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00:03Let's leave the surprises to TAMI.
00:05We do predictable electricity costs and savings you can actually see.
00:08You know energy.
00:11You just know.
00:30Hello there everybody and thank you very much for tuning in.
00:32Welcome to the show and I hope you enjoy what happens here over the next hour or so.
00:37And to find out who our first guest is, let me hand you over to our MC for the evening,
00:41the beautiful Fred Cook.
00:43Thanks Tommy.
00:44Well, our next guest is Stephen Hendry.
00:51How are you?
00:53How are you doing?
00:55Nice to meet you fella, really nice to meet you.
00:57How are you?
00:58I sat beside you once at a poker tournament in Dublin.
01:01Really?
01:01Many years ago.
01:02Did you take my money?
01:03No, I didn't.
01:06I was impressed by your assertiveness.
01:11Right.
01:12Yeah, anytime I see you on telly and stuff like that, I know you pretend to be a nice guy.
01:18Right.
01:20But I think you have that, is it a killer instinct or something or a,
01:26it's not an, it's not an, arrogance is not the right word, you know, it's, there's arrogance in it.
01:32I remember the footage that exists of you winning, I don't know if it's the first world title, you're kind
01:41of a, you're kind of a, you're kind of a, you're kind of a, you're kind of a, you're kind
01:44of a, you're kind of a cross between a mullet.
01:44And like I said, a lovely girl's haircut.
01:50And there is a sense of you, there's a sense of entitlement, but also of delight.
01:58Yeah.
01:59And of claiming your place.
02:01Whereas when Steve Davis won his first one, he's like, yeah.
02:04Oh Jesus, I can't believe it.
02:06Whereas you were kind of like, I don't know.
02:09I mean, I turned pro at 16 and I did an interview in the Daily Record in Scotland and because
02:15it was unknown for, especially a Scotsman, we had no history in the top of snooker at all.
02:20But in the sport to turn pro at 16 was very rare in those days.
02:25And so I did an interview and he said, oh, what's your ambition?
02:27I said, I'm going to be world champion by the time I'm 21.
02:30And whether I actually believed that or there was a bit of a bravado or whatever.
02:34Yeah, yeah.
02:34So I actually achieved it.
02:36And it was like, yeah, I wouldn't say I expected it, but it was just like, yeah, this was the
02:41path that I went on.
02:44And that world champion, I think I won the semifinal, became world number one and then beat Jimmy in the
02:49final to be world champion.
02:50What made you so good at snooker?
02:55And tell me about, I want the specifics of technique.
02:58Right.
03:00When I first started getting a small table, a six foot by three foot table for Christmas, and I started
03:07playing on that.
03:08Within three or four weeks, I was making sort of 30, 40, 50 breaks.
03:11I was totally naturally talented.
03:14So my cue action was quite natural.
03:16It was like sort of pumping action, up and down sort of thing, very fast.
03:20Not what it was at the end of my career, completely different, having gone through two or three coaches.
03:27Coaches sort of take that sort of naturalness away from you, I think.
03:31I sort of copied Jimmy White a wee bit, but then when I went as a term pro and wanted
03:36to be the best,
03:38Davis was the one that was winning everything.
03:40And that's what I wanted.
03:41So I kind of modeled my career a little bit on, not his technique as such, but his whole, my
03:47manager and I, his whole ethos of how he went around being the best.
03:51The work ethic, the hours and hours of practice, the, okay, not mixing with other players, sort of going down
03:57that road.
03:58I mean, Steve wouldn't give you a nod in the desert.
04:00You know, if he walked past you, he wouldn't say hello, basically.
04:03And that was a kind of, I probably took his miserableness on to another level, probably, with the way I
04:09did it.
04:10So, yeah, but I think that's, you know, you look at the top players now, Ronnie doesn't really socialise with
04:15other players.
04:16Yeah.
04:17Judd doesn't really either.
04:18Yeah.
04:18So the action then was kind of foo-boom, foo-boom.
04:22Yeah.
04:22Foo-boom.
04:23Yeah, it was very quick.
04:24Yeah, yeah.
04:25Very quick.
