My guide to the summer festivals for The Dubliner…
THE DUBLINER’S FESTIVAL GUIDE 2012
From the big three-dayers to the boutique city events to the magical woodland gatherings, there’s something for everyone on the summer festival circuit this year. Paul Flood throws his eye over the offerings and suggests the best fit for your festival needs.
Best for a Blow-Out: Electric Picnic
If your after that big festival experience in 2012 it’s the only show in town, what with Oxegen on a fallow year, yet the Lecky Picnic isn’t shirking any of its musical responsibilities with a three-dayer that’ll entice the likes of The Cure, The Killers, Christy Moore, Sigur Ros, Patti Smith, Hot Chip, Richard Hawley, Crystal Castles, Grizzly Bear, many more tantalising TBAs, and the usual mix of comedy tents, arty events, holistic healing, gourmet burgers and alternative ways to sleep off all that hedonism. And don’t forget a Hail Mary or three at the Inflatable Church for good weather. August 31st-September 2nd. A weekend camping ticket costs €230; electricpicnic.ie.
Best for Unhappy Campers: Forbidden Fruit
Give the tent the summer off and get along to Dublin’s bona fide urban festival but a hop, skip and a boogie away from the city centre in the grounds of the Royal Kilmainham Hospital. Leftfield, New Order and Wilco are the headline acts on Saturday through Monday, with Friendly Fires, Death Cab for Cutie and Mazzy Star amongst many stellar names weighing in for a line-up that only adds to this weekender’s growing reputation. And if you miss the camping, why not pitch that tent in the back garden and continue the party when you get home. (See our panel for other after-party options.) June 2nd-4th. Tickets are €49.50 for a day, €89.50 for two, €115 for the weekend; forbiddenfruit.ie.
Best for the ‘Untz’ Crowd: Life Festival
Get your ‘untz’, your ‘slurp’, your ‘nom’, your ‘gawk’, and your occasional ‘zzzs’ on at the Life Festival, which returns to the lavish Belvedere House Estate in Mullingar tomorrow with an eclectic mix of electronic and live acts over three stages and days. There’ll also be some lavish beats with a line-up that includes Ben Klock & Marcel Dettmann, Jamie Jones, Engine-Earz Experiment, Iration Steppas, Blawan and DJ Marky, to name but a few of the many Irish and international acts making their way to the Midlands to entertain this rather knowledgeable crowd. If you like your electronic music, this is one for you. May 25th-27th. Weekend tickets costs €150 at the gate if available; life-festival.com.
Best for Bohemians (with Kids): Body & Soul
Start the younglings’ festival education off good and proper with three zen-filled days at Body & Soul in Ballinlough Castle, Westmeath. There’ll be a Masquerade Ball, music from Villagers, Django, Django, Spiritualized, M83 and more, spoken word, shiatsu, acrobats, a sky full of stars, and all sorts of unexpected surprises and treats down windy paths throughout some magical woodlands. Weekend family tickets (for one adult and two children under 12) come in at a very reasonable €99, with a family campsite and Soul Kids area, which includes kiddie yoga, storytelling, arts and crafts, making it one of the most family-friendly festivals this summer. June 22nd-24th; bodyandsoul.ie.
Best for Right Royal Buzzers: Castlepalooza
Small – especially when it’s presented at a 17th century castle amid some of the country’s oldest oak woods – can be beautiful, which is why Castlepalooza has gained a reputation for being one of the better festivals in the land. The Tullamore-based weekender offers an off-beat mix that will not only allow punters to take in the sonic joys of The Charlatans, Ghostpoet, Jape and King Charles, but, thanks to exclusive daily access for ticket-holders, will also lay on art and film exhibitions, workshops, a day spa and the odd surprise performance within Charleville Castle itself. If you can stand the commoners, check out the new Courtyard Chillout area too. August 3rd-5th. Camping tickets for the weekend start from a remarkable €50; castlepalooza.com.
Best for the Indie Kids: Indiependence
The southern republic weighs in with an intimate festival that offers a nice balance of big-name international acts (2ManyDJs, Beardyman and Scroobius Pip), established sons and daughters of Irish indie (The Frank & Walters, The Japanese Popstars, and Ham Sandwich) and young pretenders to the shoegazing throne (step forward Reid, Slow Motion Heroes and Dead School). Although relatively new to the scene, Indiependence punches well above its weight with a buzzing weekend of loud music, silent discos and till-dawn campsite club events. August 3rd-5th. Three-day camping tickets cost €99; indiependencefestival.com.
Best for Sporty Types: Sea Sessions
This year’s surfing and music festival along Donegal’s wave-battered coast offers up the horrifying prospect of Shaun Ryder in a wetsuit. Hopefully the Madchester groove-merchant can be kept away from a surf board and his Happy Mondays can go forth and join Kaiser Chiefs, Beardyman, The Coronas, Crazy P and a host of Irish and international acts for a hard-to-resist weekend in Bundoran. Away from the main stages, festival-goers can get their thrills ’n’ spills at the ‘Beach Olympics’, skateboard and BMX displays, and surf competitions. June 29th-July 1st. Weekend tickets are €88.50; seasessions.com.
Best for Grown-Ups: Westport Festival of Music and Performing Arts
There’ll be plenty of foot-tapping and head-nodding but maybe not as much moshing as the vinyl collectors amongst us flock to Westport this year to welcome the likes of Jools Holland, Imelda May, The Undertones, Ray Davies, Duke Special, Macy Gray, The Waterboys and other such grown-up acts on stage. Grown up it may be but that doesn’t mean there won’t be fun on offer as the Mayo town opens up its atmospheric pubs for a right old hoolie. For those with children, there’s a family-friendly camping and caravan park on the grounds of Westport House, and a kids’ pirate-themed adventure area. June 23rd-24th. A two-day ticket is €130, and one-dayer is €75; westportfestival.com.
Best for Gig Merchants: Belsonic
One for the compulsive gig-goer this as Belsonic welcomes a varied line-up of stellar names to Belfast’s Custom House Square over nine nights in August. Skillrex kicks things off in brostep fashion and is followed through the rest of the festival’s run by Emile Sande, Madness, Thin Lizzy, Paramore, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, Two Door Cinema Club, Tom Jones and poor old James Morrison, who’ll probably have to sweep all those knickers up from the previous night before he kicks off. Check out the website for restaurant and bar recommendations and plot your post-gig pub crawl. August 15th-26th. Ticket prices vary; belsonic.com.
Best for Folkers: Spirit of Folk
The Spirit of Folk Festival on the grounds of Dunderry Park, Co Meath, eases us into the autumn with a line-up comprised of the best folk, trad and bluegrass Ireland and the UK has to offer. It might even ease you further back into ye olde times with an immersive experience that promises storytelling, archery, falconry, healing, historical re-enactments, and experimental archaeology. For those after an alternative family-friendly atmosphere that shuns the hedonistic excesses of other festivals, this just might be what the Shaman ordered. September 21st-23rd. Line-up yet to be confirmed at the time of writing; spiritoffolk.com.
MICRO-FESTIVALS
New Order have been confirmed as headliners at Titanic Lockdown (titanic-lockdown.com), taking place on June 1st and 2nd under the iconic Harland and Wolff cranes at Belfast’s T13. Other acts already pencilled in for the micro boutique festival include Happy Mondays, Ghostpoet, Factory Floor, Errors and legendary reggae producer Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry. The Strawberry Fest (2012.strawberryfest.ie) returns to the Enniscorthy Showgrounds again this year, with Bressie, The Saw Doctors, Maverick Sabre, Mikill Pane, The Original Rudeboys, The Minutes and others getting their jam on from June 1st-3rd. Headlined by Mumford & Sons, Gentlemen of the Road (gentlemenoftheroad.com) hits Salthill Park in Salthill, Galway, on June 9th and will feature support acts curated by the band themselves, including The Vaccines, Willy Mason, Zulu Winter, Nathaniel Rateliff, The Correspondents, and Moulettes. Now in its fourth year, Helium (heliumfestival.com) will be welcoming Ash, Delorentos, Duke Special, Jape, The Kanyu Tree and others to Skelly’s Bar, Ballymahon, Co Longford, on June 9th in aid of Ataxia Ireland. The No Place Like Dome (npld.com) organisers bring their Burning Man sensibilities to the Temple House Estate in Sligo from June 15th-17th with an extended line-up that includes The Hot Sprockets, Blind Yackety and The Raglans. The Fortstock Festival (fortstock.ie) will have the Vances Estate near Clones, Co Monaghan, rocking on June 23rd and 24th with sets from those Cavan mods The Strypes, Mundy, The Rubberbandits and the Stars from The Commitments. The Carbon Dioxide Festival (co2fest.com ) will be hoping to fill that Oxegen Dance Tent vacuum on July 14th at Glendale, Co Leitrim, with sets from Hijackers, Paul Carass, Fergal D’Arcy, DJ Trolley and a few more TBAs. While Le Cheile (lecheile.com) returns to Oldcastle, Co Meath, from August 3rd-6th, with Bressie, Republic of Loose, The Walls, and Paddy Casey among the headliners.
My Dubliner interview with Cian Healy ahead of the Heineken Cup final…
HEALY THYSELF
Paul Flood caught up with Ireland and Leinster star – and Berocca Ambassador – Cian Healy to discuss DJ sets, disturbing paintings, rugby goals, and getting owned by Jamie Heaslip.
Did you always want to play rugby when you grew up?
“Rugby was always going to be a big part of what I was going to do, and since third year in school it was where I wanted to go. There was an idea of looking at athletics if rugby didn’t work out but I put a fair bit of effort into making it happen when I was in school. Shot put and discus where my two big events and I won All-Irelands in the few years in school that I did it.”
There are worse jobs, but what’s the worst thing about it?
“At the start I missed out on stuff that a lot of my friends did – J1s and things like that – while I was staying at home training. They had the whole college lifestyle and I didn’t get a chance to do that, but at the same time you’ve a much better quality of life because you’re doing what you love and you’re not just scrounging through. It’s happy enough in that sense.”
So you feel like you’ve missed out on stuff?
