My Cork Manifesto - Put It To The Testo

Solar Eclipse & Shandon, by Marcin Lewandowski

* So - a little something different - and perhaps madly niche - unless you know and care about my home-town, the southern Irish port city of Cork.

A small island between two rivers running into a vast natural harbour. Picture the Venice of The North, but with slightly fewer Renaissance palaces.

I have recently returned home after many years abroad - in Dublin and most recently London.

And in the great tradition of prodigal sons just returned to their native lands, I am now the world's leading expert on everything regarding the town I haven't lived in for half my life.

For those that don't know Cork, or just think they know it, my hometown can be a peculiar place. It's people are often traduced as arrogant, difficult or just plain delusional.

But what outsiders (mostly Dubliners) see as "typical Cork arrogance" is (as more thoughtful Leesiders would tell you) a disguised insecurity, A defence mechanism. And it's not us. It's the result of a city that has forgotten its true history. And a people who have, despite being world-class talkers, struggled to recall and to tell their own story.

So in typical Cork style, I'm going to confidently lay out my grand vision, my Leeside Manifesto, a flight of fancy or the story Cork needs to tell about itself.

You don't have to agree. But thanks For Reading.


* Cork - in fairness, like - is not an Irish city. Never was.

That's not a conscious choice or a state of mind.

It's a fact dictated by geography and history.

Look at a map of southern Ireland and you will see Cork County, bordered on almost all sides by mountains. The city itself is in a steep river valley backed by more mountains, way down on the south coast of the island. .

Cork City Quays Circa 1950s 

Cork's history, since it started trading with France and Spain in the 14th Cent and then, later, with the wider world, made it a mercantile port, a place which exported the bounty of rich land behind it, with more in common with ports like Hamburg and Porto than Irish cities such as Kilkenny or even Galway.

The energy and destiny of the city has historically flowed down the river, out through the huge harbour and by centuries old sea-lanes to the far corners of the world.

Through it's long history, even though we have recently forgotten, Cork has not been an Irish city. It has always been an Atlantic City.

When sail ruled the waves, Cork exported vast quantities of the staples - sea-biscuits, butter, salt pork and beef - which sustained countless numbers of merchant and navy sailors for hundreds of years. And - in a darker chapter of our history - also made vast fortunes for the merchant clans who victualled the slave ships sailing the Atlantic.

At one stage, Cork butter was a world commodity, internationally traded, prized and priced in the same way grain, pork belly and beef futures are today.

Corkmen were sailors and sea-traders. It's in our DNA - so many Corkmen served in the British Navy that in the pre-WWI era of the fearsome Dreadnoughts - the British navy was said to be "steel on the outside - Cork on the inside".

For most of its long history, going back to the Vikings who settled and traded where the river meets the sea, Cork has been a city of outsiders coming in, to build, trade and define what this port was.

It's architecture and streetscape is a mish-mash of foreign influences. A faint echo of Viking, traces of Elizabethan Planter, the distinctive doll houses of French Huguenots and later, and most profoundly, Quaker, Presbyterian and Protestant merchants, sea traders and servants of Empire. These "outsiders" built the city. And for hundreds of years ships sailed up the river and docked right in the heart of the town.

The City Floods Regularly - A Chance to Make Your Own Entertainment

So Cork was always an open, diverse, welcoming city. It had to be. Open your front door of a morning and you would find a ship in from Holland, France, South America or anywhere in the vast British Empire parked there right in front of you. You had to get used to seeing strangers around the gaff.

But that all changed with the worst thing that ever happened to Cork - Irish independence. Overnight Cork was cut-off from the Empire. (And by the way, the Rebel County thing? It has nothing to do with Tom Barry or Michael Collins and the fight for Irish freedom, but all to do with the Derek Zoolander of the War of the Roses - for more on that bizarre, Very Cork slice of history - see Here)

Ireland retreated and turned inwards, established trade, cultural and psychic barriers against the outside world. Cork City and its port went into its long decline and the once great mercantile city turned inwards on itself, literally, putting its back to the river and the increasingly sleepy docks and losing the energy and connectivity that once flowed through the river, harbour and the wide Atlantic Ocean.

Jack Lynch ; Hurler, Footballer,  Politician, Male Model

We became a little bitter. We made grim jibes about being the Real Capital. How dat lot up in Dublin never did nothin' for us.

We left. Or worse - we forgot.

So the story of Cork became the story of lost mercantile greatness and fading, shabby grandeur. Slow, inexorable decline and the bitter word. Or worse, a chip-on-the-shoulder, put-on arrogance that has annoyed the rest of the country and baffled anyone from the wider world.

We still retained that distinct sense of Corkness. Our customs and language have always been a little....off. We have Bonfire Night in the middle of the Summer (St John's Eve, a strange echo of pagan times that we share with those on the Celtic fringes of Northern Europe). I could do a whole other blog on how Cork people have a weird way with language, syntax, vocabulary. Have a conversation with a Leesider and you will be doing a lot of; "Wait, what!?" The humour is surreal. The attitude is a little ...Mediterranean? Anarchic? Individual?

