Speaking his mind

Now an independent Senator, here he talks about Bertie, Shinners, Prods, Journos, Movies, Mahon, Eros - and why women should dress like leopards.

Is Eoghan Harris a renaissance man, or a Jack-of-all-trades and master of none?

It’s a question that the recently appointed Senator – who also happens to be a newspaper columnist, political spin doctor, university lecturer and talent judge on TG4’s Glas Vegas show – is keen to tackle.
“One of the things that seems to make my critics ratty is that I range over so many areas. It’s true that I have many strings to my bow. I try to stay busy, but some of my less productive colleagues in the Irish media clearly feel threatened, and some of them spend a lot of time denigrating my work when they come to write profiles of me,” says the 65-year-old Corkonian – who along the way has also penned scripts and worked as an award-winning television producer.
On the political front, Harris has also been a leading ideologue. He was a member of the Workers Party, for which he wrote a dozen pamphlets; a spin doctor variously for Tomás Mac Giolla, Proinsias De Rossa, Mary Robinson, John Bruton, and David Trimble – “and,” he adds, “if you include my polemics on his behalf, for Bertie Ahern.”
He makes no secret of the fact that it peeves him how critics like to write him out of the history books by ignoring his spin doctoring work during key historical moments in Irish politics. If you want to make his blood boil, put it to him that some critics dismiss his role in Mary Robinson’s campaign as unimportant.
Harris wants to set the record straight.
“I wrote her campaign blueprint,” he insists, “made her three videos, wrote her ‘rocks the cradle/system’ speech and advised her husband Nick for the famous Late Late Show. Nobody in her campaign came close to making that size of contribution. I lost my job in RTÉ for taking part in her campaign.
“As I had worked for nothing and had now lost my job, I thought at least she might give me the credit so I could set up as a spin doctor,” he adds. “But eaten bread is soon forgotten and by the time she was into ‘come dance with me in Ireland’ she seemed to suffer from amnesia about her three videos, her blueprints and her speeches. And she is not alone in wanting to pretend she did it all herself.”
Harris points out that an American or British politician would never deprive a speech-writer of the credit for a speech.
“But here it is routine to pretend I did not write Robinson’s ‘rock the cradle’ speech, or coin Trimble’s phrase about ‘a cold house for Catholics’, or coin John Bruton’s ‘the coping classes’. But I did, and it’s a bit thick of my colleagues to use phrases of mine like ‘the coping class’ without any attribution. Actually, I like Albert Reynolds, because like me he has not got the credit for work done. Like him, I am forced to claim the credit I am due – and this can make you look arrogant. But tough shit. If you don’t claim credit in this island of begrudgers, you don’t get it. In fact, you get written out of history,” he says.
And, as he demonstrates in this in-depth interview, Harris is in no mood for that ignominy.
“All through the ‘80s, Phoenix regularly remarked that I would never be heard from again. Some hope! Cuchullainn is my hero, and – far from retiring to write my autobiography – this profile will have to serve. I mean to die in some media battle – facing my foes,” he says.

JASON O’TOOLE: What was you reaction when the Director General of RTÉ, Cathal Goan, and the Director of News, Ed Mulhall, said that they are “not comfortable” with your appearance on The Late Late Show last year on the run up to the general election?
EOGHAN HARRIS: The reaction of Cathal Goan and Ed Mulhall was weird and very disingenuous. I think they were shopping me in a disgusting way. It was a pure piece of political sucking up to Labour and Fine Gael. They know that balance in broadcasting takes places over a number of weeks and months rather than days. The reality is there had been a run of three Late Late Shows. There had been a panel of four journalists who had given Fianna Fail the thumbs down. The previous week they had Royston Brady complaining about the Taoiseach. So, Fianna Fail were two shows down. After the election, every attempt was made to wipe the Late Late Show out of the list of reasons Ahern might have won. Credit went to everybody, even PJ Mara, who could not even shut Vincent Browne up. But for six months you will find no mention of me or the Late Late, except by John Waters. But finally Enda Kenny reared up in February, and the Red C polls were published showing my appearance on the Late Late affected one vote in five. Despite what people say, I am not particularly arrogant; I know my weaknesses and strengths. I have a terrible short fuse, but I am one of the toughest polemical performers on television.
