There was a pleasant surprise for an Irish superfan of singer Gloria Estefan when he was reunited with his friend and idol live on the Ryan Tubridy Show on Monday morning.
Dubliner Kevin Murnane, who works as a freelance make-up artist for film and TV, appeared on the show to talk about his love for the Cuban singer and said he first became a fan at the age of nine years old.
"I've been a big fan since I was a kid, I mean, I’m going back to nine years old and her big hit, Doctor Beat, and my sisters would make me dance to that song over and over, promising me that they’d take me to the Apartment disco in Dublin," he said.
"I was this little tubby kid, sweating profusely. How I didn’t go off Gloria, I don’t know but it started then. That was 1984 and flash forward to 2011 and I signed up to Twitter and noticed that Gloria Estefan was bringing out a new album, which was called Miss Little Havana, but she put 'MLH’ on twitter and asked people can you guess the name.
"So me being my mischievous self, I said ‘magnetic love handles’, ‘many lustul habits’, ‘magnanimous little hobbits’ and it grabbed her attention and we started to banter back and forth."
It led to a real life friendship and since that first online exchange, Kevin, who has worked on films such as Saving Private Ryan and Braveheart, has visited Gloria in Miami, stayed in her hotel and been taken out for dinner by the singer. He even served as her unofficial photographer at her show at the Albert Hall in 2017 and appeared on her Christmas special on US television.
"The moment you meet her, you feel like you know her already because she’s such a nice down to earth person," Kevin added. "She’s had a rough life, she broke her back in 1990 but she’s such a strong and resilient person she had the power of self-healing."
A gobsmacked Kevin was in for a surprise when Estefan herself came on the line from Miami, and greeted him as her "lucky charm", a reference to an American breakfast cereal, which features a leprechaun on the box. "Here we are on the phone together in the middle of a pandemic," Kevin said.
Estefan, who left Cuba when she was a child, added, "When you started coming up with all those warped names for MLH, something drew me to you. This is my kind of person. He’s got a great personality, which I love, especially the warped part."
The singer was also on the show to talk about why she has re-written her 1989 song Get On Your Feet as Get On Your Mask after her friend, an infectious disease expert, appealed to her to emphasise the importance of wearing facial coverings to prevent the spread of Covid-19.
"One of my best friends is Dr Aileen Marty, one of the world experts in infectious diseases, and is on the frontline and (US government) taskforce and tries to tell White House how to handle this," she said.
"She has been getting very frustrated and said to me, 'Glo, I would really love it, if you would do one of your crazy things, to get the word out there that we really need to wear masks to protect the world from us?’" the singer, who was due to play Dublin earlier this year but had to cancel due to the Covid-19 pandemic, said.
"We don't know exactly completely how this thing is spread and we have been trying to bend over backwards to get task forces and everyone to put out the message to wear masks."
Estefan added, "When she told me that it had not yet become mandatory as it is now, so I thought how can I do this in a funny way and I thought the song Get on Your Feet.
"The song is very uplifting, people remember it and know it in their heart, and remember it as an uplifting songand I said if I do new lyrics, it will still be have that feeling of moving forward and getting back on our feet."
In a new video for the song, which Estefan filmed using green screen, the singer is pictured wearing a sweatshirt with the words "Prone to shenanigans and tomfoolery!", which was inspired by a conversation she and Kevin had last week.
Gloria’s new album, BRAZIL305, is due out on August 13, and her new song, We Needed Time, for the crisis we’re going through is free to download on soundcloud and her official website.
