Ulick O'Connor

Journalist, actor, academic, barrister, biographer, dramatist, critic, poet, socialite, television polemicist, champion boxer, record-breaking pole-vaulter, first-class rugby player and, above all, curmudgeonly controversialist: say what you like about Ulick O’Connor – and many do – but he sure hasn’t wasted his time on this earth. Still looking sprightly in the spring of his eighth decade, the famously opinionated Dubliner is a textbook Renaissance man – a real all-rounder who’s really been all round. His recently published diaries – which cover the years 1970 – ’81 (another volume is due next year) – reveal him as an inveterate traveller, a literary stroller, a close confidante of artists and aristocrats, a barb-tongued enemy of bores and begrudgers, and a lover of life, women and, it must be said, himself.

The interior of the rather dusty Victorian house in Rathgar, where he has lived all his life, reflects all of this. The walls are straining under the weight of numerous photographs and portraits of O’Connor in his many guises, and framed posters advertising his various theatrical productions around the globe (he is an authority on the Japanese Noh play and has had his work translated and performed in Japan). A full-sized bronze sculpture of his head adorns the mantelpiece. He proudly informs me that the table in the corner used to belong to Parnell. There are piles of books everywhere – most prominently displayed, though, are the ones he has written himself. He’s been accused of narcissism more than once in his life. But then, he’s been accused of a lot of things in his time. To his credit, the one thing he could never be accused of is being boring. Love him or loathe him, Ulick O’Connor is definitely one of a kind.

Recently, however, O’Connor has been the accuser rather than the accused. A couple of months ago, he hit the headlines when he blasted RTE for allegedly blacklisting him from The Late Late Show and refusing to help him publicise his new book. Which seems like a good place to start…

OLAF TYARANSEN: So what’s the problem between you and RTE? Or, more specifically, between you and The Late Late Show?

ULICK O’CONNOR: Well, I don’t know. I suppose in 1985, that’s the last time I got on the Late Late Show – although to talk to people you’d think I was still on it every night! I think the Sticky crowd in there didn’t like Nationalism. There’s about four or five elements. While I’ve apparently got a good following and all that, I’m considered difficult. I’m not predictable. They don’t like that. And then, of course, in a station which is gradually becoming paralysed and inert, they don’t like people around who aren’t paralysed. They don’t even say for the good of the station, or for the good of the show, we’ll have this person on.

Maybe they think you’re past it!

Well, I obviously haven’t lost whatever I had because I’ve been on the BBC fairly regularly. And the last Oscar Wilde thing before Christmas, I think it was the anniversary of his death, they had an Oscar Wilde night on RTE and, needless to say, they didn’t ask me, although I’d written a very successful play about him. But they did play a film made by the BBC called Oscar. Stephen Fry and myself – we’re the two people in it – they played that on RTE. But that’s the only time I’ve been on RTE recently – through the BBC! So I think it’s a combination of the Nationalist flavour and success. They don’t like somebody that’s bigger than themselves – bad directors, at least. A good director loves it, because he’s getting people watching the show. And then I think Gay would have given into pressure over the years. But then you see it wasn’t just Gay – Kenny has never had me on his TV show, ever! Not once in 12 or 13 years.

Something you took up with him when you were on his radio show…

I did, yeah. The Sunday Independent ran a big story on it and he said he didn’t know anything about it. But they could still do it, still have me on if they wanted, in September, but he won’t. I’m not sure in his case. He’s a very bright guy, but again there’s the pressure. I’m not even on radio, which is unusual. I used to do the Sunday radio show with Andy [O’Mahony] and all those people. It’s basically a clamp-down. But to counter all that you have to use all the other media and that takes a lot of energy, because no-one can really do it for you but yourself. And you’re in it yourself, so you know the difficulties. So as regards the video media I’m a silenced man.

Are your diaries being published in America?

It’s with American publishers. They give it to them after it comes out here. I hope it will come out in America. I think there’s a good chance that it will. All my other books have. I used to go to America every year from 1966 until about 1984 for three months to do a lecture tour at the Ladies Clubs and such things, and that gave me enough money then, as you saw in the book, to live in The Chelsea Hotel. I had big connections over there and therefore all my books would be published there.

Did you ever meet Sid Vicious at the Chelsea?