But we lost a lot. We held on to the small stuff, the little quirks, but couldn't retain the real sense of ourselves. Our story.

However, now, if we can only see it, we have come full (or full-ish) circle.

How's this for a symbol? The Hibernia Express undersea cable - the most modern fibre optic cable connecting north America & Europe and the first new one in almost a decade - came ashore in Cork in 2015. Another one is on the way.

Trace the line of these cables and they follow the copper telegraph cables that first spanned the Atlantic. Trace them back further and they overset the sea-lanes and trade routes taken by ships sailing to and from Cork for centuries.

In recent years, home-grown and international tech, pharma, agri-biz and bio-science companies have brought an incredibly diverse population back into the city and county.

Cork is connected once more. Diverse once more. Open once more. It's a compact, brilliantly livable city. We need to get that message out to people in Dublin, London, San Francisco, Paris and Berlin. Imagine a compact, open, affordable city where you can live, work and play on the most beautiful, uncrowded, unspoilt Atlantic Coastline in Northern Europe. With the best food, the best schools and the best quality of life you could hope to find.

It should also be a great destination city for those looking for something a little different, a little intangible, a little eccentric.

And that, my fellow Leesiders (and ye children of a lesser God) is the story we need to tell about the city today. Shout about Cork. From the rooftops, with one, clear, unified voice.

An Atlantic City, open and connected to the world. A port city where the energy and focus flows in and out with river and tide through the harbour.

It's time we defined ourselves once again. And told our own story. It's a good one.

And by the way, New Rule. The next Langer who utters the phrase "De Real Capital" gets strung up by the balls from that Goldie Fish atop of Shandon.

HEY! If you loved this (and why wouldn't ya) Read my Cork Manifesto Part Deaux - The Mainfestoing! - Here


**** Hey! Thanks for reading.  

Original Ziggy - The Doomed Brit Rocker Who Inspired Bowie

* The death of David Bowie, coming like a lightning bolt from the blue, has gotten the world talking about his influence and legacy.

It's made me think about the people who influenced him - and in particular, a long forgotten British Rock n'Roller, one of the originals, who was the inspiration (or at least partly) for Ziggy Stardust.

This is the story of  Vince Taylor. And I think the story is worth telling.

Vince Taylor is from the Stone Age. The least fashionable era of British Rock and Pop Music, when the early pioneers who heard  the very earliest Yank Rock N'Roll - often on radio stations serving US servicemen in Europe - came up with a weird, mid-Atlantic take on the music.

They they look and attitude of Elvis, Carl Perkins, Eddie Cochrane and Gene Vincent and came up with a strange, ersatz copy, in the way the British-made cars of the era aped the Fins and Chrome look of Yank cars of the era on a smaller, more homely scale. 

They were the likes of Cliff Richard and Johnny Kidd. And one of the biggest at the time - Rock n'Roll wildman Vince Taylor - is now virtually forgotten.

But every time you hear Bowie sing Ziggy, you are hearing the story of Vince, the Black Leather clad, chain-swinging maniac who was the first British Rock star, exploding at that moment between grey, post-war austerity and the birth of Beat Music and the Liverpool Sound.

Good Rocking Tonight - Vince Taylor in '59

And when David Bowie created Ziggy Stardust, he had in mind the long-forgotten Rock n'Roll star called Vince Taylor, the original Live, Fast, Die Young wildman of Brit Rock.

As he explained in a BBC Documentary in the '90s - Bowie used to hang out with Taylor in London in the mid-60's when the singer was well past his brief, blazing hey-day. 

By this stage, Taylor was pretty much out of his mind on drink and drugs. Bowie recalled how, Taylor would always carry maps around with him. And one day in a bar close to Charing Cross Road, Taylor took out one of the maps and started pointing to locations where UFOs would soon land.

The old Rocker had formed a theory that Jesus Christ was really an alien. Taylor had started doing gigs in old pubs dressed in white robes and telling bemused, sparse audiences that he was, in fact, Jesus Christ.  Taylor was convinced that there was a strong connection between himself, aliens and the Lord. 

Bowie resurrected Vince Taylor in the early 70s, when Taylor’s flipped-out Rock n'Roll religion became one of the main ingredients of Ziggy.

Taylor was born in London, raised in the US and returned back home as a teenager just in time to catch the Rock n'Roll wave. As the wildly gyrating, black leather clad front-man for Vince Taylor & The Playboys, he shone very brightly, very briefly. His later life was a sort of slow descent, booze, drugs, bankruptcy, bad choices, ever diminishing crowds.

