Gerry Hannan interview with limerick.com

Some Day My Time Will Come

Gerard Hannan In a full and forthright EXCLUSIVE interview with Limerick.com controversial author, journalist and broadcaster Gerard Hannan talks about his Limerick childhood, his brush with the international media, his popularity as a tamed Irish shock-jock and his globally famous row with Pulitzer prize-winning author of Angela's Ashes Frank McCourt.

Interview conducted by Jan Rice for Limerick.com

Dateline: June 8th. 2002

LIMERICK.COM: Thank you for agreeing to do this interview.

HANNAN: You're very welcome. Why should I turn down such an opportunity to communicate my thoughts and feelings?

LIMERICK.COM: You are best known internationally for your row with Frank McCourt and we will talk in detail about that in a little while but firstly will you tell us a little bit about who you are and where you come from?

HANNAN: Well, I was born in 1959 and raised in a place called Garryowen, which is a working class suburb of Limerick. I am the fifth son in a family of eight. My mother would say that my head was so big when I was born that she couldn't walk for six months after having me. My mother had five sons in a row and then three girls.I was in the middle, I think they really wanted a girl so the next baby after me was Mary. Our family was split in two groups of 4 and I got stuck in with the girls. But I have always had a better relationship with my sisters than with my brothers. I love them all but, I have to say, the girls are like my three guardian angels. I am lucky because they are so honest. They will tell me that I am either an idiot or a hero with everything I get involved with. They are the only people that can really influence me. I think women are far more intelligent than men; they have a keener sense of what's right and what's wrong. Men just throw their eyes up to God and hope that whatever the problem is; it will soon go away. Women will tackle the problem head on. So my sisters are important to me.that sounds a bit clinical.what they have to say is significant to me.

LIMERICK.COM: Did you have a happy childhood?

HANNAN: Absolutely. I really have no outstanding memories that would haunt me in any way whatsoever. Yes there were ups and downs like everybody else but as I get older I realise that what seemed important to me in my twenties has paled into insignificance in my early forties. What seemed like defining moments in my childhood was only important because I deemed them so. But as I get older I think more about what happened yesterday than what happened last year. Even bitter memories from my childhood have become somewhat sweet because I now realise that those moments have made me what I am and if I don't accept what those moments tell me about myself then I don't accept myself and nothing would be further from the truth. I totally accept myself so it follows that those moments are of no real consequence. I even feel awkward talking about them because it is giving them more importance than they actually deserve.

LIMERICK.COM: Can you give us an example?

HANNAN: Well I write about a defining moment from my childhood in TIS IN ME ASS when I was about six or seven years of age and my mother caught me playing with the girls. That, for one reason or another, was totally unacceptable to her so she put a dress on me and sent me out onto the street and at first I was mortified because my best friends were out there playing football while I was indoors playing 'house'. That was a very bitter memory for me as a teenager and in my early twenties but nowadays it think the episode was very funny. When I wrote about it I was writing with my tongue firmly in my cheek and was milking it a bit for laughs. I figure if I had wrote about it in my twenties I would have been milking it for sympathy.

LIMERICK.COM: So what you are saying is.?

HANNAN: I am saying that we are all better off leaving our luggage behind us and if we can't do that then we should look for something funny about the memory and that will help us to leave it behind. That's what I believe, it may sound like a 'cock and bull' story to others but that's what I believe God help me!

LIMERICK.COM: As I mentioned earlier you are best known internationally as Frank McCourt's protagonist but in Limerick you have a completely different image because of the popularity of your nightly radio talk show. Tell us a bit about that.

HANNAN: I keep hearing about this so-called 'international image' but I honestly don't think in my mind that there are any more than a handful of Limerick's ex-pats and a couple of student's of Irish literature who give any more than a flying damn about Gerry Hannan and his point of view on McCourt or any other subject for that matter..

LIMERICK.COM: You could be wrong.

HANNAN: Maybe.but I doubt it.

LIMERICK.COM: A random search of the internet came up with results where you were quoted in newspapers such as the New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Sunday Times, C.N.N., '60 Minutes with Ed Bradley', BBC Radio and Television, The South Bank Show, German, French Japanese and Australian newspapers, magazines, radio and television so how then can you say that there is nobody out there who gives a damn?

HANNAN: Well that was then and this is now. That was an incredible period of my life and I learned a lot about how the media works. Journalists hunt in packs and they go through you for a short cut but then the whole thing dies and you become yesterdays news thanks be to God!

LIMERICK.COM: You are grateful for that?