You have been involved in a couple of other controversial media appearances during the last year. You stormed out of a debate with Fintan O’Toole on The Last Word on Today FM. Why?
As I get older, I feel life is very short. I don’t have to listen to Fintan O’Toole, you see, once he’s talking shite. Once he’s demonstrated to me that he’s not going to be serious and starts saying something to me like, “The Irish Times was not against Bertie Ahern in this election”; I say, “I’m sorry, I don’t feel like repeating this and I’m out of here.”
And then you had a heated interview with Ursula Halligan on TV3…
That wasn’t a walk out – that was a genuine misunderstanding. I asked them to redo it because I felt it was fucking boring everyone. The Mahon Tribunal had been done to death and I had good stuff to tell her about Ahern. I thought it was poor and I just said, “Can we just do it again,” because I’m a television producer. I didn’t realise that they were into this stupid fiction of recording as live! There’s no such thing as recording live. If I wanted to stop, I could have easily just said, “Fuck! Cunt!” And stood up and said, “I believe your managing director’s like a paedophile!” Or I could have just got up and said, “Actually, I suddenly remember that I left the gas stove on and I have to go!” But I didn’t. I was trying to get her to cop on and just stop the tape, but she didn’t.
Staying on the theme of media, you harbour a dislike of blogging.
I have strong views on the abuse of internet boards like Indymedia and politics.ie by political nerds who need anonymity to function. I have always seen them as little wankers masturbating in a room and hiding behind the computer while they write nasty pieces. They absolutely loathe me, but I regard their attacks as badges of honour. What I loathe more than political correctness is left wing political correctness. Irish society was profoundly intolerant because the Catholic church and Irish nationalism created a monolith that was as severe as Stalinism. Now, both the Catholic church and Irish nationalism have collapsed – but that doesn’t mean the state of mind as collapsed. That whole judgmental, finger-wagging state of mind has just transmogrified into left wing political correctness. In the milder end it comes out in the finger-wagging of Fintan O’Toole, who’s a kind of secular bishop, and at its worst in the kind of curates of Indymedia and politics.ie. I don’t know how they consider themselves to be left-wingers or liberals when they never challenge the consensus. Being on the left means always taking on the most powerful consensus force in Irish society. And my record is far superior to anyone’s in Irish journalism in that.
Some pundits claim you received the Taoiseach’s nomination for the Seanad because of your support for him during last year’s general election?
There’s all this shit about putting me in the Seanad as a reward for The Late Late Show. Bertie Ahern would probably have put me in the Seanad as a mark of appreciation for my relentless support since 1988. I have never written a bad word about Ahern since 1988. In the 2007 election, Ahern was up against it with the media and I felt I had to do my little spin-doctoring bit to shift the pendulum and make the Irish people look at Bertie Ahern as he was really – a fucking man without a bob! I was annoyed about the sheer weight of the mob against him. I suppose in the back of my head I had hoped that at some stage Bertie might put me on some North-South body or the RTE authority as a mark of appreciation for the work I’d done in the peace process.
How do you respond to the suggestion that by accepting the Seanad nomination you have compromised your position as a newspaper columnist?
I can’t see how my appointment to the Seanad compromises me. After all, one of my catchphrases as a columnist is that I have never written a bad word about Bertie Ahern, and that compromised me years ago, if you like (laughs). But of course it didn’t. Every columnist has favourites – you can see that Stephen Collins admires Michael McDowell and Bruce Arnold admires Mary Harney. Apart from that, I hate the kind of mealy mouth who is appointed by the Taoiseach and then makes a big deal out of displaying independence. Any appointment by a Taoiseach means you are semi-detached from his party. But I accept that when Ahern goes, I may have a more rocky relationship with Fianna Fáil.
Can you explain Bertie Ahern’s financial situation that the Mahon Tribunal is investigating?
The recently published private property holdings of politicians proves that Bertie Ahern hasn’t a bob compared with most politicians. So he couldn’t be corrupt. So, why the mystery monies in his accounts? Actually, the answer is quite simple. Like almost all TDs, who have been in politics for the past 30 years, Ahern was forced to keep a war chest. Let me show you the sums. In the 1970s there were two general elections. But in the 1980s there were five general elections. Many TDs were in dire financial straits and by the end of the ‘80s the iron entered their souls and TDs of all parties had to behave as if they were a small family business. They began to salt away money, making no distinction between personal and private donations, in preparation for what looked like another long run of elections in the 1990s. But there were only two – and so a surplus built up in some TDs bank accounts. Then came the ethics legislation of 1997 and anything that happened before that became suddenly murky, although perfectly normal in the political culture back then. Hence my hunch that the mysterious Bertie monies are merely political war chests that were waiting for the long war that never came.