No, but I was there the year he died. Yeah, Nancy Spungeon and all those people – Viva Superstar and Gregory Corso – they were all around. As I say it’s all in the diaries, there’s a considerable section set in the Chelsea. Again, it’s the sort of thing I seem to walk into throughout my life without trying to do it. I didn’t know that The Chelsea – as I know now – was the hub of the universe, really. Everything was happening there. And I just shifted into it one day because I was staying up in the Algonquin and I went down to do a show for the Berrigan brothers in The Chelsea, in the room that Dylan Thomas died in. And we raised a lot of money. That was the Anti-Vietnam era. We raised a lot of money for them. And then the manager said ‘Why don’t you stay here?’ And I got into it then and I was really delighted. It was terribly casual. That was the life. It was totally suitable and ideal for me in hundreds of ways. I was in the middle of it. But I really had no connection because I wasn’t a music guy. I wasn’t a Beat by nature, well, I wouldn’t say by nature, but by vocation. But I had a Beat outlook, I suppose, on life.

Speaking of Beats, you met William Burroughs in New York, didn’t you?

I only met him very briefly and I got the wrong impression of him entirely. I’d read some of his works but it was only later when I read about him that I realised I’d missed a great opportunity. I really should have cultivated something there. He was an amazing character really. I mean he was on and off heroin throughout his life, but lived to his 80s and he kept writing all the time.

You spent some time in Tangiers as well.

Again, I floated into Tangiers without really knowing that it was a place to be, that Paul Bowles and people like that were there. I was so sort of, in a way, vague at that time that I didn’t know that Burroughs or Bowles or Corso had gone there. I don’t know why.

You did know that Bowles was there, though, because you visited him.

Well, I looked up Bowles deliberately because I loved his writing. I think he’s fantastic. Not The Sheltering Sky but a few other things I’ve read that I think were extraordinarily brilliant. But he wasn’t a Beat, he was very certain of that. The Beats made him an icon. He liked them. But he said, “I don’t belong with you, my writing is different”. He didn’t like Burroughs either – or rather, he didn’t like the cut-up method Burroughs was using. He actually showed me the carpet that Burroughs and Gysin had been doing it on, said “the two of them were down there cutting pages up and pasting the words together”. He told me that he didn’t think it worked. But he wouldn’t be against it because he would see it as a trial and everything in a good artist’s mind is a trial – and if it comes off, great.

Although you have spent much of your life hanging out in literary circles, you seem to have been more of a chronicler of scenes than an active participant – artistically anyway. Did you ever think of turning your hand to writing fiction?

I don’t believe in fiction. I’m not interested in it. I think the novel is dead. Elliot said that in 1922 after Ulysses. Actually, I wrote a book about it. It’s called Biographers And The Art Of Biography in which I wrote a whole analysis of it. And it did very well, in 1993, in England. It caused a bit of a sensation, needless to say, among the novelists, but it was terrifically well-reviewed. But I feel that fiction… (pauses). How can fiction equal what we know about life today? How could you put Charles Manson into fiction? No-one would believe you! How could you put James Jones, the fellow in Guyana who got 500 lawyers and doctors to come up and drink cyanide in the jungle, into fiction? So my concept is that life has provided so many extraordinary plots today, that fiction is dead. But I don’t believe in ‘faction’ either. So you take the life plot, but you must stick exactly to the facts and then you create something around those facts. There’s a real trend towards that.

Something like Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood?

You’ve got it! In fact, that’s what I start with in my book. That’s the beginning of it. It started with Capote really. But even Joyce’s Ulysses is based in fact. Every single fact in that book is contained in a newspaper of the 16th June, 1904. If Leopold Bloom goes down the quays and sees a certain ship, if you look it up in the newspaper you’ll see that ship is listed as being in. So he recognised that you had to at least start out of fact. Fact was so startling to the 20th century mind and so like a diamond glowing with truth that you couldn’t tamper with it. You had to take it and then you hung your imaginative insight into society and into life and truth on that rack of fact. But you had to work within that limitation. And therefore your reader could say “Jesus, that’s extraordinary, I don’t believe that,” and you could say, “but it did happen!”

But in terms of writing creatively, I’ve written a number of plays, you know. But again they’re largely based in fact. The most successful play that did well in the West End two years ago was about Wilde and Carson who were at Trinity College. It was about Carson destroying Wilde in the box and all that sort of thing. That was based on that. I’ve written a number of Japanese verse plays – and a number of verse plays besides – and I wrote a Japanese Noh play. That’s gone around the world and was translated into Japanese.

What do you make of the new Irish playwrights? Have you seen any of Martin McDonagh’s plays?