HANNAN: Jesus yes. That was fun while it lasted but as this media attention went on and on I got really bored with it and eventually I stopped taking calls because everything I had to say was somehow twisted to suit the angle the journalist was coming from. The American journalists were always pro-McCourt and to them I was a two-headed monster from Limerick. The European media, with the exception of the Irish hacks, were very fair and balanced. Irish journalists saw me as an opportunist jumping on McCourt's success. The Europeans grasped the concept of two sides to every story.

LIMERICK.COM: Let's talk about your radio show for a moment.

HANNAN: Well I started broadcasting on local radio about twenty-five years ago, back in the pirate days; I immediately fell in love with the whole concept of radio. Back then I just went on and played music but as I got older I became more interested in talk radio. I loved what Howard Stern was doing in New York and I also knew there was some guy doing more or less the same thing in Dublin and it was proving extremely popular. Then, of course, there was Gerry Ryan on 2FM so I knew my day was coming. When I approached the local radio station in Limerick with the idea of a late night talk show they offered me a late night slot, the graveyard shift, on Sundays and I grabbed it. In a matter of months the show was running from Monday to Friday for three solid hours each night and it took off from there.

LIMERICK.COM: Why do you think your show is so popular?

HANNAN: I am still wondering about that. It is a complete mystery to me but I could hazard a guess at the answer. The popularity of the show has very little to do with me. The fact that so many people can have freedom of expression on the public airwaves is a very attractive proposition regardless of the presenter. The show furnishes ordinary people with a great opportunity for young and old alike to sing their songs, tell their stories, play their instruments, talk their talk, express their point of view, good, bad or indifferent, on any subject under the sun. It is radio with no rules. A sort of pot-pourri, if you like, of views, thoughts, talents, feelings and beliefs and I think you just can't miss with that kind of a formula. Nobody knows, including myself, what is going to happen next and that keeps the whole thing interesting.

LIMERICK.COM: Are you a firm believer in freedom of expression?

HANNAN: Absolutely. But I only discovered that about myself when I started doing this show. People have every right to say exactly what is going on in their minds with regard to any issue and they also have a right to be heard. Of course there are certain rules and the greatest of these is you don't get personal, hurt any individual or be disrespectful toward what they think or feel. After that, it is a sort of free for all. That's democracy at it's best and for as long as that freedom thrives in any society then that society can never be accused of being anything other than democratic.

LIMERICK.COM: Are there no exceptions to that rule?

HANNAN: None that I can think of off hand but I am open to contradiction. I don't suggest for a moment that I am always right that would be undemocratic wouldn't it?

LIMERICK.COM: You seem to have a great affinity for aged people; the national media once described you as 'a defender of the elderly' where does that come from?

HANNAN: I have no idea. I love to listen to elderly people talking to me on the radio show. They are always very interesting. The wisdom of years. They don't take life as seriously as, let's say, my generation would. They have seen it all and if you listen to what they have to say you can learn a lot. But, as for 'defender of the elderly', that's a load of nonsense. If anything they defend me!

LIMERICK.COM: You frequently become involved in charity work in Limerick and were a founder member of ALJEFF (An organisation set up with the purpose of building a treatment centre for young addicts), you raised substantial funds for a local youth band to buy new instruments and uniforms for it's thirty or more members, you also raised funds to pay for twenty or so mentally and physically handicapped young adults to travel to Lourdes and raised money to pay for an electronic wheelchair for a disabled young girl from the working-class suburb of Moyross - why?

HANNAN: The one great thing about the radio show is that it has an enormous audience and I think people are essentially good. When they hear of something worthwhile they respond immediately. I am fortunate to be in the position where I have their attention. It is these people that are the real unselfish ones here not me. I accept no praise, nor deserve any, for this work.

LIMERICK.COM: Are you religious?

HANNAN: I have no doubt God exists. I am very conscious of his presence in my life and would always aim to do my best to live my life to his satisfaction. I don't believe that I am achieving that but I intend to keep trying to the best of my ability. If that makes me religious then I am.

LIMERICK.COM: Why have you remained single?

HANNAN: No comment.

LIMERICK.COM: Let's talk about Frank McCourt, Angela's Ashes and the famous international debate.

HANNAN: I wondered when you would get round to that!

LIMERICK.COM: When did you first hear of Angela's Ashes?

HANNAN: I met McCourt briefly one morning in autumn 1997 when he approached me at the radio station to interview him about his new book Angela's Ashes. I liked him at first and arranged to interview him later that same week but he never showed up. I didn't actually get round to reading the book for some weeks but my immediate response was lack of interest and by the time I got half way through the book it became a bit of a drag for me to finish but I soon did.