Vince, real name Brian Holden, was born in Isleworth, Middlsex just before the war. His father moved the family to the US in 1946 and in 1955, his sister married Joe Barbera, one half of the animation duo who produced huge cartoon series such as Captain Caveman and Wacky Races.

They moved to California, where the teenage Brian was exposed to early Rock n'Roll and started singing in bands. Inspired by Elvis and Gene Vince, he changed his name to Vince Taylor and decided to move back to Britain.

It was perfect timing. The late '50s saw Rock n'Roll explode in the UK and Vince, with his Black Leather & Swinging Chain Wildman act, was soon enjoying the first of a string of hits. With Elvis, Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochrane on the other side of the Atlantic, Vince Taylor was as close to the real thing as most teens and the music industry could get.

He was a big draw during the brief heyday of British Rock n'Roll. But saw his career fade in the UK. He remained popular in France and The Netherlands, as a sort of Anglophone Johnny Halliday, a throwback to the glory days of black leather and greased back hair.

Billed - with his band - as "Vince Taylor et ses Play-Boys", he lived much of the the rest of his life in France and Switzerland. By the '80s, he had largely kicked his drink and drug problems and was working as an aircraft mechanic, a period which he called "the happiest days of my life".

He died of cancer in 1991, aged 54 and is buried in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Vince is now virtually forgotten, except for those - like Bowie - who remembered him in his heyday.

A b-side of his from '59 - Brand New Cadillac - has been covered by many artists - including The Clash on London's Calling.

But as Van Morrison put it in his 1999 song "Goin' Down Geneva": "Vince Taylor used to live here/No one's even heard of him/Just who he was/Just where he fits in".

**** THANKS FOR READING***** 

Have A Very Cool Yule - Christmas Songs That Won't Embarrass You (And You Might Love)

It's Christmaaaas! As The Man Once Sang.......

The Noddster

And if you're one of those people who thinks; "If I have to listen to that basterin' Mariah Carey song one more time, I'll strangle every last person in this Tescos" - you might appreciate some of these Christmas songs - that range from the indie-tastic to the just lovely. It's a very personal selection, but you might find a few you haven't heard before and appreciate. 

So, in no particular order, My Cool Crimbo Choons Selection includes.

* 17 - Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis - Tom Waits 

Could not leave this one out - Tom Waits has the bookend for Fairytale of New York - slow, mellow, dark, heartfelt. 

*16 The Wexford Carol - Alison Krauss + YoYo Ma 

Just....gorgeous - an old Irish carol - brilliantly done by Alison Krauss and YoYo Ma - gives "all the feels" as The Kids are fond of saying.

* 15 Bob Dylan - Must Be Santa

Croakin' Bob goes kinda Polka/Zydeco - great rollicking song that will put a smile on your face.

* 14 Gaudete - Steeleye Span 

Very haunting. This sacred carol is believed to have been written in the 16th Century and Gaudete is ecclesiastical Latin, meaing "rejoice". English folkies Steeleye Span had a top 20 hit with this in 1973 - a very strange song to hear in amidst the glam-rock. This acapella version is from Steeleye's 30th anniversary reunion concert.   

* 13 Solstice Bells - Jethro Tull 

Great bit of '70s Proggified Christmas tunage from Jethro Tull.

* 12 Merry Christmas (I Don't Wanna Fight No More) - The Ramones 

Lovely blast of Christmas cheer from the lads. 

* 11 - Father Christmas - The Kinks 

"When I was small I believed in Santa Claus - Though I knew it was my dad.."

Another rocker of a Christmas song - great for Parties - a classic from the Kinks. 

* 10 - Frosty The Snowman - The Cocteau Twins 

'80s Indie heroes The Cocteau Twins did a jangly version of this classic back in the '80s - with a b-side version of Winter Wonderland. Vocalist Elizabeth Fraser and guitarist Robin Guthrie came up with a slightly woozy but very sincere take on this classic. 

* 9 Christmas Wrapping - The Waitresses 

Another '80s indie-classic - from early '80s Akron, Ohio New Wavers The Waitresses (best known for I Know What Boys Like) - any Christmas song that starts with "Bah Humbug" has got the right Christmas Spirit - but the lyrics capture a kind of love-hate relationship with the festive season - and the brass bits are gorgeous. One of my all-time faves, 

* 8 A Christmas Duel - The Hives And Cyndi Lauper 

Again - a great opening line to this sort of indie-rock take on the spirit (at least) of Fairy Tale of New York; "I got no gifts this year - and I slept with your sister". 

What follows is a rowdy, very Phil Spector/Motown Christmas song - lovely stuff. A real Midnight In The Pub Christmas Eve sing-along. 

* 7 Back Door Santa - Clarence Carter

He's a bluesy, back door Santa - he makes his runs about the break of day - Ho, Ho, Ho. Smutty Santa - he don't come but once a year. One for the office party

* 6 Santa Claus Is Ska-ing To Town - The Granville Williams Orchestra

A very rock-steady take on the old fave, with Granville Williams doing the honours - check out the great Trojan Christmas Box-Set for a whole load of Ska/Reggae etc Christmas Songs. Including Yellow Man's Santa Claus Never Comes To The Ghetto and Johnny Clarke's great version of I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus. 

