One chilly evening last month I braved the freezing cold
conditions to venture out from our warm homestead in Quinton in search of the
fabled Kitchen Garden Café, an intimate and charming entertainment venue in
York Road, Kings Heath. The recommendation came from a longstanding friend,
Paul Murphy, well known musician and writer (amongst his many other talents)
who is well acquainted with my personal interest in all-things Irish and
suggested that I may therefore find the evening’s performances worth checking
out.
As always Paul’s recommendation was a good one as the
main entertainer that evening was Rich McMahon performing his show ‘The
Imagined Nation: Inventing Ireland Through Words, Images and Songs'. Born in
Coventry but raised and educated in Ireland, Rich’s show very much reflects the
issues of Anglo-Irish identity which many of us in the West Midlands can relate
to. Rich McMahon is a witty, accomplished and engaging entertainer but also a
very insightful thinker and writer whose show captures many pertinent themes
affecting those of us who would (in the
words of W.B. Yeats and Tim Pat Coogan) “wear green” but don’t always feel
fully convinced as to why it is relevant or important to do so.
Watching Rich McMahon’s show was particularly timely,
coinciding with the well-publicised Year of The Gathering, with my personal
exploration of Irish roots through these articles in The Harp and taking place
one week before St Patrick’s Day. Clearly a marketing genius. What I liked
about his show was that he didn’t set out to give us any definitive answers or
to wrestle down, kicking and screaming, the meaning of Irishness - especially
for those of us of the oft maligned second, third and even fourth generations.
Those whom even the Census designers still haven’t quite fathomed out where to
place, how to describe or whether it even matters.
One of the themes which Rich explored, and from different
viewpoints I should add, was the term (or even the concept) of the poor old
Plastic Paddy. It’s a term I came across a couple of decades ago now,
originally coined I believe by the Irish media to caricature the distant
descendants of Irish migrants who are, shall we say, prone to over exuberant
acting-out of certain stereotypes.
Whilst acknowledging where the critique is coming from
and also recognising the behaviours it might be aimed at, as someone with a
love, pride and if nothing else an interest in my own Irish heritage, I don’t
always feel it’s a useful or constructive generalisation. So it was very
interesting to hear Rich McMahon taking this one on and throwing out some
challenges to our own perceptions.
Just on the ‘Plastic Paddy’ issue, I recently had an
email communication with someone in Ireland around family history information
and he wrote to me “I’ve never spoken to a Plastic Paddy before” which was a
slightly unexpected comment to say the least though I decided to reply with the
same humour which I hoped had been intended and replied “I was so shocked by
your inference that I was a Plastic Paddy that I spilt my Guinness all over my
Pogues t-shirt”. Unfortunately he did not respond specifically to this clever
and ironic retort of mine (well I thought so anyway), so I was left pondering
its intention though my lesson being, if in doubt then broad shoulders, a sense
of humour and a general resolve to be happy with one’s own greenness, whatever
the shade, is probably the best way forward.
A few days after the Rich McMahon show in Kings Heath I
had the pleasure to meet him again when Paul Murphy and I went along to a St
Patrick’s Day celebration at Amesbury Road Day Centre for people with learning
disability in Moseley. The event was organised by social worker Mick Lynch and
both Paul and Rich provided songs and music a-plenty to entertain the service
users and staff. In this sort of situation the stereotypes go completely out of
the window and we get on with enjoying great music and that other thing Irish people
of any generation generate so well, the craic!
What do you think Irishness means to people in the West
Midlands? Tell us your story in The Harp.
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