years of history, we’ve become very concerned with owning our own little plot of land, but it’s unsustainable,” he begins, as a preamble to a rant which discusses changing culture, legislation and the housing market. As our eyes wander, we notice a picture of Cormac with Ken Stringfellow of The Posies and Mike Mills of REM. Ooooh, tell us about that instead.
“I knew Ken from when Kerbdog toured with The Posies,” he explains, just as enthusiastically. “One night when they played Whelan’s, I went down to see them and Mike Mills was also there. Afterwards we were back-stage having a few scoops and did a rendition of [REM’s] ‘Don’t Got Back To Rockville’, which was fucking awesome. You could have killed me then, and I’d have been happy.”
The framed photo takes pride of place in the kitchen of his Drimnagh house, which he bought with his girlfriend, Emily. “I moved in exactly a year ago now,” he says, surprising himself. “When I moved in, let’s just say it had vintage character. We spent a lot of time and money turning it inside out, and we’re still living on beans on toast.”
Yet he admits to spending a disproportionate chunk of their budget on a mattress (“the type that leaves a print of your body on it”) – a luxury inspired by his experience in the rental market.
“We splashed out on it after spending 15 years renting from miserable fucking landlords. Miserable, miserly, horrible, sweaty little landlords who would put the most awful beds in their places.”
Now there’s a man with an axe to grind.
“The main triumph of buying my own house wasn’t having my own place to live, it was freeing myself from the shackles of these horrible people. This one landlord in Rathgar used to smoke a cigarette, stub it out, and put it in his top pocket to smoke later on, that’s how mean he was. Charming man. Single, by the way - surprise surprise.”
Now bona fide home-owners, Cormac and Emily are free to furnish as they please. Or almost as they please.
”The décor was generally dictated by budgetary constraints. We didn’t do it up in an upper-class-Tate-Modern-minimalist design or anything like that,” he jokes.
Moving into his living room, there’s a rather large and noticeable TV. A telly addict then?
“Yeah, I’m a bit of a telly man. I feel nervous if the television isn’t on around me, I think it must be some kind of a confidence issue. Maybe I don’t like the dialogue in my own head and sometimes the television can block that out.”
The TV itself is large enough to block anything, in all fairness.
“It’s fairly big but it’s completely bottom of the range,” he admits. “They were going for nothing at a wholesaler’s place so myself and Mick Murphy [former Wilt bandmate] bought one. They’re half off the back of a lorry, but they’re fine.”
What are his favourite shows?
“I spend an awful lot of time watching rolling news. I have the news on all the time, much to Emily’s disdain.”
Don’t the news channels just loop their stories?
“They do, and I spend my life waiting for news stories to progress slightly. ‘Here lies Cormac Battle, he watched the news a lot’.”
Elsewhere in the house lies his music collection – which he believes to be modest for his job, at around a thousand CDs.
“I don’t think you need more than 500. Anything more than that and you’ll have never actually listened to them,” he asserts.
Of the albums that he’s consciously kept, it worries us to see a Sandi Thom CD. But his excuse is ready: “I got it last week, and I haven’t managed to give it to ‘charidee’ just yet.”
Yet said excuse is supported by a very clear hatred of the lady in question. “How many people watched her bed-sit broadcast on the internet?” he asks, referring to the supposed way she was discovered. “I’d like to meet all these people. I don’t think they exist. What exists is a board-room in her record company full of ‘crazy, wacky’ marketing people who know how to get the attention of ‘the kids’.”
On a brighter note, there’s plenty of other current music that interests him. “The new Sonic Youth album is fantastic, though if they recorded themselves hitting buckets with hammers I would still say it’s brilliant. Then there’s a whole slew of Irish bands and I’m certain that at least one of them will hit paydirt.”
Who would he place bets on?
“All the guys from the Nokia Tour – Director, The Marshals, The Blizzards and The Flaws. Or Cowboy X as well, who are a bit under the radar.”
Despite being a huge Woody Allen enthusiast, his DVD collection remains relatively small.
“I don’t like watching films at home. There’s too many distractions,” he grins. “Like the news might have changed a little on the other side.”