How is Bertie handling the pressure from the tribunal and the media?
How Ahern functions is beyond me. That’s the basis of my admiration. Let me put it like this, anybody who has been through a tax audit knows what I’m talking about. Remember this – Ahern has got up every morning for the past eight year to a tax audit conducted in public. It is cruel and unnatural. If he had walked into a bank in Drimnagh with a shotgun and taken all the money out, he’d have got the probation act or served six months. He has committed no crime and yet every morning he wakes to this horror. You would never see me giving out about what politicians are paid. Nobody would do what they do – to be rung seven days a week, 24 hours a day, to be got out of bed by some wanker who wants to annoy them about something. It’s a horrible job. I’m doing a term. I don’t want to do more than one term. I actually find it time-consuming and tedious.
You have a lot of sympathy for Bertie?
I’ll answer that by saying this: when I worked in Fine Gael with John Bruton, I saw quite a lot of Michael Lowry. Back then, Michael was a fresh faced, boyish, young lad – like the laughing boy, Michael Collins – dark haired, pale faced, fit as a fiddle. I passed Michael without knowing him on the first day in the Seanad! There was this grey faced, bent guy. I thought at first that he had cancer. I said, “Are you OK, Michael?” And he said yes. I said, “That stuff, Michael, took its toll.” And he said, “You have no idea.” And he took me through it and the hairs stood on my head. It has greyed Lowry and made him angry enough to give Fianna Fáil his vote. The vote with Lowry is a not just political but is a gesture of personal solidarity because he understands the suffering Ahern went through.
What legislation do you feel needs to be introduced to combat crime?
I don’t just believe in ASBOs – I believe in selective internment in places like Moyross and South Hill and in parts of Dublin, where you’ve got extended criminal family culture. The only thing is to lift the entire family out of it and give them some time off on their own in a state-of-the-art rehabilitation centre. Not so much like a prison sentence but just a short reminder that their lifestyle is not acceptable in this society. I would like to see a fundamental shift in the Irish criminal justice system, away from the British common law system, towards the continental system of investigative magistrates who are armed with enormous power.
What type of powers?
I would like to see magistrates, like district justices, or justices of peace given extraordinary powers to pro-actively chase the gangs. They should have investigative powers to pick someone up and say, “Johnny McCarthy – you spent the last six weeks in the company of the known criminal, the Monk or the Viper or the Tosser, and unless can give me a minute by minute account – almost like a tax audit – a time audit; and if not, you are going to go in for six months until you tell us what you were doing. Or until you shop somebody.”
What’s your view of current sentencing policy?
I believe there should be much shorter jail sentences and much tougher ones. People should not be in jail for shop lifting. I do not believe jail sentences are appropriate for most crimes against property. I don’t believe in witness protection programmes. Honestly, if you give a person six weeks serious solitary confinement, instead of a six year sentence, for aggravated assault I believe he or she would not repeat that offence. The State should save itself money and make them do harder time but shorter time – and especially at a younger age.
Most media coverage of the poet Cathal O Searcaigh has been extremely negative. But you defended him.
At the start of the O Searcaigh affair there was only one journalist asking for fair play – me. I felt very exposed and I got terrible abuse. I looked around to see if there was anybody else opening their mouth and with great courage David Norris – who has balls of steel – did. I said to him, “You are really running terrible risks as a gay man.” And he said, “I know but the silence is terrifying.” And then Hot Press came out. I remember saying to some people, “There is nobody prepared to tell the truth except the counter culture – and Hot Press is part of the counter culture.” The truth in the O Searcaigh case was only published by Niall Stokes who comes out of that ’60s libertarian generation; counter culture; ‘up yours’ to the establishment. Niall Stokes is still one of the most tolerant people – and without Hot Press, The Irish Times would not have published Dermod Moore’s later article justifying O Searcaigh. Hot Press created a climate that allowed sane voices to put the boot in O Searcaigh where it should be put in and to put the boot into RTÉ, who have huge questions to answer in relation to the exploitation and titillation of the tabloid road they went down by not pixelating the boys’ faces and by not having a panel discussion.