04:25I didn't get a sort of, a sort of pause at the end of my backswing until I started working
04:29with Frank Callan.
04:31That was his big thing about pausing at the back to sort of say that Frank Callan went like that.
04:37That wasn't a bit of good timing there, was it?
04:39But yeah, the backswing was too long there.
04:41That wasn't meant to hit that glass.
04:43But yeah, so that, it kind of like gets your eyes back on the ball.
04:47And what that did was enabled my long potting to be more consistent.
04:51Yeah.
04:52Through the 90s, I was expected to win.
04:54I won five world championships in a row and I just took it for granted I was going to win.
04:57And then all of a sudden you're in a situation where you take it for granted you're going to lose.
05:02And it's just, it's all about confidence and losing that invincibility that you had.
05:06Why did you get worse at snookering?
05:10I think, I think there's a variety of reasons.
05:15I mean, I mean, as I say, two or three coaches and I think coaches sort of take you out
05:19of the way you naturally played the game.
05:22I mean, my cue action, I mean, the last 10 years I used almost a different cue action.
05:27In every tournament, just trying things all the time to try and get back to that sort of spark that
05:32you had when you were young.
05:34I think you don't, you're not as dedicated, I think, at the end of your career as you were at
05:39the start.
05:40I used to practice from the age of 16, 15, 16, sort of six hours a day, seven days a
05:45week on my own and do that all the way through when I was winning.
05:49And it's very difficult to keep the enthusiasm for that as you get older.
05:55And for me, I stopped being as dedicated near the end.
06:01And my game, I developed a sort of a yip in my cue action, which is a horrible word golfers
06:09have it, darts have it.
06:11And it completely dragged my game down.
06:13Is it kind of a twitch or something?
06:14It's basically for me, it starts with a grip hand and I played a shot.
06:19It was around about the sort of early 2000s.
06:22I played a shot and it didn't go through at all.
06:24You're supposed to go through, hit the cue and then feel a nice follow through, a nice acceleration through the
06:29ball.
06:29I sort of stopped and sort of de-celled and I was like, oh, that was horrible.
06:35I didn't like that, I felt terrible.
06:38And you kind of forget about it.
06:39And then maybe a couple of tournaments down the road, it happens again for a different shot.
06:43And then, as I say, it stays in there and then you're frightened of that shot.
06:49So you avoid, you play the wrong shots to avoid certain shots because you don't know, I can't play that
06:53shot again.
06:54I don't want that experience again.
06:55Yeah, wow.
06:56What kind of adventures did you have after Snooker?
07:02Well, as I say, I retired in 2012.
07:04Aged?
07:05Aged.
07:06That's a good question.
07:07I'm going to have to think of maths now, that's terrible.
07:1039, 40-ish.
07:11Okay, you were born around 69 or something, were you?
07:14Yes.
07:14Yeah, yeah.
07:14So I'll let you work it out.
07:16Same age as me.
07:17Oh, really?
07:18I'm 54.
07:19But I signed a contract before I knew I was retiring.
07:21I signed a contract, a 10-year contract with a company in China to promote Chinese 8-Ball Pool.
07:26Oh, yeah.
07:28So they employed me as the ambassador.
07:30So I basically spent the next sort of seven, eight, nine years.
07:34I've been to like 60 cities in China, just going around, basically eating and drinking my way around China.
07:41Why did you do that?
07:43I've always loved traveling.
07:44Yeah.
07:44And you can say the money, it's okay.
07:47No, yeah, I mean, the money was okay.
07:49It was kind of, you know, a replacement for the earnings from snooker, really.
07:55But I've always loved traveling.
07:57So the adventure that came and went?
08:00Yeah, yeah.
08:00And obviously commentating and, you know, immerse myself in sort of talking about the game rather than playing it, which
08:07I still do.
08:08I enjoy.
08:09Not every match.
08:10There's some matches that it's quite difficult to sit through.
08:14Yeah, of course.
08:16But, yeah, listen, snooker's all I know.
08:19So I'm always going to be involved in it in some shape or form.
08:21Yeah.
08:23So you're the same age as me.