“I’m used to it now and since I was very young I’ve been very fit, so it’s built into my life at this stage.”
Would you say you’re intimidating on the pitch?
“Sometimes I’d be in that sort of mood…”
Would you give your opponents in the scrum a bit of lip?
“I’ve no interest in that. I don’t really have time for people with the smart talk, as such, in games. You’re wasting your time doing that.”
Tell me about that hand gesture you like to roll out when you score a try?
“It just came from messing with mates and stuff, and I just kept doing it and then did it in a few games. It doesn’t really mean anything.”
You’re a bit of an accomplished DJ too – DJ Church…
“Accomplished DJ? I don’t know about that! I do a bit. My housemate [‘DJ Gordo’] showed me how to do it and taught me a few of his tricks. So I got a chance to do a couple of gigs with him. I play a lot of house music, and RNB remixes into a bit more upbeat stuff. It’d be all high tempo stuff. It’s completely different from rugby and it’s nice to distance yourself from the game every now and again. If I was fully involved in rugby and it was my whole life I wouldn’t have the same passion for it, I don’t think. When I take myself away from it completely I have that craving to get back and play, so it’s a nice side path.”
You played Oxegen in 2010 and 2011, will we get to see DJ Church again this year?
“I’ve no gigs planned. We would have been looking forward to Oxegen but it’s just unfortunate that it’s cancelled this year.”
There’s always the Lecky Picnic?
“No, I’ll be in training by the time that comes around.”
What’ll you do after your playing days are over?
“I’ve no idea to be honest. I haven’t thought about it. There are loads of options and it depends on what kind of path I want to go down. I’ll look into that in the future when I get worried about the rugby.”
You could always become a painter…
“Yeah, I’ve always been into it. I did it in school and stuff, and I’ve managed to keep it on as a pastime after. I try to do a bit of real-life and I do a lot of messing around with designs and shapes and stuff. Taking something and kind of changing what it looks like but still you recognise what it is, if you know what I mean – abstract.
What was the last thing you painted?
“A face screaming.”
Sounds like Edvard Munch beat you to that one…
“Yeah, it was kind of like The Scream but it was different, if you know what I mean…”
‘A face screaming’, what does that say about Cian Healy?
“I don’t know, I think I was in a bad mood when I painted it…”
You painted BO’D, didn’t you?
“Yeah, I did a few of them. I did Drico, Johnny Sexton, and Paul O’Connell as part of an Adidas thing I was doing. The lads loved them. I think Johnny wanted his but I’d already said I’d auction them off for charity. Down the line I might do one for him.”
What’s going on between you and Jamie Heaslip? [His team-mate got Jim Jim Nugent of the Strawberry Alarm Clock to make a prank call on live radio offering a part in an ad that would have him high tackling Georgia Salpa and dancing in a chorus line of models, amongst other things...]
“We’re good mates so we just pull the piss out of each other every now and again I suppose. I wrapped his car in cellophane as part of my revenge for him getting me on the radio. We’re messing with each other all the time – every April Fool’s himself and myself get together and go out and get a few of the lads. This time he decided to pull a prank on me.”
What do you think of Jamie’s new restaurant Bear?
“I’ve been in it a few times; it’s a nice little venture for him to get into. He’s always in there – he’s enjoying being part of it and the whole set up.”
You’re the brand ambassador for Berocca Performance, which helps keeps a professional sportsman like yourself in peak condition, but how would you really treat yourself on a day off?
“I do like to get a lie-in on my day off, which is a big enough thing for me. I live in over Clontarf so I’d be up before 7am to get over for training with the lads. So usually on a day off I enjoy a good old lie-in and I’ll get up about 11 and meet my friends, have a couple of coffees, get a bit of lunch and completely relax.”
Would you get to have a pint?
“No, that’s off limits. You’re allowed have something after a game – you’re not on a complete curfew. At this stage of professionalism you’re trusted with what you can and can’t do. You know what your limits are and how you’re supposed to treat yourself.”
What would be the ideal meal?
“I like a pizza and maybe a bit of chocolate biscuit cake.”
There’s a lot of calories in there…
“Yeah, but I have to keep my weight up and stay at the heavy end of the scales.”
What’s a good night out in Dublin for you?
“The two bars that I’d go to would be Harry Byrnes in Clontarf and The Bath over on Bath Avenue. If I was going into town I’d head to South William Street – there’s a lot of good bars there. A lot of my friends would be going to Krystle so I’d tip in there the odd time to them.”
What’s your rugby year been like?
“There’s been highs and lows and setbacks but it’s really shaping up to be a good end to the season. You’re constantly looking forward to what’s achievable and how you can get yourself in the best condition to do things. Hopefully I’ll get picked in the summer and get another trip to New Zealand for the Ireland tour. It’s a great place to go to and I obviously enjoyed my time there in the World Cup.”
Finally, you’re an Ireland and Leinster rugby star and you’re dating Miss Ireland, Holly Carpenter – is it tough being Cian Healy?
“It’s tough and it’s not tough – you’ve got to try hard at what you do and you’ve also got to enjoy what you do. It’s a nice balance and I’m enjoying life at the moment.”
My ‘Fan’s Twickenham Guide’…
THE DUBLINERS’ GUIDE TO TWICKENHAM
The ‘home of English rugby’ is going to get some Irish gatecrashers this weekend as Leinster take on Ulster in the Heineken Cup Final. However things play out on the pitch, all you Leinster fans can beat your northern cousins to the best pubs, restaurants, shopping and downtime activities by sticking The Dubliner’s Twickenham Survival Guide in your hand luggage.
For a stretch of grass that was once used to grow cabbages, Twickenham, the majestic 82,000-seater recently renovated HQ of English rugby has certainly come on. On Saturday it will welcome a Leinster team that have been busy coming on themselves over the last few years – if they get past their Ulster opponents in the first ever all-Irish Heineken Cup Final, they will have defended their crown and brought the trophy back to Dublin for the third time in four years. But you know all this, what you probably don’t know is where you can get a decent pre-match nosebag (if you can eat with the nerves), a serviceable pint or two of Guinness, and a taxi back to the digs in the wee small hours. The Dubliner’s got your back with a visitor’s guide that’ll make Twickers your oyster.
Getting there and around
We’ll assume that you’ve either got your accommodation sorted or are going to party on through until the evening train back to Holyhead – in which case we hope they win, and it’s a calm crossing home. If you’re flying into Heathrow, Gatwick, London City, Luton or Stansted airports, trains are the most reliable and cheapest way of getting to the stadium, which is located in the borough of Richmond upon Thames to the southwest of London. Regular mainline trains run to Twickenham Station from Waterloo, and the ground is about a 10-minute walk away from there. The London Underground runs to nearby Richmond on the District Line and to Hounslow on the Piccadilly Line. Visit thetrainline.co.uk for route information, prices and timetables, and if you’re making a day of it in London, a Day Travel Card for zones 1-6 is the way to go. Buses 281, 267 and H22 all run regular services which pass close to the stadium, or you can take a 33, R68, R70, 290 or 490 bus to Twickenham town centre. If you’re driving, the stadium is located on the northern side of the A316 into London. From the M25, exit at J12 onto M3 – this becomes the A316, and the stadium is off the Whitton Road roundabout next to the Lexus/Toyota car dealership. From London, turn right off the A316 at Whitton Road roundabout. You’ll need to give yourself plenty of time to beat the traffic and find a parking spot, however. Navigating the stadium is simples, but if you’re after a good seating plan, visit rfu.com/TwickenhamStadium.
Pubs, grub and clubs
The William Webb Ellis pub (24 London Road – turn left when exiting the train station) is, as the name suggests, a real rugby boozer, and has been known to lay on a few discounts for punters in Leinster shirts on big match days. There are plenty of screens for those without tickets and real ale in the pumps to drown any ticket tout sorrows, with a restaurant menu operating all day, including a full English that’ll put you in good stead. The Cabbage Patch (67 London Road) is the closest pub to the stadium and as such can get five-deep at the bar, but it also boasts a great atmosphere and prides itself on fast service. The White Swan, beautifully situated close by along the river, has rugby memorabilia on the walls, gastro pub grub on the menu and a decent range of craft beers, while The Orange Tree (45 Kew Road, Richmond) also has great river views, buzz and booze, but is a handy enough distance away from the stadium not to be rammed. If you’re after a pint of plain, a singsong, a marquee with outdoor bars, as well as food and a BBQ, Irish pub The Garryowen (68 London Road) is your only man.
If pub grub soakage isn’t doing it for you, A Cena (418 Richmond Road; +44 20 8288 0108) is a cracker of an Italian with a decent wine list and cocktails, Arthur’s on the Green (The Green, Twickenham; +44 20 8893 3995) is a quirky yet popular bistro with an accomplished menu that can be enjoyed al fresco, and The Cabin Grill in The Albany (1 Queen’s Road; +44 20 8891 1777) has got your back for great steak cuts, fresh fish, shellfish and a variety of American classics such as BBQ beef ribs and Wagyu burgers. Those splashing out should visit the Bingham Restaurant (61 – 63 Petersham Road, Richmond; +44 20 8940 0902), with its modern British cuisine, or dip into the celebrated Japanese and Korean menu of Matsuba (10 Red Lion St, Richmond; +44 20 8605 3513).
You’re a bit out in the sticks, so if you want to get your dance on, it’s going to be cheesy. Viva (1-3 Hill Rise, Richmond; +44 20 8940 5283), and Oceana (154-156 Clarence Street, Kingston; +44 20 8547 2848), are your best bets – but the serious clubbers among you will already be heading up the road to the delights of London.
Culture and shopping
You can come down on Sunday with a bit of culture and a visit to the historic stately home of York House and its gardens (Richmond Road), or the legendary Eel Pie Island, whose hotel regularly welcomed the likes of The Rolling Stones and The Who during the 60s. There are plenty of boat hire companies along the river, and if you point your punt north, the beautiful upmarket town of Richmond boasts many stately homes, parks and open spaces. The famous Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew (adults £13.90, concessions £11.90, children free) are a further paddle up the Thames or a dart up the District Line to Kew Gardens station.
