Archive News
Funnyman Tommy seeks new horizons with Sky
Date Published: 05-Dec-2012
Tommy Tiernan’s current choice of reading material isn’t exactly what you’d describe as lightweight. Lined up alongside the popular comedian are the first five books of the bible, The Glenstal Book of Readings and a tome entitled Sex, Marriage and Family in World Religion.
“I read a lot of serious material and a lot of depressing stuff,” he explains. Fortunately, for his thousands of fans, that material provides the starting point for hilarious observations on Irishness, family life and religion, which he’ll be sharing with people on his World Tour of Galway this month.
“I’d be very drawn to religion,” he says, adding that on a recent work trip to England he found himself attending Mass in London a few times.
He describes himself as having “a religious instinct”; one which is not “at home in the Catholic Church, but it’s not at home outside it either”.
He’s happy to talk about religion, but right now, he’s most excited about a short, autobiographical drama, which he wrote, acted in and directed for Sky 1. It’s part of the Little Crackers series that gave birth to Chris O’Dowd’s Moone Boy.
Although the story is autobiographical, he decided to shoot it in Brighton to differentiate it from Moone Boy, which is also set in the 1970s. Tommy’s Little Cracker, which sees him make his debut as a director, is based on autobiography, but “wouldn’t be strictly true”, he laughs.
He is hopeful it will open new doors to him in terms of directing, and has a meeting scheduled with Sky for January about a possible series.
“The signs are good, but you never know until you start shooting,” he says. He is optimistic though, and has been giving a lot of thought to where in Galway it will be set, because the location will be a vital component.
“I was really upset with [John Michael McDonagh’s film] The Guard. There were a lot of great laughs in it and it was great to see bits of Galway on the screen but it was a non-Galway story super imposed on the place.” He compares it to Bob Quinn’s film from the 1970s, Poitín, “which came from the stones”.
That’s the approach Tommy favours, and while a story hasn’t suggested itself yet, the location will be crucial. He’s torn between using Connemara with its “extremity of landscape which is perfect for storytelling”, or basing it in Galway City, where “you’d have to make a story out of a specific place”.
Either way, he’d like to make it as Irish as possible, although it’s being made for English television. He recently saw DruidMurphy and was impressed with the fact that Tom Murphy’s writing made no concessions to US or American audiences. “Yet the reviews from the UK and America were phenomenal,” he notes.
It’s the same with stand-up, he feels. “The reason I always found American comics so exciting is that they were American and weren’t trying to be universal.”
At the moment, the Sky project is still tentative, but he’s enjoying the creative process and the prospect of doing more directing.
“It just seems right. I’m comfortable making decisions – even if they are the wrong ones.”
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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