08:25Right.
08:2554.
08:27What are you?
08:29I'm 55, but you've got to get 55 this year.
08:32Yeah, yeah.
08:33Highest breaking snooker, 66.
08:35Impressive.
08:36Not bad.
08:36Yeah.
08:37Peaked that and then downhill ever since.
08:39Right.
08:40Do you have children?
08:42I have two sons, yeah.
08:43And how are they?
08:44They're fine, yeah.
08:45They're good.
08:45They live in Scotland.
08:46I'm divorced, so they live in Scotland.
08:48I live down south now in England.
08:50But, yeah, they're fine.
08:51Are you okay with the type of dad that you are?
08:59No, I'm probably, I haven't been the best because I think in sport, in video sport,
09:06you make sacrifices to get to the top and sort of, you know, things don't work out, like family
09:13relationships can be difficult and can be sacrificed because I was all about being the best in snooker
09:20and snooker and snooker was all that mattered.
09:22So that makes you a very selfish person.
09:25And I think it takes that special kind of sort of selfish person to get to the top in an
09:32individual sport.
09:33I mean, you look at most top sportsmen who've dominated sports and most of them pretty much are divorced, have
09:40been divorced.
09:41I mean, it looks like Faldo was one of my heroes.
09:44Tiger was one of my heroes.
09:46So there's casualties in terms of getting to be the best.
09:50I suppose if you were, it's that thing of looking back with regret is a strange one because it's,
10:00I'm not sure how beneficial it is.
10:03But at the same time, just as you were talking there, I'm thinking, you know,
10:07is it stupid to say, God, if only I'd had the wisdom to say to women, stay away from me
10:13till I'm 40?
10:14Yeah.
10:15Yeah.
10:16I mean, it's something to think because it's, you almost think like, you know, the, you know,
10:20the way you think that might not as even was well even been there because you weren't really paying any
10:25attention.
10:26Even when I went home after tournaments, I'm thinking about other stuff and you're not really fully involved and fully
10:33there.
10:34Yeah.
10:34I mean, it's, you know, you've lost in one tournament, you're probably thinking about the next one or why.
10:39I mean, when I, when I lost, you know, I used to sulk for days.
10:45I was just, I was just, I was like the worst loser in the world.
10:48So, yeah, it's, and you, you can't, you regret taking that out or, or putting, you know, people that you're,
10:56you're, you're involved with in that sort of situation.
10:59Do you think they forgive you?
11:02That's a good question.
11:06Probably I'm not qualified to answer that one.
11:08Do you hope to do?
11:10I would hope, but I would doubt.
11:13Where did you grow up?
11:15I was born in Edinburgh.
11:16Okay.
11:17My school, my school, once I started playing snooker, school just went.
11:20I mean, when you turned pro at 16, did you leave school then?
11:23I'd left school at 15 and a half.
11:25Yeah.
11:25I had four O levels.
11:26I turned up for two, failed them and didn't turn up, but didn't bother turning up for the other two.
11:31All right.
11:31My life was just snooker.
11:32I knew that.
11:33Unfortunately, I had parents who, it wouldn't be the advice you'd give now.
11:38No.
11:38They didn't force me to sort of, you know, you must do your homework.
11:42You must sit your exams.
11:43You must revise.
11:44Snooker can come at the weekends or later.
11:47Yeah.
11:47Basically, they allowed me to, I think, especially my dad earlier on, he believed I was going
11:52to be a world champion very early on.
11:55My mum did as well, but my dad was like, he doesn't need to, he's going to be a world
11:59champion.
11:59And when did you become aware that you could earn your living from this?
12:04I was sort of supporting myself from the age of 14.
12:07You could earn money as an amateur in snooker.
12:09So, from the age of 14, I won the Star of the Future at Pontins in Pristat, North Wales.
12:1814 years old, just turned 14.
12:20I got £100 cash and £100 Pontins vouchers.
12:25In 1983?
12:26And, yeah, something like that.
12:27So, I bought a watch for 50 quid, gave the other 50 to my mum.
12:31But then after that, basically, I supported myself.