Legally, O Searcaigh has done nothing wrong, as the age of consent there is 16. But it has created a sense of outrage.
The Irish media is the most intolerant in the world. Evelyn Waugh says that too great an interest in theology is a sign of insanity. I feel much the same about commentators who are obsessed by sex and sexual morality. Many of them profess to be atheists or agnostics, and to be critical of the old style Catholic church. But during the O Searcaigh controversy – behind the veneer of political correctness which cloaks the commentariat today – I could clearly see the clerical collars and the blackthorn sticks of my childhood. The biggest lie during that row was the pretence that homophobia was not a factor. In my experience most journalists are narrow-minded when it comes to other people’s sexual lives. Homophobia, like anti-Semitism, is sublimated in Irish society and it made it difficult for supporters of O Searchaigh to get a good hearing.
Would you be in favour of legalising prostitution?
I think the Dutch have got it right. I think prostitution should be de-criminalised. It should not be a criminal offence and every attempt should be made to smash the grip of the pimps. And every attempt to make prostitutes self-employed PLCs. She should be ‘Katy PLC’. And taxed on it. And fully compliant with the revenue commissioners and up to speed and audited.
Do you feel there is a prevailing hysteria in the media about drugs?
We have demonised drugs the way the Puritans demonised drink. As a result we keep drug addicts at arms length and like to think of them as from an alien planet. The more we accept drugs as an addiction – like drink or tobacco – the more likely we are to de-criminalise them and thus put the drug gangs out of business.
Should drugs be legalised in Ireland?
I totally believe in the de-criminalisation of drugs. I believe in the short term it would cause dreadful difficulties and problems, but that’s the necessary price you pay for any great shift in social issues. It is very wrong to pretend that alcohol is not a substance that’s abused. Alcohol, cocaine, heroin – they are not all the same, but if you don’t de-criminalise drugs you are running straight up to stuff like crystal met now. It will be made in a bath. People will do it. Fundamentally, I am a libertarian. I believe that people are responsible for their own lives. And because they’re responsible, they are answerable to society.
Did you ever try marijuana?
Oh, yeah! I smoked a fair amount of marijuana for one year. Everything is politics with me I’m afraid. I smoked marijuana before I became active in the Workers’ Party. When I was a student I smoked marijuana, but the minute I came to Dublin and I came into contact with Cathal Goulding I realised that the booze is alright but smoking marijuana would typecast me as a kind of Trotskyite messer! So, I stopped (laughs). I didn’t find the drug did me any good either. I found – while alcohol made me look eloquent and gracious – pot made me stupid and slow, you know?
Did you ever try anything else?
No. To be honest with you, I’m kind of quite afraid. I was always interested in movies and I read a lot about Hollywood and cocaine. So, I knew about cocaine as a young person in my 20s and I saw what cocaine did to people. It is a very seductive drug – I met a lot of them in Hollywood in the ‘70s and ‘80s – and it did great work for a young guy who needs to stay awake for a while and they go into a fantastic productive time for a few months and then it kicks in this terrible toll that takes effect. It really is a Faustian pact.
On the North, you went from being involved with pre-Worker’s Party Sinn Féin to being virulently anti-Republican?
To me, Ireland from 1970 -2000 was a State under siege. And it affected all aspects of my life, from friendships to the plays I wrote. When Haughey began his come-back, I went on red alert against Irish nationalism. I could clearly see how a combination of circumstances – green grand-standing by Haughey, the infiltration of the IRA into Irish society, sectarian atrocities on both sides – could all combine and spiral into a civil war. These were bad years and they put a terrible strain on my friendships with people like Christy Moore and Gabriel Byrne, who I thought were too soft on the Provos. To me it seemed that we had to make the word Provo as shameful in the south as anti-semite is in modern Germany, while at the same time squeezing the leadership into doing a deal. That was the dialectic. And that was what worked in the end – shaming the south into distancing itself from the Provos, and squeezing the Provos into making peace.
But you began as a left-winger and a Republican.