LIMERICK.COM: You didn't like it?

HANNAN: I didn't dislike it. Nobody can deny that the book was brilliantly written. McCourt got the childhood voice absolutely perfect. There was a certain innocence about the whole thing that was impressive. I was touched by specific parts of the book but not enough to warrant any great praise. That may sound vindictive coming from me but that is how I felt and I must be honest. I reread the book some months later because I figured that I was biased first time round and the same held true so maybe it deserves another chance. I have heard the book being described as a work of genius but I am hard pressed to find why.

LIMERICK.COM: At what point in time did you decide to publicly challenge the authenticity of Angela's Ashes?

HANNAN: There was no particular point in time. I started to discuss the book on the radio show and I was overwhelmed with the amount of calls I received complaining about the inaccuracies of Angela's Ashes. These calls were coming from Limerick's senior citizens who came from the lanes of Limerick in the McCourt era. People who walked the walk and knew more about the reality of life in that time than I ever could.

LIMERICK.COM: Are you not far too young at 40 to know or remember anything at all about life on the lanes of Limerick?

HANNAN: This is often said to me but I am a journalist and a student of social research with some education in Sociology. I deem myself an acceptable researcher and reporter of facts. I have often said you don't need to have spent time in Nazi Germany to write about it. There are plenty of witnesses willing to discuss their experiences and they can paint a pretty accurate picture of what life would have been like there and then.

LIMERICK.COM: Your first book ASHES was published within weeks of ANGELA'S ASHES. How did this come about?

HANNAN: ASHES was not my first book. I wrote a book called 'FROM CAMPFIRE TO CARNEGIE HALL' in 1994; that was a good seller in Limerick too. It was about Limerick's comedy duo TOM & PASCAL whom I loved as a child. I had been working on a book called 'Penance' which was set in Limerick and was about two childhood friends who grew up on the lanes. It was pretty much completed and I decided to change the name because I wanted it to be linked with ANGELA'S ASHES. The idea was to present another side to the story. There are always two sides to every story and this book was about people who came from the lanes but emerged from the experience with little or no bitterness.

LIMERICK.COM: Wasn't it a bit opportunistic to call the book ASHES?

HANNAN: A journalist once told me that if I were in any other business, other than writing, I would have been given an enterprise award for the idea. Others have said it was opportunistic; it depends on how you look at it. For me it meant instant recognition for my book. There are lots of books published in Limerick every year and calling my book ASHES gave it an edge that it otherwise would not have had.

LIMERICK.COM: Did it sell well?

HANNAN: I think we sold about 20,000 copies all over Ireland. It is out of print now and it had three print runs. I am very satisfied with the sales.

LIMERICK.COM: How did McCourt respond to the book?

HANNAN: I have no idea. He never publicly criticised it other than on one occasion he told the Sunday Times that he had no doubt that it would be a runaway best seller to the borders of Limerick. Being that that was all I was aiming for in the first place I was impressed by his intended insult. Maybe I'm small minded and a little too insular in my thinking but I never believed for a moment than anyone other than a Limerick person would have any interest whatsoever in my books.

LIMERICK.COM: Were you surprised by the amount of international media attention you received after the publication of ASHES?

HANNAN: Surprised and amused. But of course I became suspicious when the American journalists started to ring me and I asked a researcher for '60 Minutes' how she got my number and she told me that it was given to her by Frank McCourt. Here was the man calling me an opportunist and he was dishing my number out to anyone who cared to write a few paragraphs. I suppose I made good press for him so we both gained from the so-called 'war of words'.

LIMERICK.COM: Do you regret calling your book ASHES?

HANNAN: No. Why should I?

LIMERICK.COM: Well it's now branded the 'anti-McCourt' book.

HANNAN: Only by those who haven't read it and therefore know no better.

LIMERICK.COM: You once told the media that you could pinpoint 117 inaccuracies in ANGELA'S ASHES what were the main ones?

HANNAN: Well the top three would be the story about Willie Harold masturbating at the sight of his own sisters undressing. Harold had no sisters. The story about Frank's mother having sexual relations as rent payment with her first cousin Laman Griffin. She never actually lived with him. The story about Treasa Carmody having oral sex with Frank on her deathbed; she died a long time before Frank says she did. There are others, I don't believe Malachy Snr was actually Frank's father, the McCourt's were not as poor as Frank claimed, the list goes on and on. The book was vindictive towards Limerick and it's people. There were plenty of scurrilous lies about innocent people and a lot of facts about the McCourt family were conveniently omitted. It's a fairy tale disguised as fact.