* 5 Troika - from Lieutenant Kiije - Prokofiev 

This VERY Christmassy song was actually written by Prokofiev for a 1934 Soviet Propaganda movie  about a soldier - go figure. I love it. 

* 4 - I Believe In Father Christmas - Greg Lake 

A lovely Christmas song from '70s Progster Greg Lake - this is a song with a message, but pretty subtle. It was also once chosen by the Archbishop of Canterbury as his fave Christmas Song, thanks to what he thought was its very Christian Message. And he should know, in fairness. 

* 3 The Pogues & Kirsty MacColl - Fairytale of New York 

C'mon! I'm hardly going to leave it out?! It's just about perfect. 

* 2 Christmas In Hollis - Run DMC 

This is just a bit of a nostalgia trip - remember hearing this a LOT the year it came out and Run DMC were very, very cool. 

* 1 2,000 Miles - The Pretenders 

If Santa put a gun to my head - this would be the one Christmas song I would choose as my favourite, a beautiful pop Christmas Carol, dedicated to (and about) a band-mate who had died way to young. It's got everything about Christmas, family, yearning, nostalgia, the bitter-sweet thing. It's just perfect. 

* Hey! Thanks for Reading. 

No Gods, No Masters - The Remarkable Margaret Sanger

* If you follow US politics, you might have heard of Planned Parenthood – the nationwide women’s health agency that is now under huge attack by the Republican Party, militant pro-life activists, Fox News, the Christian Right and assorted other wingnuts.

What you may not know is that Planned Parenthood can trace it’s lineage back to a remarkable Irish-American woman, a suffragette and early advocate for women’s health rights and family planning.

She was the redoubtable Margaret Sanger, the daughter of two Irish emigrants. Her father Michael Hennessey Higgins, left Ireland as a child, served as a drummer-boy in the Union Army fighting the Civil War at 15 and grew up to be a radical free-thinker, socialist and “Walk Away” Catholic.

She was born Margaret Hennessy Higgins. And 99 years ago, on October 25^th, 1916, she was arrested for operating a birth control clinic in Brooklyn, New York (America’s first). Convicted and sent to jail for a month, she was totally unrepentant and went on to devote the rest of her life to women’s health. 

Today - at least two candidates for the US Presidency have added their names to a letter - signed by 25 Republican Party law-makers - calling for a bust of this great woman to be removed from America's National Portrait Gallery's "Struggle for Justice" exhibit. 

They label her a racist and a "baby murderer". But you could argue that what they really hate about Margaret Sanger is that she stood up against ignorance and religious dogma, to fight for the rights of poor women. And helped found what would go on to be Planned Parenthood. 

Sanger's legacy has come under attack from the extremists who want to deny women birth control and access to affordable health care today.

For her supporters, those who want to destroy her name and erase her legacy today are the direct descendants of those politicians and law-makers who put Margaret in prison in 1916, to silence her, to intimidate her, to punish her for daring to stand up for the health rights of ordinary women.

The woman born Margaret Hennessey Higgins refused to be silenced back then, those who honour her work and her life can show the same strength today. 

* Born in 1879 in New York, Margaret was one of 11 surviving children to her Irish catholic parents (both had fled to North America as children during the Great Famine). Her mother underwent 22 pregnancies and died (a devout catholic) aged 49. 

Sanger's Father - Irish-born Michael Hennessey Higgins

Her father Michael was a remarkable man, a boy-soldier with the Union Army in the Civil War, he had tried to become a doctor before having to settle for being a stone-mason (his speciality was angels for fancy tombs). Michael Hennessey rejected the Catholic Church, became a radical, a free-thinker and encouraged his children, including Margaret, to think for themselves, work for social justice and reject dogma and ignorance.

Margaret became a visiting Nurse, working with some of the poorest families on the Lower East Side in New York, in 1911. She also threw herself into radical politics, campaigning for social justice, for voting rights for women and for access to health care. 

It was whilst working amongst the poor that she came across cases of women who were facing severe health problems due to multiple births, and also women who died because of back-street abortions. 

Margaret had already, in 1914, launched a regular newsletter, titled That Women Rebel - No Gods, No Masters - promoting birth control and women's rights.

She wanted to provide information for women - but also to provoke a challenge to the federal anti-obscenity law that banned any promotion or mention of contraception. 

In her work day life as a nurse, it was after one particularly harrowing case in 1915 that she resolved to import contraceptives from France and distribute them through the first family planning clinic in the US. She set it up in 1916 and was arrested after a month. A book she published on the issue of family planning was also banned and led to another prosecution. 