My relationship with the Republican movement goes as far back as 1960 in Cork. I helped found the Cork Wolfe Tone Society – that would be as far back as 1964 when I was still at university and in that branch was Daithí O’Connell, who later became chief of staff of the IRA, among other luminaries. At that time we were a kind of Republican think tank – all very respectable. Then I came to Dublin and moved closer.
Were you ever a member of the IRA?
It is in an odd fact but I actually never joined Sinn Fein. Or the IRA. I was asked to join Sinn Fein and IRA. But I never did, mostly because I felt if you had to join these things you wouldn’t be as good a revolutionary. There was a time Seamus Costello asked me to join the IRA. That was 1968. And I wanted to join. But Cathal Goulding stopped it. He said, “No, you’d be useless as a member of the IRA. I doubt you’d be able to shoot anyone – you probably haven’t got it in you. And we are going away from all that. Seamus is just a hothead.” And he said, “Forget that. Your job is to write pamphlets and work out the ideologue side.” So, I never did. But let me be clear: I would have. At that age I was mad to. I wanted it as a badge of service. I wanted to show my commitment. Young men are mad to serve.
You remained part of the movement for a long time.
Even though I stayed on the left for 30 years, I was a very conservative left-winger. The word Stalinist is thrown against me. I was never a Stalinist nor could I have been because there was no Stalinist party in Ireland, except the British and Irish Communist Organisation. But The Workers’ Party was very much a Leninist party, which is a very different thing. It believed in democracy – you debated everything out but then when a decision was taken you were bound to it.
So what went wrong?
I found all the posturing in The Workers’ Party about foreign struggles – you know, the Korean People's Liberation Group or the Cambodian Liberation or the obsession with Israel, or the Palestinians rather, I found all that hard to take. I was temperamentally at odds with liberal left-wingers, people like Liz McManus. I wouldn’t see eye-to-eye with Liz about anything on earth. There was finally an explosion – I could no longer take the tension. It took the form of me having rows about the collapse of socialism and Northern Ireland. But the deeper philosophical reality was that I was an Aristotelian, in a party of left wing Platonists. People who fundamentally – when you scratch deep enough – believe that with enough State money that you could change the world. And for 30 years I paid lip service to that.
What do you think of the attempts to mount a case against Sean Garland, who was a key figure in the Worker’s Party?
Oh, I am very clear about that. I was approached by ‘60 Minutes’ in America looking for dirt on Sean Garland. I think it’s appalling that the Americans and the CIA have nothing better to do than to try and persecute Sean Garland. I wouldn’t give them an inch on Sean Garland. I am very strong on comradeship. I don’t believe in snitching at any level. But there is nothing to snitch on Garland, as far as I’m concerned. Sean Garland spent his whole life fighting fascism and nationalist fascism in Ireland – fighting the Provos. It’s appalling that Gerry Adams, who was associated with a terrorist fascist, sectarian organisation is welcome guest at the White House and the same White House should be persecuting Sean Garland. Put Sean Garland’s life on the weighing scales against Gerry Adams and Sean Garland comes out on a white charger. He’s on a white horse. He’s a revolutionary hero. He’s a democrat compared to Adams!
But surely printing fake money is wrong, if that’s what he’s accused of?
Look, there are two kinds of crimes as far as I’m concerned – crimes against property and crimes against the person. And I’m sorry but with my family background – I come from a family background with a very strong Republican revolutionary tradition – the notion of robbing a bank to fund a revolutionary organization was not something that made us go white as a sheet. Michael Collins robbed banks; other people robbed banks. So, I find it very hard to get excited about forgery. The Workers’ Party offences, which were supposed to be embezzlement, money laundering, fiddling fucking business dockets – that was all reprehensible, of course, at one level; but it certainly beat killing Protestants! As a matter of fact, what they actually spent it on was publishing pamphlets. Quite an expensive business. And they also spent it on party organization.
There was a lot of criticism of the Sunday Independent for its treatment of Northern nationalists.
I feel that Aengus Fanning, the editor of the Sunday Independent, and my former wife Anne Harris, played a noble part in that process by keeping steady pressure on the Provos. There is a lot of shit talked about the Sunday Independent being an enemy of peace. The Provos did not set out to make peace. They used John Hume to test the market. And they would have done the bad thing if they had found any weakness in the south. Any fool can see that the peace process needed sticks as well as carrots. If the Sunday Independent kept public opinion alert to all their stratagems, and in that way played a huge and positive part in the peace process. As far as I’m concerned, it was Sir Anthony O’Reilly’s finest hour.