Yes I have. I like his plays. I’m not a major fan. I think he’s a good playwright, but I wouldn’t go any further, you know. In terms of writers I think the greatest living writer, one of the three greatest playwrights of the 20th century is Friel. I think he’s amazing. It would be very hard to compare with him. Certainly in Ireland. I’d put him up with Tennessee Williams and Eugene O’Neill. They were the three great ones.

What about Arthur Miller?

Oh, and Arthur Miller, you couldn’t leave him out! Anyone who could get into the scratcher with Marilyn Monroe and at the same time be one of the great playwrights of the 20th century, that’s a hell of a combination. He actually used to stay in the Chelsea, but I never got to meet him.

Which novelists do you admire?

I don’t really read many novels. I read Martin Amis because he doesn’t write novels. As in, I read his essays and journalism. I keep up to date really through films. I always have been able to get much more out of films than I have out of novels. Because only one novel in 50 is really worth reading. Whereas in films, what kept me in touch in the ’50s and ’60s would be Bergman, Bunuel, Fellini.

How about the Americans?

I knew Jack Ford. In fact, there’s a book I wrote called Gogarty up there on the shelf, and in the front Jack Ford says “this is the only book I ever stayed up all night to read”. But those films gave me the kind of insight into the life that we were living that you’d get about the 1890’s from Flaubert and Balzac in novels. And then today I’ll go to the IFC or The Screen regularly. Certain films teach you more than 500 novels. If you’re into writing and art and painting and you’re looking for insights into what we’re all about then that’s the place to go. The very odd time you’ll get it from the stage.

Would you ever think of writing a movie script?

Well, as I say, I’ve written a number of plays. In fact, I had the record for the longest-running play in the Abbey – a play called Execution, about the Civil War. I’ve also written a script for my Brendan Behan book and maybe something will happen with that. I really would have loved to have worked with a really good director in the ’60s or ’70s, but I never got the chance. If I walk into something, I stay there, but I never walked into it. I tried to a few times but… (pauses). I met Bergman once in the ’60s. But you have to make an impression on these people. Most of my success has come from hitting people in the right way. You hit them, they ask “would you do this” and then I do it. If people say “would you write this biography?” then I’ll do it. But I didn’t make much of an impression on Bergman. Obviously he wasn’t impressed. He wasn’t depressed either, mind (laughs).

Were you writing your diaries with an eye on eventual publication?

No, not at all. I was a barrister by profession, up until the ’70s. I liked the bar but I wanted to write. You know in Ireland everybody wants to be good at five or six things – something which saves you from the responsibility of being very good at one. And then, when I left the bar to write, I started to keep a diary really to tell me what I was thinking at a particular time and to try and clarify my ideas, you know. I’m not a terribly meticulous person. Well, I’m quite meticulous about my writing, but there are big gaps in it. But I have my daily diary. I carry a thing around to let me know what I’m doing and I would make notes in that and keep the diary and then I finished up with about thirty years’ worth, you know. It’s all there.

So how did they come to be published?

I had no thought of publishing them until my agent in London asked me had I got anything like that. So they had a look at them and they asked me if they could publish them. It was amazing really. I tell you why I didn’t write to publishers telling them about it was simply because I didn’t think anyone would publish them. So there’s lots of things there and I was delighted that I’d kept them. The thing was to find the bits that were interesting, things that are revelatory of one’s own mind and condition at the time.

Did you take much out?

Oh yeah, well I had to. Well, do you mean for libel?

Libel or not wanting to reveal too much about personal relationships.

Well, you can write about a relationship in an interesting way without putting in every detail. The details you would think would be the most necessary ones in fact aren’t. That sort of personal diary is very often not of great interest to the outside world. I think in a diary you should write what is of interest to the outside world which concerns you, and which is pretty intimate but only the stuff that would be of interest to people reading it.

You didn’t start drinking until you were in your forties.

That’s right, I was about 42. I’ve drunk since then, of course (laughs). But I only drink wine. I’ve never liked the taste of Guinness. I never drink gin. It always reminds me of perfume. I have drunk a glass of whisky from time to time. I drink two or three glasses of wine a day.

How come you started so late?

I’d always be scared of drink because the world I grew up in was a world of drunken writers and drunken barristers – seriously drunk men who were alcoholics and who were very talented. Brilliant barristers, brilliant writers and the four brilliant writers of Dublin were all dying in front of me – Brendan [Behan], Kavanagh – they say it was cancer, but Kavanagh died of drink – Myles na Gopaleen and… (pauses) I can’t think of the other. But there they were, hung up on drink and the victims of inferior people who would sneer at them. And they were being attacked, because you are attacked in this city. Yeats called it “the daily spite of this unmannerly town that I must endure”. Imagine if he had to endure it, somebody of his eminence. And he committed himself to the country by becoming a senator. It’s a spiteful and envious city – and country.