If you have the lady in tow (and why wouldn’t you?), Twickenham’s Church Street has a number of boutique shops, but, again, Richmond is the place to make a dent in the overdraft, with a great mix of well-known outlets, boutiques, designer stores and antique shops along its cobbled alleyways and High Street. You can catch a breather, a bite and the first of the day on Richmond Green – London’s largest town centre open space. Brewers Lane, Paved Court, Golden Court, Church Court and Hill Rise are also worth a gander for the many independent shops, galleries and curious places to browse.
Taxis
You won’t want for a chariot to swing low and take you home after the session, but if you are struggling for a lift, stick these numbers into your phone: Apex Cars (+44 020 8891 0262), Taxis Twickenham (+44 800 625 0362), and Ace Mini Cabs (+44 20 8892 2285).
And that’s it – all that’s left to remind you is to rest those vocal chords the night before, give the ball back if it comes your way, and if you’re not in bed by half eleven on Saturday night, go home. Oh, and come on Leinster!
EMERGENCY PANEL
We don’t need to tell you to be safe over there, but if things don’t run as smoothly as planned, here’s some essential info… For lost property at the stadium, enquires can be made in person at the Security Office located at Gate F. This will be open until 9.00pm on the day of the event. For enquiries after match day, email lostproperty@therfu.com or phone +44 208 831 6527. The Taxi Lost Property Office in London can be reached on +44 845 3309882. Just like at home, the emergency number in the UK is 999 from both a payphone and your mobile. There are no 24-hour pharmacies in the Twickenham area but C Goode Pharmacy (22 London Rd; +44 208 892 1614) is open until 6pm on Saturday. The closest 24-hour service is Zafash Pharmacy about seven miles away to the north-east (233 – 235, Old Brompton Rd; +44 207 373 2798). Lost or stolen cards can be reported to Bank of Ireland on +353 56 775 7007, AIB on + 353 1 269 5022, Ulster Bank on +44 131 549 8186 for debit cards and +44 142 370 0545 for credit cards, and to Permanent TSB on +353 (1) 212 4290.
My series of interviews with some of the dads of the Leinster rugby team…
A STAR IN THE FAMILY
DAVID KEARNEY – FATHER OF ROB AND DAVID
“I played centre with Dundalk for about 14 years after I left school till I was about 32 or 33 but it was only provincial towns standard. My three lads [Richard, Rob and David] all went to Clongowes when they were 13 and that’s where they played nearly all their rugby. Robert was always very well coordinated and he had a good eye for ball. And physically he was built well so it was always reckoned from a fairly young age that he was going to do well in the game if things went right for him. He developed a bit of speed and everything fitted into place for him and he went on from there.
“David’s doing well too. He developed later than Robert actually; he was always lighter physically. He didn’t really get going until he was in fourth year in school and then he took off and developed right physically and got a bit of speed. If you don’t have the speed you have nothing. He’s made great progress in the last two or three years now. With a bit of luck he’ll make the bench because poor old Luke Fitzgerald is gone now. He’s been very unlucky. That’s the other side of it – it’s a very rocky road.
“There’s been a few stand-out moments with Robert. Obviously being in Cardiff for the Grand Slam was brilliant, and then being down in South Africa for the Lions Tour. I went down for the second and third tests and he played very well in the second test, even though they were narrowly beaten, and they won the third.
“I go to all the matches; I wouldn’t go to any of the RaboDirect away games but we wouldn’t miss any of the others. I suppose it’s surreal in ways watching Robert out there. You’re watching your son but sometimes you’re watching a player out on the pitch and you forget that he’s your son. You do concentrate on him all the time really. You’re watching for little mistakes and errors and you hope he plays well. It’s not until you get home and put on the replay that you can actually sit down and enjoy it. We’d always have a post-mortem. Very often after a game he’ll text or call and say, ‘Well, what did you think?’ and we’ll go through it. Before the game there’s just a quick call and a ‘best of luck’ and ‘hope all goes well’.
“We’ll be going over to Twickenham – Siobhan my wife, Richard, the eldest fella, and Sara, our youngest. It’ll be the first Heineken Cup Final Robert’s played in if he makes it. Last year he was injured and the previous one he had the mumps and just came on as a sub in the last few minutes in Murrayfield, so he’s really hoping and praying that he’s safe and sound.
“I’ve a lot of friends in Ulster – I live just south of the boarder in Carlingford – and one of my best friends Craig Best is Rory’s uncle, so I have to be very careful when making predictions. But certainly on paper Leinster are the form team. It’s a fantastic achievement for a small country like ours to have two teams in the final.”
FRANK CULLEN – FATHER OF LEO
“I’ll be at the game on Saturday, of course, and have been going to all the games since Leo was a kid. I was in boarding school in Mount St Joseph’s in Roscrea, where I played rugby, but I got injured in my final year and never played again. Leo from the day he was born was connected to a ball. There was a famous game in 1988 during the Dublin Millennium and that year they had an extra match to celebrate the event, which was Ireland versus England in Lansdowne Road. That’s when the Millennium Trophy was first presented and played for. And on that day, before the match, there was an under-10s game between Willow Park and Terenure and Leo played in it for Willow Park and scored a try. I have a picture of him standing beside Bill Beaumont and that to me was the launching pad of his rugby career.
“Then he went on to win a Junior Cup and two Senior Cup medals with Blackrock, he was with Ireland Schools for a couple of season, and all through that I’ve lived every one of those moments. It’s a privilege to have a son that’s evolved to that level. When you go to a game you feel rather humbled. In the Aviva Stadium with 50,000 people roaring the team on and your lad is out there. I feel immensely proud.
“The Leinster team have this habit of putting us through the wringer. The game in Bordeaux [the Heineken Cup semi-final against Clermont Auvergne] was really heart-stopping stuff. Those games are Herculean for the lads but for us they’re heart-stopping.
“Winning the first Heineken Cup brought them to a level that they deserved to be. As a Leinster supporter right up along the way I always felt this bunch of players were truly great and I think winning that first Heineken Cup was a massive mountain to climb – and then winning the second in such an extraordinary game. And that would be my approach to the third, I think this bunch of players are well capable of winning their third Heineken Cup, which would really show their greatness.
“Paula my wife and myself go to most of the games together. She’s as much a supporter as anyone else, more avid than anyone else. She’s very boisterous on the pitch, whereas I tend to be a little more in myself. All the family will go: Leo’s younger brother Eoin, who’s regularly confused for Leo, but it’s useful when it gets him into nightclubs, and his older sister Sarah.
“A final is a final. On paper you’d say Leinster should win it but Ulster are an improving team who’ve had some really good results over the past few months. They’re in the final and the final starts as a 50/50 game for me every time. Anything can happen. It’ll be great. To be in this game at this point of the season is fantastic.”
DR FRANK O’DRISCOLL – FATHER OF BRIAN
“When it comes to nerves it’s exactly the same as any other final, and probably even more so because of everyone making us firm favourites. I’m too long in the game to fall for that one. It’s a cup final so it’s 50/50 on the day and any side can win it. We have to preform to our very best to win.
“We’ll be there on the day lock, stock and barrel, the whole lot of us, grandchildren as well. It’ll actually be their third Heineken Cup Final. I’ll be nervous on the day but I don’t think I could ever feel any worse than I did in the semi-final against Clermont. I say about that match that we won it, we lost and we won it back. I was sure it was gone but it just shows the value of the camera.
“I played a bit of rugby for Clontarf and all the way up to international level but when I’m watching the games I’m not itching to get out there; I’m just like every other mother and father. And it gets worse as you get older!
“When Brian was a kid he was very good at all ball games so it looked like he had a future is some kind of sport, not necessarily rugby. It was 11 or 12 when he started at the rugby and he just took to it. The rest is history. His first game was for Blackrock Under-12s against Terenure. He played on the wing and he scored four tries that day.
“What gives us great satisfaction is the way Brian behaves himself and the kind of role model he is, and the fact that none of it has gone to his head. The way he involves his two sisters too. It’s very easy when you have a star in the family for the other two to be left out but he’s brilliant at involving them and their husbands.
“You can be damn sure that the Ulster fans will travel in their thousands. They’re very passionate as well and home or away they have avid support. It’ll be a smashing day for Irish rugby. We’re going on Friday on the boat and we’re going to relatives in Manchester that night, so we’ll have a hoolie there. Then we’re going down on Saturday for the game, so it’s a great occasion.”
FRANK ROSS – FATHER OF MIKE
“Well he’s not playing for Munster but I’m very happy that he’s playing for an Irish province. Myself and my wife Patty will be heading over on Saturday to watch the match. I go to all the matches, I’m really into it. We won’t have any contact with Mike on the day, we’ll get to speak to him after the match but sometimes he gets held up with the press. Hopefully he won’t have any injuries, that’s the big fear in any game. We’ll just go over and back in the day because we have the dairy cows here.
“I played towns rugby and schools rugby and I played junior level and senior level with Dolphin. I can’t really claim much credit for Mike’s underage career because my wife always drove him to rugby at Fermoy Town. I recognised even at the age of eight that he had extreme physical strength. I remember going into our local creamery for cement and at that time the sacks where 50kgs, and he was eight at the time and he ran out to me at the Jeep with the bag of cement. I knew then that he was very physically strong. We’d always have rugby balls around the farm here and he’d be kicking with his brothers. I remember at underage he was way physically stronger than his own age groups and that meant that he used to score a lot of tries.
“I was very happy with the time that he was in the UCC team that won the European University Cup in 1999. I think it was the same day that Ulster won the Heineken Cup. That was the first major moment, and then it was when Dean Richards gave him his first Harlequins start against Leicester Tigers. He went over there with only a very small contract, I think it was two or three months, and he actually missed his own wedding reception over getting that start. He was married in the States but he had a reception for the relatives here and he couldn’t come back to Ireland because he got his start against Leicester the following day.
“We are always worried when we’re watching Mike in games because he’s right in the front. You could see himself and Brad Thorn where really taking the hits in the last match against Clermont and where doing a lot of the hard tackling. For Mike’s front row it’s going to be a very tough day in the office, they’re not going to get anything easy.