12:33I bought my own if I wanted to buy records or clothes or from then on, I was earning enough
12:39to look after myself.
12:41And it didn't become a job, really, until my manager, Ian Doyle, took over my career.
12:47My dad couldn't have supported me financially as a professional.
12:51It was okay, I'm amateur, the odd tournament taking me, but up and down the road to England
12:55all the time, he couldn't have done it.
12:56So, we needed someone to look after that part of my career.
12:58And when Ian took over, it was basically, if I'm going to support you, everything, take
13:03care of everything, you're going to work.
13:06And it was him that started the regime of seven days a week, six hours a day.
13:10And that was when it stopped being a hobby and started being a job.
13:15Wow.
13:17When you were, like, to be world champion five times in a row is, I mean, it's such, it's
13:27so domineering.
13:28It's so commanding.
13:31Do you remember what that felt like back then?
13:35Was there, did you think this will never end?
13:39Yeah, pretty much.
13:41Pretty much.
13:42I mean, it was brilliant.
13:43Don't get me wrong.
13:43It was fantastic.
13:45I mean, I just, I used to, I mean, at the Crucible for five years, I just felt that nobody
13:49could beat me.
13:50And what about the thing then, which I imagine may have been difficult, is that you're feared
13:55by every player.
13:56You're respected by every player.
13:58No one wants to look up against you.
14:00Everyone knows you're the best in conversation.
14:03Yeah.
14:03In records to then noticing that guys aren't paying that respect.
14:08It's, I know, it's, in the media and everything as well, you know, in the 90s, you know, you'd
14:12read the papers, oh, Stephen's going to win the world championship.
14:15Stephen's the best.
14:16He's a man to beat.
14:17To, like, 10 years later, oh, Stephen's gone.
14:20You know, is he going to win another match?
14:22He's not the player he was.
14:24And all that's going in there.
14:25The good stuff's going in there.
14:27And then all of a sudden the bad stuff's going in there.
14:29But also from other players and the way they might look at you and kind of go, that's.
14:32Yeah.
14:33What do you, as a 55-year-old gentleman now, what do you worry about?
14:43I don't know.
14:44I don't know.
14:45You know, in terms of snooker, you know, I always want to be able to play snooker.
14:50I mean, I do exhibitions.
14:52I'll always love, you know, getting a cue and potting balls, getting a room and just playing
14:56away.
14:57So I'd worry if I wasn't able to do that, to actually play snooker again.
15:01Yeah.
15:02But so I asked you, what do you worry about?
15:04And the only thing you were able to tell me was snooker.
15:07It was almost the same when Roy Keane was on the show, that Roy was kind of going, I don't
15:14really worry that much about things.
15:16And I wonder, is it about, is there something about being a very elite, focused sports person that there's
15:25a kind of a real, natural, healthy practicality about you?
15:31Even though it's years afterwards, but you just, you don't, you don't crumble mentally.
15:36No, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I try not.
15:39I don't really give much attention to things, if, if, if negative things, I tend to think
15:43or then, then sort of get, get rid of it kind of thing.
15:46But no, I don't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say I'm a massive worrier about things.
15:49Yeah.
15:50Just go through, go through life, really.
15:54And I don't want, I've no intention of prying, but I'm just kind of curious then, say when
16:00the, when your marriage broke down, were you able to just kind of plow on and kind of go,
16:09or did that knock you on the, like, have you ever, have you ever been knocked onto the
16:15flat of your back, is what I'm asking?
16:17Oh yeah, I mean, that, that was, that was obviously a horrendous period, going through
16:20a divorce when, when, when there's kids involved and everything, it's terrible.
16:25But I've always been able, as I said, to put things to, to compartmentalize things and,
16:29and, and get on sort of thing.
16:31I mean, so that's why my traveling to China was, was, was, was huge for me, I think.
16:37And it was the same when my own parents broke up, they got divorced.
16:40I had, I had snooker and it's kind of been, you know, I've got something I could sort of
16:45put that to one side and, and forget and, and channel my interest and my, my focus onto
16:49the snooker.
16:50Yeah, yeah.