Do you think that the Irish are a particularly begrudging race?

Yes, of course, spite and envy is everywhere but it’s particularly Irish. You can trace it back in Swift. He actually wrote about it. He founded St. Patrick’s mental home. It’s a natural thing and it may be to do with the fact that it’s a small island, a small community, a brilliant island, everybody wanting to be brilliant. But you just have to fight back and to some extent that’s by fighting back verbally. But you’d see all these guys with their defences down and slumped in a corner, you know. And then these other people who would sneer at them and hope they’d never write again. I did a lot of sport as you probably know and I kept very fit until I was in my 30’s or so and I still kept up. I hadn’t drunk because of that and that meant I had a built-in system of resistance to it. I had been a pioneer and all that as well.

Were you moralistic about it?

I’ve no particular morality about it, except self-preservation. And I think really it’s degenerated a bit, but probably the most entertaining place you could find yourself casually in the world would be in a Dublin pub, certainly at that time. I’m sure there’s elements of it left, but it’s been spoiled by a lot of people who go in more to drink rather than to talk.

Have you ever used drugs?

I’ve never touched any drug, but it would be for the same reason. In America in the ’60s everybody smoked marijuana. I tried it once but I never learned to smoke cigarettes and I was never able to inhale it. But I was totally in favour of the whole thing. What struck me in the ’60s at all the parties was that there were never any rows. I come from a place where every time you went to a party there was someone snarling and bashing someone’s head off a bloody wall. But in America there was always a lovely atmosphere – and a sweet smell. Of course, now I would have taken it, but if you look at it this way, I was passively taking it. And of course I remain completely indignant about the legal situation regarding drugs.

Are you in favour of cannabis legalisation?

I’d legalise the whole bloody lot! The ordinary, human, common-sense intellect can see that it’s causing more damage because it’s illegal. And you can see that cigarettes are more damaging, and that drink is more damaging than many illegal drugs. It’s a terrible age thing. Young people must look up with contempt at those laws that are alienating them from society. I’d legalise heroin like that (clicks fingers). Let’s legalise it. And I wouldn’t have anything about getting it from the State either. Heroin would be down to the price of cigarettes. It’s as cheap to produce as cigarettes. And the whole criminal system would just disintegrate. Well, obviously it wouldn’t disintegrate. They’d come up with something else, but it wouldn’t be this. You’d save hundreds of lives, save a lot of money. I can’t understand why they don’t. The Dutch have virtually legalised everything.

Well, they haven’t quite legalised everything, but they do have some fairly impressive harm-reduction schemes in place.

Well, at least that cuts down half the damage. Why not give it to them every day if they want it, like food? But then, of course, you’d be accused of putting people on it. But I don’t think that addiction would be anything like the people I know who’re on heroin. I’ve known heroin addicts.

Well, look at Burroughs. He was an addict for decades.

Yeah, there you are. He could kick it, of course. You know he wrote a book about coming off it and it was horrifying, the pain and all that. They say that the pain in coming off heroin is not worse than coming off cigarettes. I’ve heard that. I’d certainly legalise the whole bloody lot. I can’t see what’s wrong with it. If you’re allowed to drink to the extent that you don’t damage yourself, but you’re allowed to drink a good deal, what’s the difference in taking a certain amount of heroin? As I say, I have known people who took their daily injection and got on with their lives. A lot of people who used to do that were doctors. Coming from a medical family, I knew that a lot of doctors were morphine addicts. Look at Sherlock Holmes! He was a morphine addict. In the books he takes his morphine. He injects himself with Watson, of course, skulking in the background (laughs). I thinks it’s totally a survival of the negative religious concepts. It’s there and it’s all mixed up. We should get rid of the whole lot of it. Get down to the real crime, you know! Like crooked public representatives. Put those people in jail, not the heroin addicts!

Are you religious?