“You can’t be nervous about it; you just have to take what comes. There’s nothing you can do about it. When he was at Harlequins he played something like 90-something matches in three seasons and he started in all but one or two of them. For a number of years in the Premiership I think he was in the top four of minutes played, so he’s played at a very high level and he’s learnt his craft.
“I don’t use the word ‘proud’ but it’ll be a happy moment for me if things go well on Saturday. And obviously I’ll be in anticipation of that but, you know yourself, you can’t do anything about it – unless you can do something psychic. I won’t miss being out there; I don’t think I could take a tackle now.”
My feature on Dublin’s lost and found…
FIGHTING A LOSING BATTLE
Some time spent in the frontline of lost property – with all those mobiles, keys, laptops, engagement rings, rabbits, trumpets, money-belts, wheelchairs, oh, and that penny farthing – leads Paul Flood to some interesting conclusions about ourselves, not least that we’re still a right bunch of losers.
If the economists ever tire of those numbers that they like to crunch – you know, the ones which indicate that we pissed it all up a wall – they could always point punters in the direction of Sean Hyland in the Dublin Bus Lost Property Office. “In the height of the Tiger economy we would have had a lot of shopping bags that a lot of people wouldn’t have claimed,” Sean tells me. “We would have had bags from Arnotts and Brown Thomas – now we only get Penneys.”
If you want to gauge prosperity you need only look as far as the stuff people are prepared to lose it would seem. Or not, as Sean points out. “Nowadays if it’s a decent phone left on the bus it’s claimed whereas years ago it wouldn’t have been.”
Among the phones, bags, car keys and wallets that are left by Dubliners on buses and which make their way to the office behind Clerys on Earl Place, Sean gets the odd odd item too. “We got a live rabbit in one time, a fairly big one with floppy ears. We rang the VSPCA if I remember correctly and they came in and took him. We’ve had live mice too – obviously someone was feeding a snake.
“We’ve gotten prams, buggies, a wheelchair – he must have been coming back from court after winning his case – walking sticks, guitars, a violin, a trumpet, all kinds of instruments, hurleys, footballs. We got a bag in one time and there was all kinds of stuff in it – whips and chains and that. The girl came in and claimed it, not a bother on her.”
Anything that isn’t valuable is kept for a month and then given to charity shops. “What we would consider of value would be money, jewellery – they’d be kept for a year,” Sean explains. “If it’s a large sum we’d try and contact the person, we’d write to the bank if there was a bank card with it and ask them to ask the person to contact us. There was €3,500 in a credit union book found one time. That person was on their way into us when I rang the credit union and told them we had some property with his name on it.”
Irish Rail’s seen a few strange items too – and strange owners. “A loaf of bread was left into lost property one day by one of the guys from the train and we obviously got rid of it as it was perishable,” Rita Butterly remembers. “The next day a lady came back looking for it and she wasn’t too happy that it wasn’t there.
“You get things lost on every train – people are traveling to appointments or interviews or to court or hospital and they can be stressed. People have even left their X-rays that they’ve come to Dublin with to bring to a consultant and it’s the most valuable thing that they’ve with them on the day.
“An artificial leg was also found and it was never claimed.”
Among the shopping bags, umbrellas, phones, personal documents, reading glasses, keys, wallets, and handbags mislaid on the Luas every day, lost property staff have had to store away a single insole for a shoe, which was eventually claimed, and dentures, which weren’t. An illuminated Budweiser pub sign did light the way back to ownership for one cultivated commuter, however.
Like the other forms of public transport in the city, the Luas lost property offices in the Red Cow and Sandyford depots hold onto the items for a set period of time before they’re sent onto their chosen charities. All except those dentures, you’d like to think.
The Carriage Office in Dublin Castle, once the last hope for many a hungover caller, no longer deals with lost property. Now there are five designated Garda stations in Irishtown, Store Street, Finglas, Tallaght and Shankill that manage property found in taxis. It makes it easier for the drivers to drop stuff off instead of making their way into Dublin Castle, but it’s still not ideal, as Vinny Kearns, Chief Executive of Xpert Taxis and a former driver and representative with over 29 years in the industry, relates.
“If you left your laptop in a taxi and the driver happens to live in Crumlin, he brings it to Crumlin Garda Station. If you’re out in Santry Garda Station looking for it, the guy in the station doesn’t know that the laptop’s in Crumlin Garda Station because there’s no central database for it. People should be able to go online and register lost items and identify them. Items should be tagged and accounted for and no matter where they’re left there should be a central database of lost items. The technology is there to make this job simple.”
Vinny tells me that the usual suspects still turn up in taxi footwells – phones, wallets, bags, the odd stiletto – but one incident does stuck in his mind from the time when he was out on the meter. “I had a money-belt left in the car. It had various different currencies in it. I’d driven the man to Dublin Airport and I was able to trace him and got it back to him before he left. He’d obviously loosened the money-belt in the car and got out. The man was emigrating to South Africa and there was a lot of money in it in various currencies.”
I put it to him that not every driver is as honest. “There are guys out there that if they see the wallet fall out of your pocket they put their foot on it, but then again there are more decent taxi drivers than there are scoundrels. I think the majority of drivers would be happy to do it if it was convenient to return lost property.”
Property left in taxis and recovered stolen items that remain unclaimed generally find their way to a public auction at Merlin Car Auctions in Naas. It’s not a bad spot for a bargain. “We always get a big crowd,” Corporate Services Manager Ed Byrne tells me, “whether they’re buying a DVD for a euro or a bike for a fiver. All garda items are sold ‘no reserve’, which means the highest bidder will get every item, and that’s a real attraction for people buying at auction. Everything that is sold through the lost and found in auction will be a bargain.”
There’s a bicycle auction every six weeks or so and a miscellaneous auction of mobiles, bags and the rest on a quarterly basis. “Only recently we had one of those penny farthing bikes, which had a huge interest,” Ed continues. “It was a really old bike with the huge wheel. I think it was sold to a guy who does sightseeing tours around town. We also had an engagement ring recently as well. It was still in the box so she must have had an argument and threw it away.”
The huge number of smart phone and iPhone thefts in the city has resulted in a garda clampdown, and while services and apps such as MobileMe and Find My iPhone have made it possible to track a stolen phone effectively on a map, it has raised another issue – what do you do with the information.
Dave Fortune from Dun Laoghaire had his iPhone stolen last year while jumping into a taxi on Suffolk Street. He twigged it immediately and got onto the gardai. “I told them that I was able to track it and they told me to ring them if I could. So I got home and tracked it on MobileMe. I’d pre-tested it before on numerous occasions and it was able to tell me what side of the house I was in, so I was confident about where it was. First off it was on Dorset Street, it was sitting there for about 20 minutes, and then it went to Stoneybatter. I rang it a couple of times and said that it was my work phone and that I was happy to give him a few hundred quid just so he could give it back to me and your man just said, ‘Give me the pin code or you’ll never see your phone again.’
“I rang the guards and told them where the phone was. They told me they needed a warrant and that I wasn’t to take things into my own hands. I hung up and went to do something about it but my mates warned me that I could be walking into a whole gang down there, so I let that one sit.”
Dave continues: “You can make a note of the IMEI number, which is what I did, and I rang Vodafone, gave them the number and they disabled it. So that’s disabled in Ireland, it’s basically an iPod here, but you can send them over to the UK and they work fine there. So they probably send them over in boxes. There’s teams of lads out there eyeballing for iPhones. I don’t take mine out with me anymore.”
Kevin Fagan, who got the idea for his Lost.ie website when some German tourists returned his wife’s wallet after she dropped it at the Cliffs of Moher, has presided over some happy outcomes since the site launched in 2007. “The way Lost.ie works is you’re free to put something up and when you take it down we ask for a little feedback, and the majority of feedback we get has been of people finding things through the site.”
Again it’s the usual flotsam and jetsam, but there have been some panicky posts. “You tend to get a lot of guys losing engagement rings, so you have posts saying ‘Engagement Ring Lost in Temple Bar’ and the guys would have gone back to England from a stag party.”
This summer the Electric Picnic is the only show in town, and Garda Tara Reddin of Portlaoise Station, who looks after lost property at the festival, will be there again. “Lost property at the Electric Picnic was very much down last year compared to other years. People are getting more mindful of their property,” she explains.
There’ll be a Garda cabin at the festival – in earshot of the bands, Tara tells me – and there are a few things you can do to make any potential visit this year run a bit smoother. “With the likes of cameras I’d advise people to maybe have a picture on it with their contact details. With the phones maybe put a sticker onto their battery and have their contact details and a forwarding address on it.”
I’m mindful of something Kevin at Lost.ie told me: “If you give someone an easy way to locate somebody who’s lost something, 80 or 90 per cent of the time they will go through the trouble if it’s easy for them. If you make people jump through hoops to find someone they’ll lose interest quickly.”
Losers aren’t always weepers it seems, as long as finders get their finger out.
My piece on Dublin’s gay entrepreneurs and the pink pound for The Dubliner…
IN THE PINK
Paul Flood spoke to five Dublin-based gay entrepreneurs about their businesses, the difficulties of the current environment and the merits of going after that ‘Pink Pound’.
Many business people and entrepreneurs have chased the ‘Pink Pound’ (or ‘Pink Euro’ if the alliteration isn’t doing it for you) in an effort to tap into that pot of gold gay market – the one that has no co-dependents and heaps of disposable income. But does it really exist anymore? As one entrepreneur pointed out, “Gay people have lost their jobs too and are struggling, and it doesn’t make sense to target just one demographic anyway.”
We may not have as much money as we used to but we have progressed as a society – and not just in terms of diversity and inclusivity, tastes and fashions have developed to such an extent that they could now be said to be in line with those of the gay community. We now want to enjoy good food and coffee in well-designed environments, while male grooming is not just socially acceptable, it’s a booming industry. Here five gay Dublin-based entrepreneurs talk about their successes and failures and their belief in setting up businesses and services that deserve to see the colour of your money – pink or otherwise.