LIMERICK.COM: Why did it vex you so much?

HANNAN: It just did. I am not a psychologist so I can't explain why. All I can tell you is that I felt very strongly about it. I am a passionate person by nature and I stand up for what I believe in. That's all.

LIMERICK.COM: Your controversial appearance on the Ireland's most popular talk show THE LATE LATE SHOW is still well remembered for its ferociousness. Do you regret the strength of your attack on Frank McCourt?

HANNAN: (Laughs).Not at all. Perhaps I would act differently nowadays. I don't feel quite as passionate about the subject these days. That was what I felt there and then and I acted accordingly. But I do feel that was really a one-to-one conversation with McCourt. He knew exactly where I was coming from, no one else did. He got the message loud and clear so my mission was accomplished. I am told he told a friend of his in New York that my actions reminded him of his own mother's behaviour in a New York theatre when she jumped up from the audience and called him a liar. The whole thing took him aback but I believe he knew exactly what I was saying. Other people's opinions on the matter really are of no consequence to me.

LIMERICK.COM: Were you really as angry as you appeared?

HANNAN: I suppose there was an element of 'acting' there too. But I wanted to get my point across and the best form of defence is attack they say. I wanted the moment to be memorable for McCourt and it was. McCourt was in Galway recently and he met a friend of mine from Limerick and told him that he had no ill will toward me because he felt the producers of the 'Late Late' were ambushing him. But I have to say there was no such prior discussion between the producers and myself. It may have been their agenda but it wasn't mine. I was finally given a chance to confront McCourt and I took it and that was my only motive. The producers assured me that McCourt knew full well that I was going to be in the audience and I don't see why they would lie about that.

LIMERICK.COM: Do you dislike McCourt as a person?

HANNAN: I don't know him well enough to have any kind of an informed opinion. But I do believe from people who do know him that he is not a likable fellow at all. I believe he is a most sarcastic and bitter man. But that's just going on second hand information.

LIMERICK.COM: Did you ever meet McCourt after the initial meeting in the radio station?

HANNAN: Just once in the Green Room after the 'Late Late' but it was only for a fleeting moment. He gave me a rather friendly smile while his wife was calling me a 'scum ball' from Limerick. He told her to hush-up and shook his head as he walked by. That was it.

LIMERICK.COM: And there has been no further contact?

HANNAN: People that I know to be personal friends of his have often made contact with me on different matters but there has been no direct contact nor do I expect there will ever be. I am sure I am no more than a very minor player in the life of Frank McCourt.

LIMERICK.COM: Let's talk about your second book TIS IN ME ASS.

HANNAN: Now, that for me was where the real fun began.

LIMERICK.COM: Why do you say that?

HANNAN: Well my three books, ASHES, TIS IN ME ASS and FROM BARDS TO BLACKGUARDS are all part of one trilogy but they were all part of a sort of work-in-progress until the final part was complete. I first called the trilogy 'The Penance Trilogy', then changed it to 'The Singland Trilogy' - writers prerogative, then it finally became what it is now, 'The Limerick Trilogy'. But TIS IN ME ASS was the most fun for me to write. I got great help from my brother Dominic who has a sort of photographic memory. I wrote about our childhood in Garryowen in the 1960's and 70's and I think it is a book that will be best appreciated in fifty years time when people wonder what life was like back then. I wanted it to be funny and I hope I achieved that.

LIMERICK.COM: So TIS IN ME ASS was a labour of love?

HANNAN: I love that cliché.

LIMERICK.COM: FROM BARDS TO BLACKGUARDS attempts to look at the history of Limerick storytelling right up to the writings of Frank McCourt. His presence is strong in your three books do you not fear being tagged 'obsessed' by Frank McCourt?

HANNAN: I've been called worse on a short walk.

LIMERICK.COM: Do you intend writing more books about McCourt?

HANNAN: (Laughs) I'm afraid the obsession has passed for the moment.

LIMERICK.COM: What are you working on now?

HANNAN: I have two books in draft form at the moment. I have been working for some time on a romantic novel called WHEN ANGELS WEEP and a children's book called SHAWN OISIN. Look out Maeve Binchy and J.K. Rowlings I'm coming to get you!

LIMERICK.COM: Thank you for taking the time to talk to us.

HANNAN: You're welcome.