I was brought up a Catholic. I’m an admirer of religion. I don’t practise it, but I would admire it. If you take all the various religious movements and put them together, the concept is to raise some form of spiritual emotion in what is essentially a materialistic society and try and raise it towards something better. But I’m very annoyed about this thing about locking up the churches here – some Archbishop has locked off all the churches at night because people were stealing from them. Surely that’s against the whole ethos of what Christianity is about? People need shelter and churches offer refuge in a nicer atmosphere – one of calmness and peace. And if people are stealing from them, then surely the church can afford to hire security guards. All they need to do is hire one bloody security guard and the people who are stealing won’t. It’s a bit of a sham really.

As a journalist, you were very involved in the Irish political scene in the ’60s and ’70s. Were you aware of the corruption then?

Well, I don’t think that it was corrupt then. I’m quite certain that, in the ’50s and ’60s, sure there was corruption and people telling lies, but there was no money. They were all bacon and eggs men. Really the Dev crowd and the Cosgrave crowd – they’d never go out to restaurants. They had no concept of money, big money. It just wasn’t around. They might make a deal which would benefit their children, get them a job or something, but that was about it.

I was totally flabbergasted when it started coming out. I would say it started about the early ’80s, but the extent of it I just couldn’t believe. It just means that the Irish have a vast capacity for greed that they didn’t think they had. Maybe it’s sublimated under the invader or whatever you call it, the whole culture, but largely our culture was un-materialistic. The healthy thing about the Tribunals is that it’s putting before us what happened. I think Flood is doing a great job. The next thing we have to do is to find out how to punish them. Will they do it? I don’t know.

You acted as a go-between for Jack Lynch in the ’70s, when the Northern Troubles were really beginning to hot up. What do you think of the current situation?

Immediately, it’s hard to say. I think it’s been working out very well recently. I think the real difficulty is the Unionist mindset. They don’t want equality and it’s too much for them to take that the others now have the same opportunities that they do. And all the symbols that go with that – like the police. They can’t take it, therefore the real problem is that the Unionists… (pauses). I mean, decommissioning is only part of their excuse. Because I think the last offer that the IRA made was reasonable – I mean, it was recommended by De Chastelaine. If he says it’s good enough then it’s good enough. So they don’t want that. I’d say if the IRA handed in half their guns tomorrow, the Unionists would still object.

Back to more personal matters: how come you never got married?

Ha! Every day I wake up and say a prayer to thank God I never did. When I look around today most of my conversations with taxi-drivers, they say they’re living in one room and the wife is at home with the three children and a fancy man, and he can’t see his children. I think the laws have gone completely haywire, from a state of 1900 when the Suffragettes hadn’t got a vote until 1920 really. And women were underprivileged to a massive extent. But that’s completely changed now. I certainly would have broken down under the unfairness of the relationships of men and women today.

But I had a housekeeper here all my life. I had a nanny and when my father and mother died I kept her on. That may be another reason for my not getting married. The other thing about getting married is you notice today you can go into the supermarket and feed yourself. Also, women are not that difficult to get as they would have been before. People got married before for other reasons that aren’t necessary now. On the other hand, in my life the number of women who’ve helped me have given me the most powerful help. Not just in a relationship way. But the balance in society generally has gone. And I do think men are in danger of losing some part of their nature. And the male suicides are a good example of it.

Did you hear what Doris Lessing said recently?

She’s right! Men are marginalised now. Basically when women get equality there’s one thing that always makes them superior and that’s sex. That is always there and it’s something that makes their relationship superior. It means that they have a superior element. Nature has provided them with this magnetic radiance that they’re able to use. So when they get equality the tendency then is to overuse it. And that’s how I feel about it. And I couldn’t have taken that. I would probably have gone on the drink or something. Apart from the fact that to be a writer it’s a very hazardous adventure and I didn’t want to be bringing other people into it. I’d enough trouble keeping myself going.

Surely you’ve done alright financially over the years?

Yes. I’ve always had, I suppose, relative security. Having said that, I’ve had times when I had very little money and I was pressed for debts and all that. Aosdana is a great help in the sense that it’s £10,000 a year which means that you don’t face bankruptcy.

How long have you been a member?

I’ve been a member since the foundation. I hope to God Sile de Valera doesn’t manage to do in the Arts Council because that’ll be the end of it. But Aosdana is a great thing. Very few people got into it that aren’t genuinely committed. They’re mostly poor people. The wonderful thing is that the rich people in it often don’t claim the money. You don’t get it automatically, you have to claim it. Artists are so delighted to be helped. They have a morality in them. I suppose again there are very few of them with money – real writers. Money doesn’t mean that much to them.

The Ulick O’Connor Diaries 1970-1981: A Cavalier Irishman (John Murray, £22.50)