CORMAC CASHMAN – CLUB PROMOTOR
“I went to college in Trinity and graduated last year. I did business, economics and social studies. I always saw myself going into business in one form or another – I wasn’t really suited to anything else – but I pretty much picked my course by going through the prospectus and crossing everything else off the list. It was course by elimination! I started promoting when I was about two years into the course and then college became a part-time thing really because I wasn’t that into the academic side of things. I was more into nightclubs. My parents were as surprised as me when I got my degree.
“I was into the gay clubbing scene in Dublin, I was about 21, but I was kind of bored of the clubs that were out there and I found the gay scene a bit expensive, so I said I’d start my own club. I wanted to focus on chart pop music with good drinks promotions and set up a night that way. I called it Prhomo and it kind of took off. It originally started in Base Bar on Wicklow Street and then we moved it to Dragon about a year and a half later. We were getting 400 people a week when it was in Base Bar and now we’re getting 700 people a week in Dragon. It’s done very well – a few weeks ago it had its third birthday.
“Then nearly two years ago I started a club called Mother with GCN in Copper Alley. The other night’s aimed at a younger crowd, this night is aimed at an older crowd. The focus is on good music and good DJs – electro pop, Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys, that kind of stuff. That’s what Mother is all about: it was different to everything that was on the gay scene at the time and it’s stayed committed to electro music.
“I pretty much identified things on the gay scene that weren’t available. There were niches in the market, like the focus on electro music and older disco at Mother, and with Prhomo there were hardly any drinks promotions on the gay scene so I focused on that. It was all about finding the niches and finding the right people to work with. It wasn’t that difficult to make a success of it. We were doing stuff that was different to everybody else so we kicked the competition’s ass.
“The Pink Pound is as strong as it always was, you just have to focus and make sure you’re providing a good product. People still want to go out and enjoy themselves but now it’s once a week rather than three times a week. They’ll come out to the club that will provide them with the best service and we seem to be doing that with our nights. The downturn doesn’t seem to have affected us too badly, the clubs are as busy as they ever were.”
GARRETT FITZGERALD & JAMES BOLAND – BROTHER HUBBARD CAFÉ
“We’ve taken a very slowly-but-surely approach to all of this – you have only one chance to get it right. This might be a rather naïve thing to wish for but we didn’t want to be too busy too soon while we were still figuring things out. Myself and James are relatively new to the business so we felt that slow and steady wins the race.
“I originally studied at the Shannon College of Hotel Management and I also did a Bachelor of Commerce at NUI Galway. I then worked as a business consultant for a couple of years, moved onto the Commission for Energy Regulation for five years and progressed through the organisation. It was after a holiday in Argentina four or five years ago that James and I decided that we needed to shake things up a bit. James also showed me an article about the ‘psychology of regret’ and that was a eureka moment for me – I didn’t want to be stuck at a desk wondering what might have been. I’d always been very drawn to entrepreneurship, and we had talked about a café or some form of food business. We got very motivated – I arranged a career break from my job and headed down to Ballymaloe Cookery School to study, which was fantastic. James finished his job in investment banking, and we headed off into the sunset travelling, eating our way around the world for a year or so. We ended up in Melbourne, where I worked in two small owner-run businesses, an artisan bakery and a little neighbourhood café. That was a very important experience for me. When we returned to Dublin things had certainly changed but we felt the situation wasn’t so bad that we couldn’t pursue our idea. We felt that people were still in the habit of going out and enjoying themselves but instead of dropping €40 on a main course they were dropping €10 or €12 on brunch or a nice salad in a café on a Saturday or during the week.
“We viewed properties and got our business plan set up with all our financial projections and then this property where we are now, 153 Capel Street, came up on the market. What was most frustrating about the whole thing wasn’t the rejection of the banks, it was going in and them telling us, ‘We’ll tell you in two weeks’, and it dragging on and on. That happened with two financial institutions but fortunately the third one went with us.
“We came across two young lads known as Designgoat who had graduated from NCAD last July and we were really impressed with them and got them on board to design the setting. We opened just over a month ago and our policy is that effectively we make everything. We don’t sell Coca-Cola, we only sell our own drinks, and similarly when you walk in everything you see on the counter will have been made by us – salads, soups, cakes, a lot of our menu is influenced by our travels too. We’re in for about 6.15 every morning because we’re dealing with yeast and yeast takes time – it controls you, unfortunately – and we get home at around 10 or 11. Overall we’ve been delighted with things. We’ve probably been overly cautious in terms of our forecast but it’s better to be so in this environment. Twitter and word-of-mouth have been amazing for us, which is how a business should grow – organically and on its own merits. These are difficult times but you have to take a leap.”
Brother Hubbard café, 153 Capel St; 01 4411112, brotherhubbard.ie
STEPHEN THOMAS – MALE GROOMING INC.
“I’m from Kildare and moved up to Dublin to go to college in 1998. I did business in Ballyfermot Senior College. My entrepreneurial story would really start with the fact that I have very bad skin and had severely bad acne since I was a teenager. One day my flatmate had a friend over who had some books on the subject and I asked her where she went to beauty college. I approached the college but found it very difficult to get in because there weren’t any men who were being trained at that stage in any of the institutions here. Eventually Galligans on Grafton Street decided to take me on for a Beauty Therapy course after a number of interviews proved that I was serious about it.
“With my background it just seemed like a natural thing to happen to start a business after I took the course. I did some research and I found that any place I rang up to actually get some facials and a treatment weren’t taking men. That just jumped off the page for me and I thought I had to do something about it. I worked in a salon for a while and got some fantastic on-the-job training and from there I went for it. It just all fell into place – a friend with a salon had a spare room and gave it to me and it just got bigger and bigger.
“Initially I treated male and female clients because it would have taken me longer to establish a men-only clinic, and then in late 2004 I moved into my present premises in Dame Street and I got a bit of a profile. I do all the treatments myself and I do all the business stuff myself, so it’s just a one-man operation here. I’ve purposefully kept it very small because men like to know that what they’re getting done is private, they don’t want to be walking out of somewhere that has a big shop front. I also like to get to know my clients on a personal level just so they know that when they come in it’ll be me that they’re getting every time. You build up a rapport because of that.
“I don’t distinguish between gay or straight clients. Initially most of my business oriented around the gay scene and I used to advertise in the GCN. The stereotype is that gay men take care of themselves a bit more than straight men but I don’t agree with that, I actually think it’s the other way round. Right now I have a slight majority of straight clients.
“The Pink Pound came from a time when there wasn’t any money and the only people that had it were gay people because we didn’t have families or kids. Then we went through a period when everybody had wealth and it became less about the Pink Pound and more about everybody wanting things, and now it’s reverting back. To tell you the truth I sometimes think that the Pink Pound was a bit of a myth because I didn’t see any of it – and I never had any of it!”
Male Grooming Inc., Top Floor, Coghill’s Court, Dame St, Temple Bar, D2; 01 6729444
KATE BRENNAN-HARDING – MOTHER JONES POP UP GRUB
“I had a restaurant for years in Clonakilty and then I ran different nights in Cork such as the Fantasy Ball. And now I’m back in Dublin and I’ve just set up a food store, Mother Jones Pop Up Grub, with my business partner in the Mingle Market off Thomas Street. It’s going well, it’s gone beyond pop up because it’s an established space but we’re hoping in time that we can pop up all over the place. We sell old fashioned grub such as bacon and cabbage, toasties, sausages in a crusty roll and soups. Everything is homemade.
“I’ve gone through different jobs and I’ve been offered different jobs but I just prefer working for myself. I guess the entrepreneurial spirit was just built into me, I’ve always done my own thing. I was brought up in Dun Laoghaire and went to college – I was going to become a teacher but I just got caught up in the fun of the gay world. I started selling my own stuff like phone accessories. I’m always looking for the next project and seeing what can work. I had no work after coming back from travelling and I spotted a building for lease in Clonakilty, where I was living with my partner. I just thought, ‘I can do that’, so we started a restaurant called the Oracle and had it for four years. We did outside catering too and we ran events as well. It was a massive learning curve – the first six months I made the biggest mistakes of my life and learnt from that. Everything evolves and we did really, really well because you have to change and find where your money’s going to come from. It’s tough at the moment but you have to get yourself out there and be really innovative. Most people are going back to basics with the pop up thing. If you were to ask me would I ever have a restaurant again I wouldn’t because it’s a different culture now.
“I think the Pink Pound is there but I just think gay people are not as open to being marketed in that way – it can come across as a little bit patronising sometimes. Gay people tend to have a little bit more income but it is all getting more homogenised, which, in my opinion, is kind of cool.”
See facebook.com/MotherJonessPopUpGrub.
WILL WALSH – GAYB.IE TRAVEL AGENCY
“I studied in DIT Cathal Bruagh Street and did the travel diploma there, then I went to work in Donnybrook Travel. I’d no plans to go into specific LGBT travel but while I was there I spotted a niche in the market and helped set up Pride Travel, which catered for the gay and lesbian community. I ran that for a few years but unfortunately the business folded. Then I joined The Travel Broker in Clontarf about four years ago and again I was instrumental in helping to set up GayB.ie.
“We originally advertised in GCN but didn’t get much return from it. I’d be quite well known in the gay community, I’m proud to be a gay man, so I tend to go out to gay events to advertise the business. Things like BEAR events are perfect – there’s the BEAR Feile, which is on over a weekend in March. I’d go along and meet people there and explain our service. We advertised at the GAY Pride Festival a few years back but you tend to get lost at events like that so we focus now on smaller events. The personal touch really matters – we’d have a lot of older clients and people who aren’t out of the closet so they can come in and get personal and confidential advice. We’d have a lot of connections around the world so we can help tailor the package and help people get the holiday they want.
“You couldn’t run a dedicated LGBT travel agent in Ireland because the market isn’t there. It is in the UK and America but not here. It has to come as part of an overall travel agency operation. The gay travel business is suffering, like the whole industry is suffering, because people are doing their own thing and going online to organise their own holidays, but we provide a dedicated service to the community and are well established with tour operators throughout Europe and the world.
