Eoin Butler: writer, journalist and Mayoman of the Year
Tripping Along The Ledge
irish times
Published: Evening Herald, January 2010SOUTH WILLIAM
It’s Saturday night in South William and my almost-long-lost school friend Gerry the Bonnet is offering crash course reminder of why we drifted apart in the first place.
Suffering mother, how had I forgotten? He’s the most boring man in Ireland. Christ, you could drive a bus through some of the gaps in those sentences.
“I told the girlfriend… Tracy…. Tracy is the girlfriend,” he drones.
I know. Read the rest of this entry »
Published: Irish Times, September 24 2011“You do realise this will be on Reeling in the Years 2011 with, like, Justin Bieber playing in the background?”
TREAT YER FEET
Derek Reid and Gerard Kelly discuss fish pedicures, the batshit insane craze sweeping the nation.
I’m about to put my feet into a tank full of fish. What type of fish are these?
Derek: These are called Garra Rufa fish, a type of carp found in the springs of Turkey. They’re sometimes known as Doctor Fish, because of their ability to help people with skin problems.
Gerard: Keep your feet slightly apart and let them dangle in the water.
Fucking hell.
Derek: Keep your feet still. There’s always a bit of a frenzy to begin with. The fish will calm down in a moment. Read the rest of this entry »
I’m a bit surprised to be referred to as “you people”… Isn’t that kind of condescending?
MAT FRASER
Star of Channel 4’s Cast-Offs, his one man show From Freak to Clique comes to Dublin this month.
When you walk out in front of an audience for the first time, how do you break the ice?
Well, obviously, I was born with phocomelia. That’s glaringly obvious and people want to know about it. So I deal with that straight away. You can’t lampoon others if you’re not willing to lampoon yourself. Read the rest of this entry »
Wayne Coyne Battles the Bad Buzz Robots
[Introductory note: Electric Picnic 2005. I had only a couple of minutes notice I’d be talking to Wayne Coyne. No time to prepare questions. So I got to thinking, you know, the guy is always so insanely happy. Wouldn’t it be funny if I just tried to depress the shit out of him. So I tried. Did it work? Well…
I did everything I could think of to irritate, annoy, anger and/or depress him. In the end, I hung out with him for a couple of hours. And, sadly, he couldn’t have been nicer. Sufficed to say, he’s just a decent, happy guy… Bastard!] Read the rest of this entry »
Published: Evening Herald, January 2010The Liberty Belle
It’s a wet and freezing Thursday night and Thomas Street is teeming with pretty, young things raucously celebrating… something or other. When you’re pretty and young, I suppose, you don’t really need an excuse.
We duck down Francis Street and stick our heads in the door of the Liberty Belle. There are football scarves hanging from the ceiling and a load of old drunks codgering at the bar. Read the rest of this entry »
Published: Mongrel magazine, September 2005Two of these individuals participated in this interview… your guess as good as mine
[N.B. Minutes before or after (I can’t remember which) yesterday’s tête-à-tête with Flaming Lips’ mainman Wayne Coyne, I interviewed two unidentified members of the Arcade Fire. They weren’t very famous then. I assumed I was talking to Win and Regine. But when “Win” started referring to himself in the third person, it occurred to me that this wasn’t necessarily the case. For the published piece, I called them Will (Win’s brother) and Regine. But to be honest, for all I know, I could have been talking to anyone that day. I was pretty high on life back then. Like really, really high on life…] Read the rest of this entry »
“We’ve got a connection with this place called Ireland. But that country doesn’t exist anymore…”
DES DILLON
Scottish playwright
For those unfamiliar with the vocabulary of Scottish sectarian invective, you might first explain the title of the play: ‘I’m No a Billy, He’s a Tim.’
In Glasgow, a “Billy” refers to a fan of Rangers football team – 99 times out of 100, he will also be Protestant. And a Tim is a Celtic supporter who, 99 times out of 100, will be Catholic.
The ‘Billy’ presumably is named for William of Orange. What’s the derivation of ‘Tim’?
The Tim Malloys were an Irish Catholic street gang operating in Glasgow in the early 1900s. So a “Tim” is the generic nickname for a Catholic in Scotland. Read the rest of this entry »
‘Lots of writers I admire – Dostoyevsky, Orwell, Vonnegut – served in the military.’
DERMOT
Private First Class, French Foreign Legion
Tell us about yourself.
My name is Dermot, I’m 24 years old and I’m from Balbriggan. I didn’t always want to be a soldier. In fact, when I did my Leaving Cert in 2003, I wanted to study journalism in DIT. But I missed out by ten points.
So you decided to try something less cut throat instead?
I worked a while in insurance first. Then I did three and a half years at one of the state’s largest bank. But by 2008, my feet had started to get itchy. My friends were all heading out to party on Bondi Beach. I decided to do something completely different.
Basically, you absconded from a cushy banking job in 2008 and joined the Foreign Legion… It wasn’t Anglo-Irish by any chance?
No, it wasn’t Anglo. To be honest, a love of literature influenced my decision as much as anything else. Lots of the writers I admired – Dostoyevsky, Orwell, Vonnegut – had served in the military. It was something men just did in those days. I wanted to experience what they’d gone through at first hand. Read the rest of this entry »
“I took things quite seriously the first time around. Back then, I’d have been really nervous doing an interview like this…”
CONOR J. O’BRIEN
Ex-Immediate man returns with a new band, Villagers, and a new EP called Hollow Kind
Your first band, The Immediate, did something that few bands ever do: you walked away from success.
(silence) I suppose, but it depends on how you define success.
You were in an enviable position, let’s say. Other bands would have killed to swap places with you.
Sure, but that’s still a very subjective judgement. Given that we broke up, we obviously didn’t feel that we were in an enviable position. Besides, things are always more complicated than they appear from the outside. It didn’t feel right anymore. It started to feel forced. Read the rest of this entry »
“That’s shit. They could at least remember you as the ‘anti-war activist’ who dressed in a cat suit…”
GEORGE GALLOWAY
The left-wing firebrand explains why Saddam was a better company than Bertie Ahern
Throughout your career, you’ve been closely associated with Arab and Middle Eastern issues. What initially inspired you to engage with the politics of this region?
In 1975, when I was 21 years old, a Palestinian student leader named Sa’ad Jabaji came to the door of the Labour party office in Dundee. He spoke to me for two hours in a mesmerising fashion about the catastrophe the Palestinian people have suffered. I became a signed-up member of the Palestinian resistance that day and have remained so ever since. Read the rest of this entry »