Sanger had witnessed a young women she knew personally die from the affects of an attempted self-induced abortion. 

Later on, she wrote of that night; "I threw my nursing bag in the corner and announced ... that I would never take another case until I had made it possible for working women in America to have the knowledge to control birth".

A few years earlier, she had written a series of extremely frank and informative sex columns for a popular left-wing magazine, titled "What Every Woman Should Know". 

Sanger (she had married and had kids herself several years earlier) refused to be silenced, refused to be barred from what she saw as her life's work. 

She did dabble in the fashionable (at the time) theories of population control and the quack science of Eugenics, the belief (then very widespread in intellectual and scientific circles) that you could "breed" superior human beings through selection based on race, IQ, physical characteristics etc. This is the stick that is now being used to attack her legacy, the implication being that Sanger wanted mass sterilisation and the elimination of "inferior" races.

Eugenics - viewed from a modern perspective - is gruesome, quack science. It was widely championed at the time by scientists, politicians, intellectuals (GB Shaw was a big proponent) and even religious leaders such as the Catholic Archbishop of New York, Irishman Patrick J Hayes, who hosted an international conference on Eugenics in NY in 1921. But it was used by Hitler and the Nazis to justify the mass sterilisation or euthanasia of people they considered sub-humans,

Everything that we know about Margaret Sanger - her humanity, her devotion to the health and well-being of all women, her promotion of science and knowledge, her rejection of crushing dogma and the many hypocrisies and shibboleths which were designed to keep women ignorant and powerless, tell us her belief in Eugenics was, at worst, as mistaken and misguided with her as it was with the many other prominent figures who briefly embraced its dubious promise.  

Sanger lived a very long life, worked with trade unions, on worker's rights, on social justice, on health provision for the poor and for the rights of women. 

She was instrumental in changing laws, in changing attitudes and changing the lives of millions of women for the better, whether that was in getting the right to vote or opening the way towards affordable, available contraception. 

Her life was far, far too long and eventful to go into here, but there is much to read online. 

Margaret Sanger was by any measure a remarkable woman. If anybody deserves to be remembered in their country's National Portrait Gallery, especially in a section titled "The Struggle For Justice", it is her.

**** Hey - Thanks For Reading****  

Wings Over Monasterevin! The Nazi Paratrooper Who Landed in Co Kildare

* Another strange story - this about the German paratroop legend/Nazi War Criminal who rescued Mussolini, attempted to assassinate Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt, and ended up farming cattle in Co Kildare. 

Yes, Otto Skorzeny was some man for one man. An insanely daring soldier and leader of men, an ardent Nazi and the man who (temporarily) saved Benito Mussolini from the retribution of the Italian nation. 

He masterminded and personally carried out one of the most spectacular commando missions of the Second World War. But Otto Skorzeny was not a hero. He was a fascist, a killer, an SS officer, mercenary for military dictators and - by any measure - thoroughly evil.

He was also - for a while - Ireland's least likely beef farmer. 

Wartime Snap of Skorzeny - Note the Duelling Scars

* The Gothic Hunting lodge, Martinstown House, is today a luxury B&B set in the classic horse racing country of the Curragh of Kildare. In the 1960s is was home to Standartenfuhrer Otto Skorzeny of the Waffen SS, Hitler's favourite paratrooper. 

How the man who was born in Vienna in 1907 and helped set up the Austrian Nazi Party in 1931 ended up farming cattle in the Irish midlands is something of a complicated story. 

But then Colonel Skorzeny was a complicated man. An unapologetic Nazi to the end, he combined farming in Ireland with running an international mercenary agency - serving, amongst others, the apartheid regime in South Africa - and stood by his love for der Führer right to the end. 

He was the man who was (according to Soviet intelligence) chosen to carry out Operation Long Jump - the German plan to assassinate the Big Three (Churchill, Stalin & Roosevelt) while they were together at the Tehran Coference in 1943. He was also the man who held the military HQ in Berlin from rebel officers after the Valkyrie plot to assassinate Hitler in 1944 came close to succeeding.

"Der Furher Was A Wunnerful Dancer!"

But it was the daring and successful Operation Oak - the ridiculously dangerous paratroop mission to rescue deposed Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in September 1943, that made Skorzeny internationally famous. 

The SS officer had been shot down - twice - on two previous missions to locate and rescue Mussolini. The first time, he was the only survivor, the second, his plane was shot down by Allied fighters and crash-landed in the sea. Skorzeny and his crew were miraculously rescued by a passing Italian warship.

In the end - Skorzeny led the paratroopers who landed a plane on a tiny mountaintop fortress at Gran Sasso, grabbed Il Duce and flew him off to run a puppet fascist state in Northern Italy, until the Italian partisans finally caught up with him.

At 6ft 4in and 18 stone, he was known to his men as "Scarface", thanks to a prominent duelling scar picked up in his youth. 