“The Pink Pound is there but speaking as a gay man it has a negative connotation. If you look in the GCN and see an ad one week you’ll think, ‘They weren’t advertising here before and probably won’t next week.’ It seems exploitative. We’d much rather go down the route of being a company with a more personal touch. It’s really important and I think it’s appreciated. Businesses who cater for the community do well when it’s clear that they’re not just out to make a fast buck, that there’s a bit of substance to their service and that they really care.”
Visit GayB.ie or speak to Will on 01 833 3921.
My Dubliner interview with Dragons’ Den survivor Mark O’Callaghan…
A GAME OF TWO HALVES
When Mark O’Callaghan entered the Dragons’ Den last Sunday, he not only brought with him a unique idea for a football board game but also a remarkable story that began in the tough orphanages of Dublin. Words by Paul Flood
Last Sunday, the fire breathers on Dragons’ Den welcomed another budding, trembling entrepreneur into their pressure cooker. “I was shitting myself,” Mark O’Callaghan remembers. “Being in front of the camera and being behind it are two totally different things. I got dry mouth.” He didn’t get scorched, however. Far from it. Tactico, the football board game he dreamt up, wowed the Dragons and brought a deal. Which, when you look back at his start in life in the orphanages and care homes of 1970s and ’80s Dublin, makes this latest achievement all the more remarkable. Not many came out of that world unscathed, never mind a budding success.
Mark was born into a Dublin tenement in 1971 and will only say that he was given into care at the age of two because of “problems that were typical during the time in working class areas”. That first home was Madonna House in Blackrock, an institution that has since become infamous after claims of sexual and physical abuse were levelled at it.
“Sadly enough Madonna House is associated with a lot of abuse that went on,” Mark tells me over the phone from his London home. “I don’t know much about [the claims] because I wasn’t in Ireland when it was kicking off but I do know that there was a serious amount of abuse that went on in the home.”
I wonder if he suffered any. “Certainly nothing that I can remember. I know it went on but I don’t know who did it. Probably what saved us in comparison to a lot of other kids from broken homes was that I had my other siblings there and my older brother there – there were five of us – so if you wanted to attack one of us you had to attack all five. We took care of each other.
“We were really lucky. One of the conditions that my father put on it was that if we were to be put in a home then all five of us were to be kept together. Nobody would adopt us because the restrictions were if you wanted to adopt one you had to adopt all five. That’s why we ended up staying in a home so long.”
The O’Callaghans were then moved to St Clare’s Convent in Harold’s Cross when he was five, and this brought them under the care of Sister Francis, a nun that was to have a remarkable impact on Mark’s life.
“I’m here because of her, it’s as simple as that,” he explains. “There are loads of kids out there that would be the same. She was loved by everybody. My god, every kid in the home called her ‘Mother’. That stands as a testament to the person. You don’t call somebody that name unless you mean it. And it wasn’t forced on you, you just did it naturally. She was an extraordinary woman.”
Barely into his teens, he was separated from his brother and sisters and moved onto Hope Hostel off Dorset Street. “It was a horrible place because they were adults in there. There were drunks, there were people who had mental problems… I’m only 14 maybe 15 years of age and I’ve been landed in this place. They used to kick you out at 8 o’clock in the morning and you weren’t allowed back until 8 o’clock in the evening, so you had to spend the whole day out on the streets.
“I used to hang about with a couple of Traveller kids and there was this pool – a water tank – in the Ilac Centre that people used to throw money into. That’s where we got our lunch money.”
He then found himself in Don Boscos House on Gardener Street until he was 16, when he became homeless. He slept on the convent grounds in Harold’s Cross – “They have a grotto, like a room with lovely statues and stuff, on the main field in St Clare’s Convent. I used to go in at lunchtime and Mother would feed me.
“Sister Francis was like a safety net for me all the time. She eventually got the State to provide what they called an ‘Orphan’s Benefit’, which enabled me to get a flat and basically go back to school. So the nuns paid for me to go to a private school in central Dublin, the Dublin Tutorial College. She convinced the nuns to pay and this wasn’t a cheap school, it cost IR£2,500 a subject and I was doing eight subjects. They paid for that for two years until I got my Leaving Cert.”
Mark loved school and did well in his Leaving but knew he had to get out of Ireland to get ahead. “The stigma of coming from a home, the fact that university was unavailable to people like me at the time just limited my choices. Unemployment was rampant; I couldn’t get a job. I was always going to leave Ireland. The opportunities just weren’t there for someone from my background so I just decided to up and go.”
He went to France and then onto Germany, where he spent five years, before his brother in London put him wide to the fact that third level education in the UK was free. Mark soon joined him, took on an Electronic Imaging Science Degree in Westminster University and eventually found work in post-production houses putting together movie special effects. When his older brother got a job doing the electrics for the new Wembley Stadium, Mark followed in his footsteps again.
During a break on English football’s most hallowed turf the idea for Tactico popped into his head. “I just thought, ‘Nobody has invented a board game based around football.’ When I did research on it and tried to find something like it I found a few that had died a death – one that they’d done with Paul Gascoigne.
“I decided to make a game that didn’t involve stats or trivia and make it more like an actual football game and a management game and that’s how it started. At Wembley I made a mock-up board and mock-up cards just out of paper and at lunch time I would get the guys to play it with me on the pitch. That way I could find out what the problems were with it. So I did that for two years to find out what the format of the game would be like until I basically got it down to where it is now.”
He got a bank loan, found an American company with cheap manufacturing facilities in mainland China and had his first prototype by early 2008. When he sent a couple of samples home to his sister and her teacher husband in Mayo, it proved a hit with his pupils and she made up her mind to send an email to Dragons’ Den about Mark.
“I knew who I wanted to get after Siobhan entered me on the show,” he reveals. “One of the Dragons stood out for me because he’d already invested in a person that had done a game called Animatazz. That went on to be a great success so I knew that this was the guy I wanted, a guy called Gavin Duffy.
“The first two Dragons went out and I thought, ‘F***, I’ve bombed out.’ Then one of them offered me half the equity, which was the €50,000 I was looking for, for 25 per cent equity share in the company. Then Gavin told me, ‘Look, I’ll give you all the money you want for 40 per cent.’ And I straight away shook hands. That’s who was I was after. I blew Gavin away; he told me it was the best board game he’d seen on the show.”
Now he has Tactico in Smyths Toy Store, is in discussions with Toys R Us and is courting Argos. “I’ll know after this show and the feedback from Smyths if it’s going to be a game that makes it.”
If it doesn’t Mark has plenty of other things in the pipeline. “I’m just about to finish another prototype that I’m hoping to launch as well and I’m working on a third project. I try to find gaps in the market that I think I can fill. I always had the dream of running my own business. I used to annoy my older brother – I used to tell him when I was a kid that I’d own a chocolate factory.
“I could have ended up a lot worse,” Mark reflects. “I’ve a lot of friends in prison, dead from drugs – I ended up OK. My whole family went through university and we’re all OK. Others didn’t have the support structure around them like I had. I had Mother and I had four members of my family, so if things got tough I had them to fall back on.
“This is my way of saying thank you to Sister Francis. She’s not around anymore but it’s my way of saying thank you to her.”
For more information on the Tactico board game visit tacticofootball.co.uk.
My feature on those who run away to the circus for The Dubliner…
ROLL UP, ROLL UP
It may be as old as the hills but the circus still attracts its runaways. Paul Flood meets the new generation of performers, both contemporary and traditional, that have helped it evolve while remaining as popular as ever.
Bread and circuses, that’s what used to keep the masses happy back in the day when the latter involved gladiators waiting for a thumbs down. The bill may have changed a bit since then but, remarkable as it seems, circuses are still coming to town and providing us with their own brand of spectacular entertainment. What’s even more extraordinary is that people are still running away to them, although that isn’t as straight forward as it once was either.
“It was a bit like a light going off in my head,” Blackrock native Declan Mee tells me of the day he started on the path to becoming a circus performer. “I always did different things like music and sport and I never really had the passion that I could see in my mates for those things. But as soon as I started juggling that was it – I was instantly practicing for hours and hours.”
Declan then joined the juggling clubs of UCD, Trinity and DIT and plugged into a vibrant community that helped him develop, but in order to pursue his passion he had to leave Ireland. “I decided that if I did want to be a juggler I was going to have to go for it. So I heard about this training space in Berlin called the Katakomben – it was mainly juggling but also a general circus training space. Various jugglers would also come in and do week-long workshops. So I stayed there for a couple of years, did every workshop I could and ended up about a year ago getting a job teaching in one of the circus schools in Berlin, Die Etage.”
Not so much as a note left for his parents after sneaking out the window – they probably dropped him to the airport – but as Declan’s fellow juggler Brian O’Connell explains, circus, and the ways of getting into it, have evolved: “There are two broad areas in circus – ‘Traditional Circus’ and ‘New Circus’. Traditional Circus is the travelling tents that move around countries and towns, and the New Circus started about 30 or 40 years ago when people started doing circus out of the tent and outside the families. Now they’re doing things like this juggling convention but also bringing circus into theatres and touring shows.”
He’s talking of the Dublin Circus Convention, an annual get-together in the capital that attracts both hobbyists and professionals and allows for an exchange of views and skills in a relaxed environment of impromptu workshops.
”Nowadays you ‘run away’ to New Circus because it’s more accessible,” Brian says. “You can live in the city and have all the advantages that that gives you but you can work on the street or go to work at festivals or big days out or what have you…” Brian’s running away took him from Swords to the Belfast Community Circus School, the only circus school on the island. Northern Ireland’s biggest outdoor spectacle, ‘The Land of Giants’, will celebrate the Titanic’s centenary and the upcoming London Olympics on June 30, but in order to prepare for the event the school got a rare hit of funding so it could train the required circus talent.
“The school is really well connected to the international scene,” Brian reveals, “so we’ve got tutors from all over the world. Just this week we had one of the only people in the world that can do a one-handed handstand on slack wire. She was teaching us for a week.”
