Hats off to pat

At last we know. Sir Winston Churchill is the Greatest Briton of all time according to BBC viewers. The same viewers that made people like Noel Edmonds and Dale Winton much-loved household names. The same viewers that keep programmes like Robot Wars and EastEnders near the top of the ratings. The same viewers who, surprisingly and to their eternal credit, ensured through their suffrage that the name Robbie Williams was conspicuous by its absence from the Top 10. If only their taste in music was as shrewd as their taste in Britons.

It would be interesting to see who would feature on the list of Greatest Irish People, as voted by the viewers of RTE. You’d imagine Dave Fanning would have to be in the shake-up. As well as being great and Irish, he is the person in the world who is seen most often by viewers of RTE. There was a time when Cynthia Ni Murchu could have given him a run for his money but, along with her even sexier sister Cliona, she seems to have disappeared off the radar, which is a shame. In idle moments, I wonder what they’re both “at” these days.

Having said all that, my vote would go to Pat Ingoldsby.

Controversial, I know. It disturbs me that there may be young people (i.e. people younger than me) reading this article to whom the name Pat Ingoldsby might well mean nothing. It disturbs me even more that I have no idea whether or not Pat Ingoldsby is still alive (He most certainly is Barry, but carry on… Ed.). What reassures me is the knowledge that if he is still alive and happens to be reading this, he’s so great and Irish he’ll probably find it amusing that someone is wondering aloud in public whether or not he has shuffled off this mortal coil. He might even write a poem about it and that would make my millennium. Although now that I think of it, he might well be dead.

Whatever his status, Pat gets my vote. In a country wracked by Troubles, Catholicism, alcohol and all the guilt they bring with them, Pat Ingoldsby was a middle-aged man who regularly appeared on RTE in the afternoon wearing a big saucepan on his head. It was the same kind of saucepan your mother boiled spuds in, except it had an added telephone for zaniness, and yet somehow Pat always retained his dignity in a manner which invariably proved beyond his English equivalent Timmy Mallett, over on Wack-A-Day on Children’s BBC.

If the phone on Pat’s Hat rang, the group of kids assembled around his feet would stare spellbound as he paused in the middle of whatever story he was telling (and let me say here, for the record, that his anecdotes knocked the twee, saccharine-sweet doggerel of Poparama’s Auntie Poppy into a cocked hat) and proceeded to talk utter gibberish about Numpty Monsters and Killer Frangs. Oh how we laughed.

Everyone loved Pat, who was unique among children’s entertainers in that he genuinely seemed to enjoy the company of children to that of people his own age.

Perhaps what is/was (I really should make more effort to find out) best about Pat was that the trappings of fame never turned his be-sauce-panned head. In an age when even the most F-list of celebrities worth their salt hides behind a phalanx of minders, managers, agents and publicists I often think of Pat, who always kept it real.

Years after I’d written to Jimmy Saville to enquire if he could fix it for me to sit spellbound on Pat’s Chat (if I’d only known then what I know now), I’d see him standing there, freezing cold, selling books of his poetry on College Green. Old enough to drink and aware by now that he was prone to bouts of depression, I’d resist the urge to ask him why he’d eschewed his trademark culinary headgear in favour of a more practical navy blue woollen number. Then I’d chat to him for a while about this and that, buy yet another copy of The Peculiar Sensation Of Being Irish and eventually steer the conversation around to That Hat. Even then he wouldn’t tell you to fuck off, even though you knew deep down he probably wanted to.

Perhaps the most ringing endorsement of Pat Ingoldsby, the Greatest Irish Person Of All Time, has a lot to do with the fact that even though I bought countless signed books of his poetry over the years, I don’t know where any of them are now. Unless you’re a complete tightwad, the truly great book or album is the one you end up buying repeatedly because you keep giving your own copy away to the unconverted among your friends.

I’ve lost count of the number of Primal Scream and Super Furry Animal albums I’ve been through, and I certainly haven’t got a book of poetry I can call my own. Which wouldn’t be a problem, except I’d really love to have a signed book of verse by the man who could easily have given Yeats or Kavanagh a run for their money, but chose instead to appear on afternoon television wearing a saucepan on his head. With added telephone.