After the war, he was captured by the Allies and was due to stand trial at Dachau (site of the concentration camp) but escaped in 1948. 

Skorzeny With Mussolini Moments After He Was Rescued

He fled using the underground railway for ex-Nazis (and this is where his story gets very Frederick Forsysth) that was (allegedly) set up with the help of high-ranking Vatican officials and ended up in Argentina or Brazil. Later on, Skorzeny would help run the ODESSA network - helping to find gainful work for former SS soldiers with the fascist governments of Spain and several Central American and Middle Eastern Countries.

In Argentina, he became a bodyguard for Eva Perón, with whom he was rumoured to have had an affair.

He worked as a freelance mercenary/military adviser for dictators in Europe, Central America, the Middle East and (later on) Africa. 

But his "other" passion - farming - saw him buy Martinstown House and it's 160 acres of prime farming land in Co Kildare in 1958 and play at being the landed gentry.

Visa issues - and the fact that he was an international war criminal who had only been granted a partial amnesty - meant that Skorzeny could only reside in Ireland for six months of the year. 

But while he was a figure of alarm for the Irish government - he was regarded as something of a intriguing, almost glamorous figure by the Irish newspapers and much of the public (he was not, however, overly popular in the locality in Kildare, being something of a stand-offish character. And the whole, y'know, Nazi war criminal thing).  

He did became a local celebrity in The Curragh, driving around in his distinctive white Mercedes saloon, popping into the Post Office to collect exotically-stamped mail from his "friends and former colleagues" all over the world and even dining out in the best restaurants in Dublin.  On one occasion, he was said to have spent an enjoyable night at a glittering social affair in Dublin, chatting to a young TD called Charlie Haughey - who would go on to be Ireland's Taoiseach (prime minister) and who always had an eye for strong leaders who were - somehow or other - worth a bob or two. 

Of course, Skorzeny wasn't short of friends in Ireland. Our little republic - staunchly Catholic, ready to do the Vatican's bidding and not prone to asking too many questions - ended up as a bolt hole for a number of high-profile ex-Nazis include the successful businessman Albert Folens of Irish schoolbook publishing and Waffen SS fame. (Folens was a Belgian nazi/collaborator who at one stage led the Flemish SS legion). 

Skorzeny kept up his "international consulting role" right up to his death in fascist Spain in 1975, with one of his last jobs being for the apartheid regime in South Africa, helping to recruit "security and counter-terrorism experts" to fight in the internal and external wars being fought against African liberation movements. 

His ashes were returned to Vienna (after a Catholic funeral mass in Madrid). And Kildare lost one of it's most notable beef farmers.

** For More on Skorzeny, you can check out this good piece from BBCNI Just Click Here

And this is an excellent piece by Irish journalist Kim Bielenberg - "How My Grandfather Tried To Assassinate Hitler" Click Here

***Hey, thanks for reading!*** 

The Last Man To Hang - And The Crowd Sang "Champagne Charlie".

* I have written before on the grisly subject of public execution. And the recent commemorations of the Fenian Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa brought to mind one of his comrades, the alliterative "forgotten Fenian from Fermanagh", Michael Barrett.

The execution of 27-year-old Barrett, on May 26th, 1868, was the last public judicial killing in England. And the story around it gives us a flavour of how these events were huge public spectacles, carried out in a riotously macabre atmosphere, halfway between a sporting event and a street-party. 


********** 

Charles Dickens, a noted attender of public executions, was, regrettably, otherwise engaged. And Karl Marx, who had followed the newspaper stories of "Irish Fenian Outrages" avidly, only wrote about how the actions of the condemned man and his accomplices would turn the working classes against the cause of Ireland.

Marx, a strong supporter of the cause, despaired that the terrorist acts carried out in Britain by the Fenians would prove counter-productive.

"The London masses (wrote Marx), who have shown great sympathy towards Ireland, will be made wild and driven into the arms of a reactionary government. One cannot expect the London proletarians to allow themselves to be blown up in honour of Fenian emissaries.”

On May 26th, 1868, 27-year-old Fermanagh man Michael Barrett was taken from his cell in Newgate Prison in London and brought to the scaffold erected outside in the public space. It was three days before a bill to end the practice of public execution would pass through Parliament.

As the noose was placed around his neck and the last rites were read by a Catholic Priest, the crowd sang patriotic songs, including Rule Britannia and the most popular music hall song of the day, the jaunty "Champagne Charlie".

But the crowd was not turbulent or violent, as they had been for previous high-profile executions. Even though anger against the "Irish barbarians" in their midst was running high, the Times newspaper noted (with some caution); “The crowd was most unusually orderly - but it was not a crowd in which one would like to trust.”