The ‘Circus Arts for Employment’ course also prepares students for the less thrilling aspects of circus life. “We do classes in running a small business,” Cian O’Reilly, an aerialist from the Dublin Mountains tells me. “So hopefully we should be equipped, if there’s enough of us who want to do it, to set something up in Dublin. Hopefully the future in Dublin is to have something at least like they have in Belfast.”
Cian’s classmate Emily Aoibheann has already gone some way to realising that ambition. With a background in dance and drama, she got her start in circus performance after attending periodical courses with Fidget Feet Aerial Dance Theatre. A search for suitable performance spaces in Dublin brought her into the orbit of fellow enthusiasts Elaine McCague, Karen Anderson and Niamh Creely and eventually led to them forming The PaperDolls. This innovative aerialist act has since used airborne circus equipment like trapeze, hoop, rope and silks to create celebrated shows at last year’s Absolut Fringe and will so do again this September.
“It’s just exploded in Dublin,” Emily, who hails from Blanchardstown, explains. “The demand for aerial classes is huge now and there are certain venues who have been really interested in making their spaces accessible to aerial. In particular Oisin Davis in The Sugar Club, who has gone out of his way to facilitate us and put in a rigging point. It’s really taking off now and I can see more people coming to use that space as an aerial venue. We’re just interested in getting more and more venue and space owners to consider making their facilities available for aerialists because there’s a huge shortage.”
Across the circus disciplines, it seems to be a common complaint: a lack of funding, a shortage of space. “I’m really curious about the new generation of circus practitioners, which I would count myself a part of, and sort of paving the way for something much bigger to happen here in Ireland,” Emily reveals. “It’s been totally impossible for people – the insurance for aerial alone is extravagantly expensive in Ireland.
“I feel sad that more people don’t get to explore the potential of learning through physical challenge. I think most of our culture is so sedentary and not a lot of people get to be creative in their physicality. I think aerial and juggling and all circus activity, regardless of if it’s in a big top or a training centre, gives you the chance to explore physicality, strength, flexibility, agility. And also risk and danger.”
And what of the big tops? It’s clear that New Circus is slowly making headway in this country but how has Traditional Circus, something that Ireland has always had a rich culture in, fared over the years?
“In the old days it would have been true that we didn’t want ordinary people learning how to juggle, or learning how to do magical illusions or learning how to walk on a high wire because that’s what circus people’s bread and butter was,” Charles O’Brien, Marketing Manager with Fossett’s Circus, tells me. “But part of the new challenge for Irish circuses is we’re the only country in Europe without a circus school, we’re not growing our own. There are people out there who are interested in a circus life – self-taught people with talent who can’t bring it to the next stage. You need traditional circus teachers who have been doing it for years to do that.”
Fossett’s turns 125 next year and has survived a lot of fads, but surely the big top isn’t the big draw it once was. “Circus will never die,” Charles says. “It will change and adapt. You see teenage boys being dragged in because the parents wouldn’t leave them at home. He’s brought in, he sits there sulking with a can of Coke. You look at him five minutes into the show and his mouth is as open as his five-year-old sister’s. Nothing else does that.”
One teenager who never lost that sense of wonder is Daragh Merritt. Fascinated from his very first visit to Fossett’s at the age of four, the now 18-year-old from Corbally in Limerick ran away to the circus last year – with his parents’ blessing. “I thought it was a really interesting thing to do with your life,” he tells me. “I’ve always wanted to be in the circus in Fossett’s. When I was 13 I saw contortion and hoola-hoops and I thought they’d be really cool acts to do – you didn’t need any aerial props or anything and I could learn it at home. So I started to make myself more flexible and do all these tricks and then I added hoola-hoops and I started practicing every day after school.”
An appearance on The All-Ireland Talent Show eventually landed Daragh his dream job with Fossett’s. “It’s everything that I wanted it to be – it’s perfect. ‘Jossers’ like me have to work harder to convince the circus people that you love what you do. But they’ve helped me be a better performer and have been very nice to me. I love it. At the moment I live in a bunk wagon, which is a big lorry with different compartments, but you can always go about getting your own wagon someday…”
One of Ireland’s most established contemporary clowns, The Fanzini Brothers’ Ronaldo Fanzini, echoes Daragh’s sentiment. “I’d advise anyone to run away to the circus – it’s a great life. I got into clowning through juggling. It’s the same for quite a lot of people. I didn’t really have a grand plan to become a circus artist or street performer… I suppose if you have a flair for performance and entertaining people and you can do it, you’ll find yourself being drawn in that direction. It’s a fantastic life.
“The contemporary clown thing is not the big shoes and make-up – it plays with different themes,” Ronaldo (not his real name) says of his own circus discipline. “It’s still comedy but it comes from somewhere else than the traditional form. But the great thing about it is it’s an extremely accessible contemporary form of art – it’s not too abstract or goes over your head. People can get it straight away and it’s very visual and colourful.” And that probably sums up the enduring appeal of the circus – in all its forms.
“Apparently Cú Chulainn was a juggler as well,” Ronaldo adds before heading off with his bag of tricks to prepare for a performance at the Dublin Circus Convention.
There’s a thriving community circus in Galway, and Cork has received funding to establish their own, but there is a clear need for a school in the Republic of Ireland, ideally in Dublin. Chantal McCormick, founder of the celebrated Fidget Feet Aerial Dance Theatre with her husband Jym Daly, has gone some way to picking up the slack with the Aerial Dance Festival in Letterkenny.
“The problem is that when people are starting to do circus it’s hard for them to get a platform to perform because people won’t book you unless it’s a finished piece,” she explains. “So part of the Aerial Dance Festival is to support any young people that want to do circus as a living. Through the two weeks we’ll advise them what classes to take and if they want to perform we offer them mentorship.”
Chantal is also on the board of the Irish Street Arts, Circus & Spectacle Network (ISACS), an umbrella organisation which seeks to establish itself as a support and advocacy group for the various circus art forms in Ireland today. “Circus is such a vast thing now,” she explains. “So it’s important for us all to come together and really try to work with the politicians and the councils to make them understand that contemporary circus and traditional circus is something that the public really want, enjoy and are entertained by.
“For young people who want to do circus as a career, it’s not an easy life – it’s a difficult life, but as long as you have the passion and the drive to do it then just do it. I had one of the young guys from the Galway Community Circus in my workshop and I was saying to him, ‘What does your mam and dad think of you wanting to do circus.’ And he was like, ‘They’re fine, they’re fine. I mean, what am I going to say, I’m going to become an accountant or a lawyer? None of those jobs are about, so why not run away to the circus?’”
For information on the Aerial Dance Festival go to irishaerialdancefest.com, you can learn more about The PaperDolls at paperdollsperformance.com, and the Fanzini Brothers at fanzinibrothers.com. Fossett’s Circus is pitched in Drogheda at the moment.
My Dubliner piece on how to get a drink on Good Friday…
GULP FRIDAY
We’ll take it as a given that you’re planning to turn this Good Friday into an even better one by indulging in a few ungodly tiddly-winks. It’d be rude not to. And if you’re determined to get your beer goggles on for what has ironically become one of the wettest days of the year, may we point you in the direction of a few venues that, thanks to a loophole or two in an already past-its-sell-by-date law, won’t have you sharing your Maltesers Egg with the Bridewell gardai on Easter Sunday.
But what of that pesky law? The Intoxicating Liquor Act, which specified that alcoholic drink could not be sold on Christmas Day, Good Friday and St Patrick’s Day, was first enshrined in law in 1927. A dark day. And while the law relating to St Patrick’s Day was later repealed in 1960 to cater for thirsty tourists, the rest of us were left to the vagaries of a secret knock at the back door of a shebeen on the other days.
You can always stock up on Holy Thursday – traditionally one of the busiest days for off-licences. “It used to make up for two days’ trade,” Ruth Deveney of Deveney’s Off-Licence tells me. “That’s no longer the situation as a result of the large multiples in Ireland now that discount heavily to increase footfall for that weekend. They absorb the majority of the business. It’s a busy Thursday but it’s not what it used to be.” Nevertheless you can get a 10 per cent discount on craft beers at their Dundrum shop over Easter Weekend. If you don’t want to help the little guy, the supermarket chains will be laying on plenty of offers.
And then there are those exemptions, which have spawned particularly Irish solutions to an Irish problem. The best known provision allows for the sale of alcohol to those travelling by sea, air or ferry. The bars of Dublin Airport will wet your whistle provided you have a ticket for an onward journey, but if you’re booking a flight just so you can get sloshed maybe it’s time to take a long hard look at yourself. Better to make a day of it on the ‘booze cruise’.
“I think the footfall on Good Friday isn’t as big on our boats as it was once upon a time,” spokesman for Irish Ferries, Don Hall, tells me. “People can have a drink on board the ship outside the territorial waters and that’s been known for a very long time. We know that traditionally and probably even this year people will decide to take a day trip on Good Friday and enjoy a drink on board.”
A trip to Holyhead is your best bet, which comes in at around €35 for foot passengers and takes one hour 49 minutes on the Dublin Swift and leaves at 8.05 in the am, or three hours 15 minutes on the Ulysses and leaves at 8.45.
“There are those who want to socialise over a drink on Good Friday that will take the trip,” Don adds, “but we’d like to think that they’d also want to take the trip for the wider pleasure it would offer them. It’s a good day out at sea, they have a little bit of time in Holyhead, and car ferries today are vastly different to what they were years ago – you have cinemas, Club Class lounges and much more. It’s a totally different experience to what it was years ago.”
If that doesn’t float your boat, maybe La Peniche restaurant, located on board Barge Riasc on the Grand Canal will. The barge moves up and down the canal while lunch and dinner is served, thereby circumventing the booze ban. There are sittings at 1pm, 5.30pm and 9pm and a three-course lunch will cost you €27.50, while a three-course dinner comes in at €34.50. They’ll want a €5 cruising fee off you too but just keep thinking of that lovely full bar. At the time of writing it’s already half booked so weigh the anchor there or whatever nautical term means get your arse in gear.