There were times when you seemed to be implying that Unionists – or possibly Protestants – were the ones to whom historic wrongs had been done.
The suffering of southern Protestants is a taboo subject and any attempt to dig up the bodies is opposed by an alliance of emollient Church of Ireland leaders, sheltering behind “ecumenism”, and extreme nationalist apologists such as the Aubane Group, as well as the kind of green academics who write for History Ireland. The most recent example of that was the attempt to challenge the films about the murders of the Pearson boys at Coolacrease. So great is the taboo against telling the truth about atrocities against Protestants in the south, that after the Coolacrease film was shown, local Midland papers ran every kind of rubbishy propaganda by local nationalist historians designed to roll the damage back. And far from getting the apology they deserved, the Pearson family were subjected to what one of them, luckily abroad, called “another slow swim through the sectarian sewage”.
Is there not a different dynamic at work in the North?
My experience of southern sectarianism deeply affected my approach to the Northern Ireland troubles. I knew that the sectarianism which had surfaced earlier in the century in West Cork, Longford, Tipperary, Offaly and Laois, would certainly surface along the Border in counties like Fermanagh and Tyrone. So I shared none of the starry-eyed notions of many republicans that this war could be confined to a struggle against the British. And my horror of what I believed could turn into a general pogrom against Protestants conditioned my attitude to any manifestation of sectarian nationalism. I was particularly perturbed by pan-nationalism, the kind of thing that John Hume and the Irish Government were working for until 1998, and which basically boiled down to all of us Roman Catholic nationalists together against the Prods. At least that was how it looked to Protestants.
Does that explain the decision to get on board with David Trimble?
By then I felt that I had made an imaginative identification with the Protestant psyche, which allowed me to anticipate how they would look at things. That helped me a lot when I was advising David Trimble. But of course I remained a cradle Catholic – hence the sentence I wrote for Trimble about the north being “a cold house for Catholics”. I tried to see the two sides and to establish a political dialectic, using my own background and my new insights into Northern Protestants to put the two sides to David Trimble. The dialectic again! But I think my advice played some small part in the Good Friday Agreement, which I called “an amazing grace”.
But there was a level of vitriol in much of what you’ve said about the North that people interpreted as a hatred of Sinn Féin and of Republicans in general.
Although I hate Irish nationalism, I don’t dislike Sinn Feiners. Far from it – as human beings I tend to like them a lot more than Dublin 4 types. I come from the same political background. And they tend, as people, to be stand-up guys and girls. You won’t normally find them hunting in packs like the PC types and seeking to put down poor devils like Cathal O Searcaigh. And Sinn Fein people from outside Dublin reflect the basic values of rural Ireland, what Thomas Davis called racy of the soil. And I’m a country boy. So I would rather have a cup of coffee with Martin Ferris – and I have done – than with some of the trendy shites who sit on Government and Opposition benches.
Talking about meetings with remarkable men, you collaborated on a screenplay with Marlon Brando.
I worked with Brando on a script about Hugh O’Neill for a week in 1985. He was a sad man who scoffed blueberry pies all day long and mourned that Jack Doyle, the Irish boxer, had stolen the love of his life, the Mexican actress Movita. When I arrived he greeted me with: “Welcome to the city of angels – you won’t find any.” And he was right. Eoghan Harris – the Hollywood Years is not a happy book. While I was there I told Brando the story of Michael Collins. At that time, nobody had heard of Collins in America. Brando said, “That’s a great movie. I’m going to send you to talk to a guy.” He sent me down to a big movie producer who was demented for it and sent me to Kevin Costner, with whom it was a meeting of minds.
Unfortunately, your Michael Collins movie never got made. Are you annoyed about this still?