Public executions were the spectator sport of the mid-Victorian age. Special trains would be laid on to bring vast numbers to the hanging of particularly notorious criminals. The press reported them avidly, special broadsides, pamphlets and souvenir newspaper editions would be printed immediately afterwards, giving those who could not attend a full account of the event. They were popular days out for the Quality, the well-dressed gentlemen & ladies who would pay money to rent good views from rooms overlooking the execution spot, a chance to go "slumming" amongst the teeming masses. Ladies would often dress in elaborate black satin and silk "mourning dresses" to mark the occasion. 

Six months previously, another crowd had watched the hanging of the Manchester Martyrs, three Irish Fenians who had tried to liberate some comrades from a horse-drawn police-van. A policeman had been shot dead. 

Barrett was convicted of another, greater outrage, the bombing of Clerkenwell Prison, another botched attempt at liberating comrades, in which a huge "infernal machine" (a bomb) had been placed against the wall of the prison. 

It blew a 60 yard gap in the Prison wall, but demolished nearby tenements, killing 12 people. 

The terrible death and destruction whipped up a wave of anti-Irish feeling and led even reformers such as Charles Bradlaugh to observe; “The worst enemy of the Irish people could not have devised a scheme better calculated to destroy all sympathy,”

In the popular press of the day, individual Fenians like O'Donovan Rossa (and his U.S. sympathisers) as well as the Irish in general were depicted as brute apes, monkeys sitting atop gunpowder barrels.

Such was the outrage at the Irish Gunpowder men, the authorities were pressed to act fast. And even though the public hangings were about to be ended, the last to hang would be a young Fermanagh man, son of a farmer, an Irish Fenian. 

Barrett has protested his innocence, claiming to be in Glasgow at the time of the explosion. The Crown brought forward witnesses to say he had been in Clerkenwell. One Fenian, Patrick Mullaly, escaped prosecution by turning Crown Witness to say that it was Barrett himself who lit the fuse. 

The young man was a Fenian. But there was strong evidence to say he was in Glasgow at the time the bomb went off, and the Crown case rested on some very questionable eye-witness evidence. No matter, the Disraeli government was under severe pressure from all sides over the "Fenian Panic". Some man had to hang. 

Barrett made an eloquent speech from the dock, proclaiming his innocence of the act but affirming his readiness to die for the cause of Ireland. 

On the morning after the hanging, the Reynold’s News observed, “Millions will continue to doubt that a guilty man has been hanged at all; and the future historian of the Fenian panic may declare that Michael Barrett was sacrificed to the exigencies of the police, and the vindication of the good Tory principle, that there is nothing like blood.” 

Of the hanging itself, it went off without the kind of mob-violence often seen at these events, when drink, excitement and the prospect of seeing a criminal dance at the end of a rope often got the better of the vast crowds that would assemble.

A lengthy sketch in The Times the following day said; A very wide open space was kept round the gallows by the police, but beyond this the concourse was dense, stretching up beyond St. Sepulchre’s Church, and far back almost, into Smithfield—a great surging mass of people which, in spite of the barriers, kept swaying to and from like waving corn. Now and then there was a great laughter as a girl fainted, and was passed out hand over hand above the heads of the mob, and then there came a scuffle and a fight, and then a hymn, and then a sermon, and then a comic song, and so on from hour to hour, the crowd thickening as the day brightened, and the sun shone out with such a glare as to extinguish the very feeble light which showed itself faintly through the glass roof above where the culprit lay. It was a wild, rough crowd, not so numerous nor nearly so violent as that which thronged to see Muller or the pirates die. In one way they showed their feeling by loudly hooting a magnificently-attired woman, who, accompanied by two gentlemen, swept down the avenue kept open by the police, and occupied a window afterwards right in front of the gallows. This temporary exhibition of feeling was, however, soon allayed by coppers being thrown from the window for the roughs to scramble for. It is not right, perhaps, that a murderer’s death should be surrounded by all the pious and tender accessories which accompany the departure of a good man to a better world, but most assuredly the sight of public executions to those who have to witness them is as disgusting as it must be demoralizing even to all the hordes of thieves and prostitutes it draws together. Yesterday the assembly was of its kind an orderly one, yet it was such as we feel grateful to think will under the new law never be drawn together again in England.

They had gotten what the came for. Revenge for the Clerkenwell Bombing, the spectacle of one of the Fenian Bogey-men hanging from a rope. They had even got to sing "Champagne Charlie" and seen the quality, the well-dressed society men and women who would pay local householders to secure a good seat by a window over-looking the gallows. 

It was the last spectacle of its kind in London. Michael Barrett was the last man to hang in public. One of the last sounds he heard before the trap-door opened was thousands of Londoners, singing the music hall ditty of the day, "Champagne Charlie". 

"Champagne Charlie is my name
Champagne Charlie is my name
There's no drink as good as fizz, fizz, fizz
I'll drink every drop there is, is, is
All round town it is the same
By Pop! Pop! Pop! I rose to fame
I'm the idol of the barmaids
Champagne Charlie is my name...." 