Another one of those lovely loopholes allows for rail passengers making long distance journeys on Good Friday to avail of a tonic in the ‘refreshment rooms’ of a train station. “Once you have your ticket to go further afield you’re entitled to come in,” the manager of Madigans Bar in Connolly Station, Declan Larmon, explains. “There’ll be security on the door, so you basically have to have an Intercity rail ticket to get access to the bar.” A ticket to Dundalk should do the trick and will set you back 20 lids.
“We’re expecting it to be just about full, as it always is,” Declan tells me. “It’s getting a bit quieter year on year but it’ll still be very busy. We kick off at half ten but by about 12 o’clock the place is just about full and we’ll probably go until about 8pm. You have a lot of people who live around the area will come in and you’d have the usual people who’d be actually traveling as well, so it’s kind of a mixture of both.” The godly lot up in The Galway Hooker in Heuston Station tell me they won’t be opening for the day, however.
The Dog Show on a dry St Patrick’s Day famously turned half the city into canine fanciers for a few hours as the RDS opened its bars under an arena bylaw. The same goes for Good Friday, and when Leinster ‘A’ welcome Munster ‘A’ for the semi-finals of the British and Irish Cup the bars will be open. Kick-off is at 6pm and admission is €10 at the gate, €9 online. Remember to raise a plastic glass of Heino to Brendan Behan and Patrick Kavanagh, who are said to have kidnapped some prized pooches just so they could get at a pint of plain at the venue.
Greyhound racing has traditionally enjoyed a break on Good Friday, but this year the Irish Greyhound Board will open its Harold’s Cross Stadium for a full programme of racing – and a full bar. Admission is €10 at the door and they’ll be serving from 6.30 until 11. The hair of that particular dog might prove more difficult, though…
Of course, there’ll be a few house parties on that evening – we’ve heard Dottsy’s auld one is away – and Seomra Spraoi, Dublin’s Autonomous Social Centre at Belvedere Court, will be hosting its own live music get-together again, with sets from Captain Moonlight, MO-T and Ainriail. Doors open at 9pm with a suggested donation of €6 to €8. Around the corner in Gardiner Lane, Subground Fortythree will be serving up its ‘Good Friday Massacre’, with the suggested donation of €8 going to the establishment of an independent DIY venue in the Dublin area. The bill includes Contort, the ferocious Disguise, Fag Enablerz, a unique covers set from Complan Complan, and DJs into the night. They’ll throw you a bit of soakage at 7.30 and bands start an hour later. It’s BYOB for both events.
If on the second day you rise again and are hungry for more, The Dark Horse Inn on Georges Quay will welcome you with a full bar and a full Irish at 7am on Easter Saturday. Some decent sounds and the unique buzz of the day that’s in it should take you up to 4pm when the Toejam crew get the Big Bank Holiday Bang underway at The Bernard Shaw.
So keep the Good Friday ban in place, that’s what we say. Sure it gives us all a chance to exercise that famous Irish ingenuity.
My feature on the world’s great rail journeys for Irish Tatler Man…
Ticket to Ride
From palaces on wheels to bullet trains, Paul Flood picks 10 great railway trips where the journey is always more important than the destination.
Trans-Siberian Express
A seven-day train journey that takes you one-third of the way across the world, over the Urals, through the Russian steppes, and past the shores of Lake Baikal to the Siberian city of Vladivostok, can confidently sell itself as a rite of passage. Yet the Trans-Siberian Express is a proper working train and as such offers travellers the chance to meet and enjoy a vodka with the many Russian peoples who board and alight over 6,000 miles and seven time zones. There are various agencies and price plans (from a couple of hundred euro to thousands) and seat61.com can point you in the direction. However, if you want to sacrifice a fascinating life experience for privacy and comfort, the Golden Eagle train does the trip in 12 nights, with hotel stopovers, from May to August for around €12,400. See greatrail.com.
Glacier Express, Switzerland
Taking eight hours to cover just 180 miles, the Glacier Express could be done under the Trade Descriptions Act, yet the spectacular views that await you as this incredible feat of engineering slowly makes its way through the Swiss Alps from Zermatt to St Moritz will soon banish such thoughts. Of course, the only time to board is winter as the Glacier Express rises and falls nearly 5,000ft, crosses 291 bridges, burrows through 91 tunnels (including the longest narrow-gauge tunnel in the world), crosses the Rhone and Rhine, and traverses the 6,700ft Oberalp Pass. Seat reservations are mandatory and prices start at €113.30, with a three-course lunch coming in at €35.50. See glacierexpress.ch.
The Venice Simplon-Orient-Express
The world’s most famous train journey is still one of the grandest thanks to a level of luxury and service that, unless there’s a moustachioed little Belgian on board, will guarantee you the most heavenly 31 hours of your life. The lovingly restored carriages, which date back to the ’20s and ’30s, not only promise an elegant sway across 1,000 miles of track as the train unzips Europe from London to Venice, but a journey back to a time when well-healed passengers dressed for dining car banquets in Art Deco splendour. A one-way trip includes all meals and accommodation, but not alcoholic drinks, and costs from €2,200. Visit orient-express.com.
Copper Canyon Railway, Mexico
You won’t be catching this famous train for the onboard gourmet experience – although the revamped dining car does offer Chihuahua-Pacific Railway’s interesting take on breakfast, lunch and dinner. No, the Copper Canyon Railway should be sought out for its stunning scenery and onboard camaraderie as it trundles from Los Mochis on the Pacific coast, across the Sierra Madre and through the Sonora Desert to Chihuahua, with embarking locals providing just as much entertainment as the many mountain-edge passages and deep ravine crossings. The 390-mile journey on the first-class express takes 14 hours and will set you back around €130 one-way. See mexicoscoppercanyon.com for more information and package deals – and remember to sit on the right for the best views.
Palace on Wheels, India
A country that places the train at the very heart of its society was always going to offer up something special by way of luxury rail travel and India’s Palace on Wheels certainly is that. Journey into the land of the Maharajas onboard sumptuous carriages resplendent in luxurious textiles and varnished woods as the dining car serves up memorable curries (or Western dishes, if you need a break from the spice) and the fort and lake towns of Jaipur, Jaisalmer, and Udaipur slowly roll into view. With elephant welcomes, a camel safari and an afternoon at the Taj Mahal also on the schedule, the Palace on Wheels will unlock the mysterious of the Royal State of Rajasthan – and charge you a regal rate for the privilege. The eight-day ‘Week in Wonderland’ package starts at €1,900. See palaceonwheels.com for more information.
The Ghan, Australia
That this newcomer to the world’s great rail journeys is named after the Afghan camel trains that pioneered the Outback routes should explain why it took until 1994 for the final stretch from Alice Springs to Darwin to be completed. Still, the otherworldly landscapes that unfold over 50 hours between Adelaide and Darwin go some way to making up for the wait. The Ghan is by no means luxurious but the ‘Platinum Service’ (€2,600) offers a great level of comfort in spacious en-suite private cabins and an on-call steward, with fine dining, including saltwater barramundi and grilled kangaroo fillet, available in the Queen Adelaide Restaurant Car and a cold one (or two) waiting for you in the Outback Explorer Lounge. Avoid booking during the Aussie summer months, however, as the air-conditioning’s turned off at night and you’ll need more than a cold one to cool you down. See greatsouthernrail.com.au.
The Shinkansen Train, Japan
You won’t get breath-taking luxury or service on the Shinkansen, but the Bullet Train, as it is better known, will literally take your breath away as it makes the 325-mile journey from Tokyo to Kyoto in just two hours and 10 minutes. You also won’t miss anything as the rather bland landscape whizzes by but this particular Shinkansen journey does bridge the country’s ancient and modern capitals. Rail fare is not cheap in Japan, and a one-way ticket for such a short trip will set you back over €100, but sometimes in order to tick those life-experience boxes you just have to bite the bullet. See the ever-reliable seat61.com for more information.
The Blue Train, South Africa
The Blue Train describes itself as a “window to the soul of South Africa” and we’re not disputing that PR pitch, but this relative newcomer, which launched in 1998, is more a window on the golden age of luxury train travel as it indulges its 84 passengers with unsurpassed service and surroundings. Each compartment has its own en-suite bathroom, telephone, television, individually controlled air-conditioning and professionally trained butler on call 24 hours a day. And, of course, there’s the sumptuous dining car serving up celebrated cuisine and the sort of views that’ll add an hour onto your meal. The Pretoria-Cape Town two-day trip can be enjoyed in a Deluxe Suite for just over €1,000 in low season. Visit bluetrain.co.za and then your bank’s website to see if it’s a goer.
The California Zephyr, America
For a place where the car is king and the Red Eye picks up the slack, America has some classic train journeys to offer a traveller ready to get intimate with God’s Country. The California Zephyr from Chicago to San Francisco probably boasts the best scenic route as it winds its way through the ‘bread basket’ farming lands of Nebraska, negotiates the dramatic Rocky Mountains west of Denver and pushes on through the wild but beautiful Sierra Nevada. You’ll find yourself thinking back to those great train-based Hollywood thrillers as you settle into the rhythms of Zephyr life in your sleeper or enjoy the view in the observation lounge. Prices for the three-day, 3,000-mile trip vary and you’ll need to visit Amtrak.com to tailor your trip, but a two-bed sleeper can cost from €350 per person sharing, including meals, depending on availability. If you’re travelling alone, that mysterious blonde in the dining car is up to no good.
The Royal Scotsman
One of the world’s finest luxury experiences also works out as one of its most expensive, with the four-day tour on the Royal Scotsman coming in at €5,600. For that princely sum you join only 35 other passengers in an Edwardian confection of varnished woods, polished brass and fine fabrics that harks back to the finest traditions of the British ‘hotel train’. This classic tour of Scotland’s Highlands and Lowlands departs from Edinburgh and follows little-used lines past lochs, glens, waterfalls, mountain peaks and vast forests, with visits en route to a castle, smokehouse, the Isle of Skye and a distillery (well, it’d be rude not to). The two dining cars have an air of the gentleman’s club and the cabins are predictably regal, with the train pulling in at night to a quiet siding to insure an untroubled sleep – if you can forget about the cost, that is. Visit royalscotsman.com for more information and invest in some tweed.