16:50Do you think it's a healthy thing to be able to compartmentalize like that?
16:54Um, I think so.
16:55I think so.
16:56I mean, I think some people might perceive it as, as cold and, and, and lack of feelings
17:02and stuff, but I think, um, I think it's important to, you know, not to, you don't ever forget
17:08it.
17:08Yeah.
17:09But to, to put it to just one side and to be able to, because if you don't think you're
17:12just going to spend your whole day.
17:13I think, I mean, as I say, it's, I've had to, you know, make sacrifices and be selfish.
17:20Um, and I think I always will be, I'll always, you know, I think, I think that's what, what,
17:24what, what, you know, what I do is, is just through, through my career and, and possibly
17:28because I've supported myself since I was 14, it's been me looking after me.
17:33Yeah.
17:34That's probably why I'm always going to be like that.
17:36It was my dream to become a freshman snooker player.
17:39Really?
17:39Yeah.
17:40But I just, uh, well, no more my father wouldn't let me play because in the eighties, in the
17:45late seventies and eighties in Navon, snooker was kind of seen as, uh, uh, there's something
17:52dodgy about snooker holes.
17:53Right.
17:54Uh, but I, uh, so the, for the fantasized about that, you know, and I remember watching
18:01all you guys and I was watching the guys before you when I was growing up and then watching
18:06you and, and, um, yeah, it just wasn't my, I didn't have it.
18:12It's like, but 66 is not a bad break in fairness.
18:15I'll settle for that.
18:16Uh, Stephen, it's been, uh, uh, an absolute.
18:24Leave the surprises to Tommy.
18:26We do predictable electricity costs and visible savings.
18:37Welcome back to the second half, everybody.
18:39Freddie, who's next?
18:40Tommy.
18:41Our next guest is Professor Brendan Kelly.
18:48How are you?
18:49Tommy, how are you?
18:50I'm great now.
18:51Good to see you.
18:52Great to see you again.
18:54I was looking at one of your books recently in Hodges Figgis and I thought happiness and
19:00I went, ah, fuck that.
19:03Tommy, did you buy the book?
19:04I didn't.
19:04No.
19:05Don't want to be happy.
19:07There's no crack in that.
19:08Is that the most recent book?
19:09No, there's been a couple of books since we last spoke.
19:12Yeah.
19:12Um, the book was called happiness and, uh, you know, how to achieve it, the pillars of happiness
19:17and strategies.
19:18Oh, I'm asleep already.
19:19But there's a more recent book.
19:20Okay.
19:21It's called Asylum Inside Grange Gorman.
19:23And that's a history book.
19:25And it's about, um, psychiatric hospitals.
19:27Um, I should mention maybe I'm a psychiatrist, uh, a medical doctor who specializes in mental
19:34illness and treating psychological distress.
19:36Yes.
19:37But I'm interested in history.
19:39Yeah.
19:39And that's what asylum is about.
19:42It's about why and how we put so many people into our psychiatric hospitals in the history
19:47of this country.
19:47What's the why do you think?
19:49Oh, there's a lot of whys about, about that one.
19:51I think we, in Ireland, we have a particular fondness for institutional responses to social
19:58problems, you know?
19:59Um, and we see this very clearly right across Irish history.
20:04And I suppose in my area, the mental hospitals, as they were called, or asylums, as they were
20:09called, uh, very much, uh, demonstrate how we tend to fall back on the institution, the
20:16building, um, the structure, you know, the routine when we're faced with a social problem.
20:21So what was the social problem?
20:24Well, there was a few of them, really.
20:26There were people who were apparently mentally ill, and this would be back maybe in the 1700s,
20:31who were homeless, you know, neglected, dying.
20:35And then there were people who were what we would now call intellectually disabled.
20:39And again, families struggled to care for them.
20:42Sure.
20:42And there were people who were homeless, people who were repeatedly imprisoned for
20:47minor offenses.
20:48And then there were people who just didn't fit into their communities.
20:52And what emerged in the 1800s were these large mental hospitals.
20:57Now, I'm using the phrase mental hospitals, Tommy, in a very historical way.
21:00I'm not, you know...