If you want to read the full times report of the hanging - you can find it here:
Times Report of The Hanging of Barrett

***HEY THANKS FOR READING***** 

Jeremy Clarkson Is An Anti-Irish, Non-Racist AssClown Who Sucks Donkey Balls

* He hasn't gone away, you know. And I realise we should just ignore the F**ker but it's hard to, when Amazon drive a dump-truck up to his house and unload a pile of money.

Yet! While I have no photographic or anecdotal proof that Jeremy Clarkson Sucks Donkey Balls, and can provide no witnesses or veterinary experts to back up my claim, it is my strong belief that Jeremy Clarkson does indeed, Suck Donkey Balls.

And the Other Two would do so if he told them to.

So here's my calm, considered argument as to why Jeremy Clarkson is a Non-Racist Who Sucks Donkey Balls. Thank you for feeling my pain. (And apologies for the Wonky Donkey Lay-Out)


****************************************************************************

Jeremy Clarkson 

* Imagine this. One of the highest-profile, best paid and (apparently best loved) personalities on American TV comes back to their hotel after a day's shooting, finds he can't get a steak and proceeds to punch a subordinate in the face, while calling them a "lazy black c**t".

How long, exactly, would that fictional TV presenter's career last after that moment?

Can you imagine the media-storm, the pressure on President Obama to weigh-in, the howls of opprobrium from the liberal media (and the cries of "witch-hunt" from Fox News)?

Do you think the African-American subordinate in question would come under a lot of pressure to laugh it off as "just a bit of banter" or would have major media figures (and friends and colleagues of the presenter) lining up to say "it's not really racist" or "we know X and he's just not that type of guy - he must have been a bit tired, is all".

He would be out on his ass in 24-hours. And Amazon or Netflix sure as hell wouldn't be banging on his door to give him a multi-million pound contract.

So what's different in Jeremy Clarkson's case? We know the facts - he rolled home to his hotel from a strenuous day of pulling faces and making lame jokes about cars to find he didn't have a hot steak waiting. So he took out his anger on a young Irish subordinate, Oisin Tymon, punched him and called him a "lazy Irish c**t".

Now - replace "Irish" with "Black" (or worse), or "Paki" or ...well you get the idea.

Clarkson did this and almost got away with it. He almost kept his high-profile, highly-paid job in mainstream broadcasting because, well, because it's not really racist if it's a white Irish guy, and Jezza's a bit mad like that, and he's built a brand by "saying the things other TV personalities won't say" and sure it was just banter and that nice Hamster Hammond thinks he's a great guy... and on and on and on.

A Donkey

So - the Non-Racist in question can write things - in a national newspaper - which suggest that airport delays could be solved by "a bit of racism" . 

"Nobody is waved through any more", he wrote in The Sun. 
"The result is plain for all to see. There’s a two-hour wait. And the problem is: the only possible solution is to introduce a bit of racism."

He added: "Nobody likes a racist. Nobody likes prejudice. It has no place at work, at play, or in government. But at Heathrow airport? Hmmm."

And of course, Clarkson generates money. A LOT of money. For himself and his employers. Seems a lot of people are willing to pay to see a guy say the things some/all of us might occasionally be guilty of thinking but cannot say out loud and hope to hang onto our jobs/respect of other people.

So will his new Amazon venture work? I think not. For a number of reasons. Including; 

* Top Gear was fabulously well-resourced, a behemoth of behind the scenes talent and money. Will Amazon be able to replicate that? Can they afford to send multiple camera crews to Tibet or wherever for two weeks to film the trademark stunts and specials? Can they find (and pay) the talent to make it happen? 

* Top Gear is a brand - A brand which is owned by the BBC - Clarkson and Co will not be able to use it, so from the very start, what they do will be a shadow of that brand - an imitation... "High Octane", "Turbo Charge" or "Glop Tear".  

* Top Gear was/is that increasingly rare thing on mainstream TV - Appointment-To-View, Sunday Night Telly - so will it feel the same when you can download (from Amazon's bizarrely user-unfriendly VOD site) and binge-watch? 

* Top Gear Appealed to 30-something and up demographic - they have proved to be pretty resistant to Video-On-Demand. Yes, they will pay for HUGE dramas like House of Cards or Orange Is The New Black - but that's drama - which follows a definite arc and makes you come back for more. Not three guys randomly messing about with cars. 

* There will still be a real Top Gear - with Chris Evans - who offers the attraction of being just as annoying as Clarkson when he puts his mind to it (actually, Evans is a real petrol-head and I think he could do a great job - he has the right personality and skill-set. And if rumours of Jenson Button joining him are true - that's your hard-core, younger petrol-head demo right there). 

So maybe it will work, maybe it won't. But you wonder about the ethical and moral fibre of Amazon - and if they would pay the same money to employ our fictional US host, the fictional asshole I imagined at the start of this rant. 

* HEY! Thanks for reading.