Granny Rita still a hard rocker

Lifestyle –  Judy Murphy meets a Galway granny who mixes with the glitterati of music and film and has been honoured with an MBE

Stop me if I’m talking too much,” says Rita Gilligan as she settles in for a chat over tea and sandwiches in the city’s Meyrick Hotel. Chance would be a fine thing! There’s no stopping this vibrant woman from Bohermore in Galway City, as she recalls a 45-year career with the renowned Hard Rock Café group, which has seen her receive an MBE in the UK as well as mixing with rock royalty from Paul McCartney to Bob Geldof and film stars from Tony Curtis to Paul Newman.

She is, she says, an amazing talker, and she’s not exaggerating. But you wouldn’t want to stop Rita when she’s in full flow, because she has amazing stories. These are captured in her new biography The Rock ‘n’ Roll Waitress at The Hard Rock Café, which is being launched this week in the Meyrick Hotel.

Formerly the Great Southern, this is where she began her hospitality career at the age of 15 on the bottom rung of the ladder, in the dish room. And it has a special place in her heart; Rita, who has lived in London for more than 50 years, visits when she’s back in Galway, which is often – she has an apartment in Bohermore.

The 75-year-old has a jet-setting lifestyle as the Hard Rock’s cultural ambassador and staff-trainer, a promotion she received in 1996. It was just one milestone in her extraordinary career with the group since becoming its first waitress back in 1971. Life hasn’t always been easy and Rita has known extraordinary highs and lows, but has retained her love of life throughout.

Hard Rock was set up in London, “in the shadow of Buckingham Palace” as she emphasises several times, by young Americans Peter Morton and Isaac Tigrett and while it’s now a multi-million-dollar business, few people gave it any chance of survival then

Hard Rock was inspired by iconic 1950s American-style diners and its founders took out a large advert in London’s Evening Standard in 1971, looking for matronly waitresses, ideally in their 30s.

Rita was only 29, but she’s persuasive and, with two small children and a hard-drinking husband, she needed a job.

However, she knew nothing about the Hard Rock concept when she went for interview. Having come from a silver-service background, and knowing that the restaurant was located in London’s upmarket Park Lane, she arrived in formal wear only to be met by a casually dressed Peter, who sipped beer as they chatted. He explained that Hard Rock would be a burger restaurant with loud music and a laid-back atmosphere. The waitresses needed to be sassy, but also friendly and efficient.

Rita got the job and shone.

“I wasn’t a particularly good waitress, but I was good with people”, she says honestly. Whether those people were Paul McCartney, Paul Newman, Rod Stewart, Donald Trump, or regular families, her philosophy was that everybody had to be made feel welcome in the Hard Rock.

People are people, she says, and it’s important to treat everyone with kindness and respect.

That philosophy won her the admiration of her employers and despite several changes of ownership and massive expansion over the decades, Rita has been a constant in the Hard Rock.

“I never wanted to write a book, but the company kept at me to do it,” she explains. Rita has more Hard Rock memories than anybody and her bosses feared those would be lost if she didn’t commit them to print.

The proceeds of the book will go to charity, including motor neuron disease research, a cause dear to her heart. Her good friend, Michael Elwood – “one of the fine men who built Galway” – died from the condition 10 years ago.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.