Monty and JD - such charming young men...
I’ve
been lucky enough to live in many English speaking countries, yet the
friendships I’ve forged while living in Ireland are matched only by those
struck in the heat of my London youth.
Whether
from Australia, America, my native England or adopted Ireland, all my friends
are capable of slagging. They have to be. What’s the use of investing all that
time and trust in someone if you can’t make them laugh by tearing them to
pieces?
Nobody personifies
the Irish art of slagging better than my excellent friend The Body. Hanging his
humour on the Continental Divide between absurdity and wisdom, there's a
dryness to his wit that’s akin to having emery paper dragged across your
private bits. His slaggings hurt, make you think, then laugh self-deprecatingly
and on the way they teach you something about yourself.
To
slag is to attack with affection, and it only really works when reciprocated.
In my experience, English and Irish people enjoy and rely on slagging more than
any from other nations. At risk of churning the stomachs of the
Shinner-inclined amongst you, I think it’s part of our collective culture.
Our
differences are mostly the result of our histories, because the humans standing
in Irish and English fields and cities are not so very different: aggressive;
witty; warriors who have survived invasion, we need to know we can bluster and
barrage our way through friendships, free from fear of offending.
Indeed,
as an Englishman living in the West of Ireland, I’ve been the victim of fairly
hysterical and frequently historical Irish slagging for over two decades now,
and when it has been delivered well, I’ve enjoyed it.
Slagging
without humour quickly becomes abuse, but thankfully most of the time, it makes
me laugh, so I take it on the chin.
In
return, apart from occasionally pointing out in this colyoom one or two minor
Irish idiosyncrasies that upset or amuse me, I’ve enjoyed gentle slagging
pleasure by referring to ‘Double Vision’ as ‘this colyoom’.
In
October 1992 I was two months off the boat, writing in this noble rag about my
efforts to make sense of my new home. Ireland was so incredibly similar to
England, yet enigmatically and vitally different.
People
were coming up to me in the street saying they had enjoyed my colyoom.
“My
what?”
“Oh,
you know. Your colyoom in the paper. Your ar-tickle.”
Aha!
So in the same way that I’d heard the Irish describe a ‘fil-em’ they’d seen,
they read a ‘colyoom’, not a column.
Around
the same time, I was sat at the bar of my first proper ‘Local’ in Ireland, when
the old fella sitting next to me asked what I did for a living. Weary
of the way my fellow Englishmen tended to overreact to the word, I whispered
“I’m a
writer.”
“Ah
sure, isn't everyone in Ireland a scribbler?” spluttered himself. “Doesn't
every gobshite have a feckin' novel stashed under the bed?”
‘Scribbler?
What a brilliant word!’ I thought to myself, feeling comforted by the
informality of his sniffy dismissal. ‘I’m going to love this country.’
Recently
I scored a slagging that reaffirmed that feeling. Conor ‘Monty’ Montague and
John Donnellan were opening Cuirt Festival’s ‘Far From Literature We Were
Reared’ event with their usual double-act skit.
The
gag was that John had been dropped from the evening’s line-up at the last
minute, because there were so many performers there just wasn’t time for
everyone. This premise allowed the lads to go through the cast list, slagging
everyone as they went.
“Charlie
Adley? Charlie feckin’ Adley?” pleaded John to Monty. “But he’s a Londoner! I’m
Irish and you’re dropping me for an Englishman? A cockney geezer who drinks
whiskey for breakfast!”
“Well,
Double Vision is a very popular colyoom!”
“Double
Vision. I’ll give him Double Vision. He only has double vision because he
drinks whiskey for breakfast. Coming over here, shaggin’ our women - ”
“Oh, I
think the women of Galway are fairly safe!” Monty interjected, to howls of
laughter from everyone who knows anything of me.
As I
laughed heartily at the way I was being mocked from the stage in front of a
sell-out crowd at the Roisin Dubh, my heart was glowing. You don’t get taken to
pieces with humour, slagged good and proper, unless you’re a part of things.
Later
in the evening we briefly left the world of slagging, instead dipping our toes
into the Sea of Vitriol. No harm was done.
John Donnellan had
brought the house down with his piece, in which he suggested the Irish
shouldn’t trust institutions of any kind. He embarrassed me by justifiably
accusing scribblers of choosing to write about beauty over truth. Sometimes the
sheer scope of institutionalised Irish corruption defeats my typing fingers.
Then he told us all to spoil our electoral votes.
Later, while on
stage to launch Seamus Ruttledge’s new album ‘Elementary Chaos’, an evidently
irritated Páraic Breathnach described John’s proposal as ‘Dull’, but then went
on to bemoan recent Irish encounters with the House Of Windsor.
All of a sudden I
heard myself heckling:
“It’s called
peace! Terrible, isn’t it!”
There
are plenty of deserving nominees for the award of Best Slagging Delivered to
this Scribbler by a Celt in a Starring Role, but the clear winner occurred over
20 years ago (apologies to loyal colyoomistas who have heard this one before!).
In a
pub in Timoleague, Co. Cork I was demeaned with wit and
perfect timing. Even though this slagging owes more to hatred than humour, it
makes me laugh to this day.
As
an Englishman travelling with his German girlfriend, we appeared an odd couple,
receiving many raised eyebrows. Yet nothing came close to the barman’s
brilliantly minimalist and wholly damning delivery.
As
he lopped the tops off our creamy pints of Guinness, he looked over at us and
calmly, quietly, slowly stated:
“So
you are German ... and he is English ... hmmmm ... (long pause) ... well, I
have no particular problem with Germans.”
©Charlie
Adley
28.04.14.
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