Writer Joseph O’Connor has perhaps the right idea. He would take his family with him to that fabled desert island, “and a machine gun, so that I could fend off anyone who tried to rescue us.”
What is your earliest childhood memory?
My sister Eimear was born two years after me, and I am fairly sure I have a memory of being lifted up to see her. There was a religious medal pinned to the hood of her cradle. And her hair was a golden colour I had never seen before. But of course I may have imagined this. Memory is really a kind of imagination, a process of storytelling and explaining ourselves to ourselves.
Who was your first pin-up?
Without a doubt, Debbie Harry, the lead singer of Blondie. She had the kind of unearthly gorgeousness and grace that Yeats describes when he says Maud Gonne had ‘beauty like a tightened bow’.
Which of your peers do you most admire, and why?
There is no Irish writer of my own generation that I don’t admire enormously, but I have a special regard, as many of us do, for the novelist and poet Dermot Bolger. Through his crucial work in founding Raven Arts Press and then New Island Books, he helped so many of us when were starting. I love his novels, poems, stage-plays and journalism, and his whole attitude to writing: the way he works so hard in so many different genres. I also have a massive admiration for the broadcaster, film-maker and musician, Philip King, who is the one of the most can-do people I know.
What would you be doing with your life if you hadn’t chosen this career path?
I honestly can’t imagine doing anything else, although whenever I teach creative writing, as I do from time to time, I really enjoy the experience of teaching. I find I always learn an enormous amount from my students and I feel honoured to be in their presence.
Can you reveal one of your guilty pleasures?
I have a love of Lady Gaga’s music that I would never mention in the company of my extremely serious music-appreciating friends. I know I shouldn’t. But for some reason I do. It fills me with the kind of glee you feel when people smash china on the stage.
Who would you like to see cast in the movie of your life?
I very much hope there is never a movie of my life, but if there had to be, I would like Podge to play me as a young lad, Rodge as a middle-aged man, and Dame Judi Dench to play me as an aul' fella. And I would like the guy who imitates me on Joe Duffy’s Liveline to be my voice, because he does it far better than I do.
Who are you following on Twitter?
I don't. No interest at all. Never will.
What’s the first thing you’ll buy when you win the Lottery?
An Irish bank. Oh, wait. I already part-own several of those! It came as quite a surprise to me. As it probably did to you.
What would you pack for your desert island?
My wife, my children, my family, and all of my friends, and then a machine gun, so that I could fend off anyone who tried to rescue us.
What’s at the top of your Things to do Before I Die List?
Not all of them are printable, but one of them would be to visit Iceland, a county I have always been fascinated by. And I’d love to write a play that would be successfully performed on Broadway. I would also love to present my own late-night music programme on the radio, along the lines of Night Train, which was presented when I was a kid by the great Mark Cagney. For any of us who loved music, it was unmissable.
Joseph O’Connor’s novel Ghost Light has been chosen as Dublin’s ‘One City One Book’ novel for 2011. The author will appear in ‘The Music of Ghost Light’ at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, on April 3, with Sinead O’Connor, Steve Cooney, Camille O’Sullivan, Eimear Quinn, Philip King and Fishamble Theatre Company. On My Tunes (The Lyric Feature), this Friday, at 7.00pm, on RTÉ lyric fm, Joseph O’Connor discusses favourite music pieces with Aedin Gormley.
