Talking about our generation

David McWilliams appears to be cultivating a certain level of popularity in the psyche of Irish viewers that can only be described as reminiscent of a young Gay Byrne. Like the debates about social issues affecting Irish society aired on the Late Late Show, McWilliams’ bubblegum approach to mixing up economics with sociology in layman’s terms is being lapped up by the public.

This likeability is clearly demonstrated when, moments after finishing this interview, McWilliams is approached on Dublin’s South William Street by a female ‘Juggler’ (that’s an ambitious Irish person in debt up to their eyeballs, for those not familiar with McWilliams’ jargon) who gushes on about how “brilliant” and “true to life” his latest TV show is. After gracefully accepting the enthused accolade, McWilliams tells me that – since The Pope’s Children was released back in 2003 – he is constantly approached with such rousing compliments.
His new book, The Generation Game, went straight into the best-sellers charts at No. 1, while the TV show managed to attract an impressive 35% rating of total viewers. But McWilliams is not getting it all his own way. His latest book’s hypotheses have been lambasted as nonsensical in some sections of the media, with one national newspaper describing him as an “opportunistic crank profiting handsomely from peddling” doom and gloom predictions about the Irish economy.
“Really?” McWilliams laughs nervously, feigning surprise, when I read this quote to him, before retorting: “I don’t read the criticism but I am aware that there has been a huge amount. Of course it’s hurtful and it is designed to hurt. This is not written as an objective commentary. I have been ridiculed by lots of people. The doom and gloom stuff is cheap journalism. It’s easy. They don’t sit down and read the stuff, they don’t watch the show – they say, let’s have a go at your man because it might sell newspapers. These guys who write all this stuff, God bless them – they’re writing about me, I’m not writing about them.”
Warming to the theme, McWilliams continues: “There are two types of people in Ireland – there are doers and there are knockers. And I prefer to be a doer. I have never written an article, personally, about anyone in my life, and I have written quite a few over the years. It’s just not my style. Very seriously, if you want to be a knocker in Ireland then there is a great constituency you can enjoy. But if you want to be a doer and do things and write things, involve yourself in ideas, then, when you come up with ideas, a number of things happen. The first thing, you are ridiculed; the second thing that happens is people see you working for someone else, so your motives are not pure, or your motives are profiteering; and the third thing that happens is you get slagged off. It would be more preferable for us to have a chat rather than reacting to...” his voice trails off.
McWilliams is adamant that such an evaluation of his book as having a pessimistic assessment of the Irish economy is utterly erroneous. “How can you possibly say that this book is about doom and gloom when the end is almost evangelical – it’s like, we have got everything. Once we wean ourselves off the housing obsession, this country can do anything. (The jump in prices) is not a sign of economic success, it is a sign of economic failure. When I was researching The Pope’s Children it began to strike me that a certain generation has done extremely well and a certain generation has been shafted by the boom; and in many ways the Pope’s children I wrote about were the people shafted because of the housing market. The book came out of that. This is an important point: how could I write a book that is a celebration of the country and then be doom and gloom for 10 years? You feel like saying to these guys, wake up, lads! Do you judge a football team on the first 20 minutes’ performance? Look at the whole game. The TV show is over three parts, the book is over 250-odd pages. You’ve got to be honest about what is happening in the economy before you can actually move beyond it.”
The other significant criticism of McWilliams has been his formula of using novelty labelling to define different categories in Irish society. There is the likes of the “Breakfast Roll Man”, “Destiny’s Child”, and the “Jagger Generation”, a 50-something who still reads hotpress because he wants to be perceived as trendy. How does he respond to the criticism of over-using stereotypes to paint his portrait of contemporary Irish society?
“Ahhh, get over it! Get a fucking sense of humour,” McWilliams says, as he sips tea in the Central Hotel. “Really – get a sense of humour. For Jaysus’ sake, it is only a way of making economics interesting. What I say to knockers is, get off your hole and do it yourself! Economics is far too important to be left to dry-arsed people, right? Because economics is everything – it’s all our lives. I say to those people, ‘Get over it. Get a sense of humour’. You mightn’t find my sense of humour cool, fine, do it yourself then.
“What I am trying to do is make something popularly accessible that has been for years regarded as the preserve of people with economics degrees or journalists. I’m trying to make this public. The People’s Children sold very well not because it was an economics book but because it made it accessible. The only people who are threatened by this type of writing are those who would wish to have the singular voice in interrupting this society. You know who they are – and they’re the critics.”
But would McWilliams accept that he is simplifying problematical issues surrounding economics and sociology to the point of it being almost like a bubblegum analysis of Ireland?
“I think making things accessible is what commentary is all about,” he replies. “So, if you call it bubblegum, cool. It doesn’t bother me at all. Let’s cut to the chase here, right? All this stuff is easy and the key to it is to make things as open as possible – unthreatening, open ideas. That’s what makes societies tick. Well, if people say that’s dumbing down, I actually think it is dumbing up. You are saying to people, ‘This isn’t hard. Just because you aren’t an editorial writer in a newspaper doesn’t mean that this is beyond you’. The book should be regarded as a very open look at life in Ireland.”
When McWilliams signed his three-book deal with Gill & MacMillan, it was reported that his advance was the largest ever paid out by an Irish publisher. “Which is apparently a crime,” McWilliams nods. “What I love about Ireland is that it’s a crime to make a living. This is what I do for a living. This is what pays my mortgage. This is what educates my kids. This is what I do – and everybody wants to go out and get paid for what they do. So, I don’t think it’s a crime, but apparently it has raised eyebrows.”
Another issue that has presumably raised eyebrows in the media sphere has been the axing of McWilliams from all of his various short-lived television and radio presenting jobs. They might have been deemed as unsuccessful but, in fairness to him, they were amongst some of the better current affairs shows to have appeared in recent years.
Even McWilliams is unable to elucidate these failures. “I tried broadcasting – but I was fired from all the jobs. Maybe they are right; maybe they are telling you something!” he concedes. “Ireland is a weird place. It’s not bad luck. It is something more than that actually. It is a bit like the criticism of this book: if you shake things up in this country, you risk ridicule, and you also risk losing your job. Maybe in their own minds in NewsTalk they made a business decision and said, ‘OK, we’re going to get some guy in who’s going to do the devil and he’s going to get huge ratings, and then we’re going to be fine’. There are no hard feelings about these things. You’ve just got to move on. I’m probably going to do some work with Channel 4 next year.”
There is something else that haunts McWilliams. He was wrongly attributed with coining the ‘Celtic Tiger’ phrase. It appears to irk him that the media are now, as he puts it, using it as a stick to bash him with. “It has nothing to do with me. I have never ever claimed it anywhere. The whole genesis of it is, again, to do with a journalistic mistake concerning me. I wrote a brief report in ’94 when I worked for a Swiss bank, saying the Irish economy would grow like an Asian tiger. And the Daily Telegraph wrote an editorial in response to this saying that ‘this man doesn’t know anything about economics in Ireland, which is a backwater’, blah, blah, blah. Hilarious. I was living in London and I knew nothing about the Celtic Tiger – I rarely came home. About a year later that report was published in The Sunday Business Post and it said: ‘The man who invented the Celtic Tiger’. Nothing to do with me. And ever since then it has stuck. And of course, now it’s used as a stick to bash me with. Give me a break! God loves these characters, I don’t know who they are!”