I have mellowed a bit, but I’m still sore about it. I was first in with a film on Michael Collins to the trade, so to speak. At the end of the day, the bad break I got was that both Neil Jordan and Kevin Costner were fundamentally contracted to Warner’s. Costner wanted to make my script, but he went off to make Waterworld and, while he was there, Neil brought furious pressure on Warner’s – could he knock off this quick Michael Collins movie? And in a moment of weakness Costner – who was demented by Waterworld and the mess that it was and Warner’s were leading hard on him – said to me, “Look, let them make the fucking movie. It’s only going to be a small movie and it won’t be as good as our movie.” And I said, “No, Kevin. Once you make one, there won’t be another Michael Collins movie.” But he said, “I’ll look after it and everything will be fine. Trust me.” After that there was no real interest in making another movie. To give him his due, Costner knew he had fucked me up on it and he paid me off. But I never got over the grief. He basically said, “Look, I fucked up and here’s the best part of $100,000 to forget it.” But I didn’t forget it because I didn’t like Neil’s movie and it wasn’t what people think is simple jealousy. I just thought it was a far too simplistic Collins.
You recently got married again. How are you finding life as a newlywed?
I got married before Christmas and the woman is younger than myself. And yet it doesn’t matter – it genuinely doesn’t matter. Fundamentally, she is a newspaper, radio and television junkie – she hears and reads everything. She gets as much out of the relationship as I do because we are political soul mates. That’s a damn sight more important than sex, money – anything. I was happily married to Ann Harris for 20 years and then I wasn’t happily married and we were separated. I used to say that we were separated but inseparable – and that’s because we had a meeting of minds about most things. And that’s what I missed most – that loss of political compatibility. And I searched for it, for 20 years. If you meet a woman like that you cling to her and never let go. Political compatibility comes first and then comes a kind of physical ease in each other’s company, which is not much to do with sex, but a certain kind of sardonic, slagging off of the world outside. You join in mocking people. Irish people love to mock and Cork people in particular.
What type of women do you like?
You know people when they are interviewed by you like this they always say, “I love women.” Well, what they really mean is they love young blondes or beautiful young women. I genuinely love women of all ages and all sizes and all categories. One of the reasons I really enjoy the Seanad is because Leinster House allows me to meet a fantastic range of real Irish women. I have been mocked – and I don’t mind it – for saying I really admire Beverly Flynn. I know she’s got a brass neck and all that, but if a man was like that we’d also find him charismatic. I love her testosterone, her energy and her sense of fun. And I love the women in the Seanad. Senator Geraldine Feeney is a terribly good looking woman. She may be in her 40s – it’s hard to know – and she has short blonde hair cut tight. She’s such a political joy to talk to. She was recently widowed and has refused to let that break her down. I admire her. I like that great mass of Fianna Fáil women deputies. I admire Mary O’Rourke, even though she drives me mad most of the time. I very much admire Frances Fitzgerald.
What are your thoughts on sex?
I have always liked the erotic dimension in women. People say to me, “Well, you would because you’re getting older and you’re not able to do it anymore!” And there’s a lot of truth in that! There is a decline of sexual function – there’s no point pretending there isn’t! But the point is: I was never actually mad about the wham bam, thank you mam thing! OK, between 17 and 30 you’ve got to have it – you’ve got to get it. You want to get it in and all that. But even then in the late 20s you begin to withdraw from that simple sexual act. You want other more complex things. The most important thing that matters in a relationship is what I would call political compatibility.
Was there a certain type of woman you looked for?
I like women with testosterone – I admit that. For years I would have been seen as someone who was playing the field, but I actually wasn’t. An extraordinary number of these women would complain that I didn’t do much with them anyway (laughs)! I wanted all sorts of different things from them – like I wanted to be with a woman from Carlow because I just loved her sheer fizz and energy. I liked another woman from Northern Ireland because I liked the way she’d sit down and stare out the window and just talk about her mother and about what life was like around the border. And what I was getting from her was the sense of the politics of Ireland. I also liked the way we could – in both cases – go to bed if we wanted to. The comfort level is totally underestimated in sexual relationships. I’m not particularly well dressed myself, but I like stylish women turned out well. I have my own ‘Eoghan Harris Rules Of Fashion’.
Which are?
Most women dress for women and look crap as a result. But if you are one of the few bright women who want to be noticed by both men and women, here are my three ‘nevers’ of fashion: Never wear culottes or shorts no matter what the temptation. Never wear pashminas, wraps or shawls in an attempt to hide weight – men have x-ray eyes when it comes to weight and wraps and fussy stuff make things worse. Never pass up the chance to wear anything with a leopard skin motif – not the loud sort, but anything with a dappled effect. I think it prompts primitive genetic memories of animals moving through trees!
Do you believe there are differences between the sexes that are rooted in biology?