21:01Do you think mental hospital is a loaded term now?
21:04Oh, it is.
21:04I think it is.
21:05Yeah.
21:05I think it is.
21:06But these terms, they come and they go.
21:08They have a, they have a cycle.
21:10And I think a lot of people will be familiar with their local asylum or mental hospital as
21:14it became known.
21:15So it's good.
21:16Would there, would there have been a good in them back then, do you think?
21:19Well, there was a good intention for sure.
21:22Which was shelter.
21:23Shelter.
21:24Shelter and care.
21:25And there was a real belief, you know, this very scientific belief in cure.
21:30The belief that if you created an institution and you put people into it.
21:35And the idea was called moral management.
21:38And what that meant was a little bit different to what moral means today.
21:42It meant that people who were maybe mentally ill or intellectually disabled, if they had
21:47a good diet, exercise, accommodation, and a rational relationship with the staff.
21:54So the doctor would talk to the person, eat about whatever they wanted, regardless of how
21:59unlikely it was.
22:00And there was a belief that this system, rather than chaining people up or giving them medicines,
22:07this system would help.
22:08But who believed in that system?
22:10Oh, it was a very widespread belief.
22:12No, widespread amongst doctors or amongst, amongst civilians?
22:16Civilians.
22:16Really?
22:17Social reformers.
22:18People who were moved by the plight of homeless, mentally ill people, and particularly people
22:24who were very disturbed in the prisons.
22:26You know, there were hundreds, if not thousands of them.
22:28So this idea of an institution that, if you like, didn't lock people up in that way, that
22:34gave them food, gave them exercise.
22:37And, you know, at Grange Gorman, and I go into this in the book, there was in the title
22:41asylum in that way at the beginning.
22:45But, and this is a big but, the institutions became overcrowded.
22:50They grew out of control.
22:52When you build an institution, Tommy, it gets filled immediately with all kinds of people.
22:57And very quickly, the institutions became the problem.
23:00The mental hospitals became unhygienic, untherapeutic, overcrowded, and people died in them.
23:07Yeah, I, I won't, I won't, I don't, when you're saying, you know, a widespread belief in cure,
23:16sometimes that can be a widespread belief amongst doctors.
23:20Yes.
23:21As opposed to a widespread belief amongst, because I, I guess, I totally get the thing of,
23:31of people being magnificently unwell, and not being able to live with them, or being physically disabled,
23:38and so forth, and people not being able to cope with that.
23:41Um, but I wonder sometimes about the, sometimes I think that the hospitals probably could have ended up as laboratories
23:48for doctors to try stuff out.
23:51So initially, when they opened in the 18, early 1800s, they weren't run by doctors at all.
23:56Okay.
23:57They were run by non-doctors who were called moral governors.
24:00So it was very much a non-medical initiative originally.
24:05Okay.
24:05But as the 1800s went on, doctors became more prominent.
24:09And by the start of the 20th century, the early 1900s, in Ireland, we had all of these mental hospitals
24:16full of people who were very unwell, physically unwell, you know, TB sweeping through the institutions all the time,
24:23all kinds of things happening.
24:24So what happened then was what you describe.
24:27The doctors tried all kinds of treatments.
24:31They were seized, you know, by the institutions that they now presided over.
24:35So they tried, um, a series of treatments.
24:39And also they had power.
24:40And they had, I guess they had no, no one to answer to, in a sense.
24:44They had power.
24:45Not only did they, and I should say we, because, you know, I'm, I'm a, I'm a psychiatrist, I'm a
24:50medical doctor.
24:51And not only not terribly answerable, but serving a very useful social function for communities.
24:58You know, if you take the town of Ballinasloe, for example, in the early 1900s, the town had a population
25:05of about 5,600 people.
25:08That's 5,600 in the town in total.
25:10And of those 2,100 were patients in St. Bridget's Hospital.
25:16So what you have is this enormous institution, and everyone who isn't in it, either works in it, has a
25:24family member in it, or supplies it, or is somehow dependent on it.
25:28So these institutions were economic powerhouses for their communities.
