My battle with Ben Briscoe

“I remember you coming into my office with steam coming out of your ears!” So Niall Stokes recalled this week, as we chatted about my legendary battle with the then Lord Mayor of Dublin Ben Briscoe in 1987.

Actually, if there was steam coming out of my ears, it was because I’d run much of the way back to the hotpress offices in Trinity Street from the Mansion House after being evicted by the Lord Mayor only 16 minutes into our scheduled one hour interview. In truth, I was delighted with the outcome. I saw the whole episode as such a surreal slice of comedy that – when the Irish Times phoned hotpress moments after I’d arrived back in the office – the quote I gave was: “I’m just sorry I never got time to finish my chocolate cake!”
The Lord Mayor had indeed given me tea and cake when I arrived. But his hospitality didn’t last for long. Just over a quarter of an hour later, I was out, out, out!
By the time I’d returned to hotpress, Briscoe had phoned not only the Irish Times but also Niall, completely misrepresenting why I had been evicted. Then on the News At One on Radio 1, Ben did the same thing. The gay rights campaigner David Norris took the Lord Mayor to task in a battle that raged on the front pages of most of the newspapers before our interview even went to press!
Why had Ben upset Norris and gays? During a controversy about the funding of the Project Arts Centre, after the Gay Sweatshop Theatre Company had appeared there, Briscoe had publicly voiced his dislike of homosexuals. As a result, the way we went about hotpress interviews, it was inevitable that I’d ask him about his attitude to gays. But here was the rub: Ben claimed he threw me out “as any parent would” because I’d pressed him on his attitude to gays when, in fact, he’d called a halt to the interview after I asked about his relationship with Taoiseach Charles Haughey, whose leadership Briscoe had once likened to “a fascist dictatorship.”
When the magazine hit the stands, the tale took a further twist. Rather foolishly, the Lord Mayor now claimed that either I and/or hotpress had restructured the interview – and that what appeared in print was not what was on the original tape.
Legal threats were in the air – leading the NME to run a story with the headline ‘Rock Mag Sues Lord Mayor’ – but we took the tape to an independent expert, who told us that we could prove conclusively that the tape had not been tampered with, and that what appeared in print was precisely what had happened. Ben dropped any legal threats – and we got on with the business of journalism. And funny enough, most people still think that it was as a result of a question about gays that he threw me out…
And that folks is the story of my battle with Ben Briscoe. Meaning that now, once again, all that concerns me is this: what the hell did happen to that chocolate cake?