I give a lecture about The Wild Bunch and I always announce at the beginning of it that this is one of these movies that women don’t like by and large, but ten percent of women do – and if you find one woman who likes westerns, grab her and never let her go. In all my life – I was married for years and then separated for years – I had a lot of girlfriends coming and going and I never met one of them who would sit until the end of The Bridge Of The River Kwai. And from that I have come to the conclusion that there is a deep gender division between men and women about film as well as many other things – nothing wrong with that, but we should stop pretending that there’s not. I deplore the politically correct effort of professional feminists to minimize these differences, which are biological. Far from denouncing them and trying to get over them we should build them into our economic structures.
How?
Women are less willing than they were before to admit that it is not as easy as the feminists pretend to combine a career with a marriage. A lot of women would secretly, I believe, prefer to go back to the ‘50s and be allowed to stay at home for the years of child rearing, which might be anything between six and ten years. And that, to me, should be admitted. They should be compensated for that, either within their marriage or within the society. A lot of women would like to be able to leave the frontline of the capitalist war and go back home and mind the child.
Last year a complaint made against you by a student. Can we talk about it?
Teaching is a huge part of my life. I teach at UCD and I teach an MA class in Dun Laoghaire. MA classes tend to attract mature students – who may have come out of a difficult personal situation like a death or a divorce – and from time to time I have run-ins with students who think the class is some kind of therapy. I say at the beginning of every year that this is not a place to have your prejudice confirmed, this is a place to have them challenged. “So,” I say, “if you are on the ‘left’ or on the ‘right’ you are going to be challenged. I am going to challenge all your prejudices.” And they nod their head – that’s the deal. But I had a complaint from a student. I called her a Platonist. I meant it as a kind of a compliment because I don’t regard Platonists as bad people, I just regard them as different. She took a complaint and the school found there was no case to answer. But you never hear that side of it. I should have got an apology from The Sunday Times. This is why the defamation bill is so important. I got the shit but I never got the other side. I wouldn’t pretend that I haven’t got a short fuse. I have never sued anybody and I despise journalists who sue other journalists. The best way to deal with libels – and I have had plenty of experience – is to take the advice of the Earl of Clarendon who said that “by ignoring them, appear not deserving of them.”
How do you approach teaching?
I know that a teenager needs more than anything else is to be taken seriously and that applies right across the board to the criminal justice system. The society has got to take its fucking children seriously. All a teenager, or a young man or woman wants is an audience. I try to provide an audience to what they have to say in the school. I try to let them know that I’m fond of them in a fatherly way – without fecking making any inappropriate physical assaults on them (laughs)! I try to let them know that I have been where they are. That I know they are suffering – either sexually, emotionally or whatever – but that it’s going to be alright and all be well.
And how would you do this?
So, I tell stories that mock myself and my own sexual pretensions – “The first woman I ever fell in love with was a Protestant and I never got there because she’s beyond me!” By laughing at me, I think they are empowered to put things into perspective. I use a lot of comedy and self deprecation to let them know that I have failed to get the ride more times than they could! I have fucked up! I have been worried about spots! I do get the results. I think I’m one of the few teachers that takes on a terrible load of correcting work. I make them write a script a week – that means I have to read it, but it gets results. I have – whatever else I have done in life – retained the affections of my former students.
So, teaching for you is about making connections?
You asked the question about romance and sex and women; you see George Steiner says that teaching is an erotic activity. That was my experience. That’s why I went down to launch the book of Dan Donovan – he was my English teacher, in Cork. I said at the launch that being taught by Dan was an erotic experience, which I try to pass on myself. Dan would read Keats’ Ode To Autumn in that sensual voice with all that heavy impregnation of a tumbled kind of blossoming and he could create a world in that classroom of enormous erotic expectation and validation. So, through that poem – which had no sexual content apparently – we felt kind of OK about our burgeoning sexuality. You’re a spotty teenager; you don’t know what you believe and what you hope for. Your ambitions sound stupid. But we found that there was an outlet for us in English and literature. At the same time, Dan by being fatherly and brotherly to us could create this kind of joking camaraderie in a class of men – “Yeah, you and me both, we are all looking for it! And we wish to find some vixen to give it to us, but boys we’re not going to get it that fecking easy, so let’s be content with Keats!” And we’d all sit back and laugh and we felt empowered.