25:33And any politician or anyone on the board who suggested scaling it down or shutting it down would get absolutely
25:39nowhere.
25:40You had generations of people employed in them.
25:43Of course.
25:43So these were very integrated social institutions upon which towns and hinterlands depended in so many ways.
25:51What's our responsibility, do you think, with our past in terms of psychiatric hospitals?
25:57What duty do we have in what happened?
26:04Well, look, there's a lot of complicity in what happened, a lot of, if you like, disseminated responsibility.
26:10Certainly my profession, the medical profession, we co-created these and, you know, presided over them for quite some time.
26:17They eventually were dismantled.
26:19But the cold hard fact is that we never had an epidemic of mental illness.
26:24We had an epidemic of mental hospitals.
26:27So looking at this story now, we do need to look at it more and look at the individual stories,
26:32because some of the stories, you know, are moving beyond words.
26:36I'll give you an example.
26:38In Grange Gorman, which became St. Brendan's here in Dublin, one of the biggest institutions in 1908,
26:45a 28-year-old woman was committed to the asylum.
26:48And she was hearing voices and she was distressed.
26:52And she had a three-month-old baby.
26:54So she was committed into the hospital.
26:57And the baby, there's no record of what became of that child.
27:01And this young woman, aged just 28, put into this huge institution, she became more distressed.
27:08After a year or two there, she got TB in the asylum, as was common.
27:13And after about three years there, and she's only 31 now, she is dying of TB.
27:19And a couple of days before her death, the asylum receives a letter.
27:23It is from this woman's sister in London.
27:25She says, I will not say I am sorry you are dying.
27:30The wonder to me is that you have lived so long in poverty in Dublin,
27:35wishing you a happy death if you are not already reaping the reward of all your suffering.
27:41Your affectionate sister.
27:43The letter arrived in the asylum and the doctors never gave it to the woman.
27:48And she died two days later.
27:50So you asked about our responsibility.
27:53Our responsibility is certainly to remember these institutions and the people in them.
27:57And also the challenge that this history presents to Irish history.
28:03These institutions were not run by the church.
28:07The church ran so many institutions and there has been, let's say, a partial reckoning with many of those.
28:13There's more work to be done on the church institutions.
28:16But while the church supplied chaplains to the mental hospitals and maybe had certain involvements,
28:22these were not run by the church.
28:24It turns out that we are perfectly capable of institutionalising each other in vast numbers without direct church involvement.
28:32But, you know, there were other things at play with the mental hospitals that were, you know, that were different.
28:38And, you know, for example, so many influences fed into them.
28:43So when the doctors were put in charge of them in the 1860s, you know, the doctors were horrified at
28:48the number of people in the institutions.
28:50So what happened was the government changed the salary structure for doctors.
28:55And the more people that were in your mental hospital, the more you were paid.
28:59And that, you know, that functioned in the way you would expect.
29:03Yeah, of course.
29:04Even when you look at the numbers, Tommy, in the 1950s, Ireland had about 20,000 people in mental hospitals
29:11on a given day.
29:12And on that same day, if you put every other institution together, you know, all of these terrible institutions,
29:20we know about the mother and baby homes, Magdalene laundries, industrial schools, orphanages, prisons,
29:25which have correctly been examined and criticised.
29:28But if you put them all together, they don't come to even half the number that were in our mental
29:33hospitals at any given time.
29:35So, you know, there's an issue of scale as well.
29:38So in terms of looking back and acknowledging, we have to do that.
29:44We do.
29:45And just to say that it happened on, not on our watch in a literal sense, but kind of, kind
29:53of on our watch.
29:55It did.
29:56Because it's, we have to own it, I suppose, in a sense, don't we, that these things happened?
30:02Tommy, we did this.
30:03We did this to each other.
30:05There are things we need to do now as well, you know, sort of, in terms of services for people
30:10who are mentally ill
30:11or psychologically distressed and socially disadvantaged as well, to make sure we're not, you know,
30:17to make sure we're not swinging the pendulum too far the other way.
30:20What does that mean?
30:22Well, you know, we have in Ireland today quite a number of mentally ill people who are in prisons and
30:28who are homeless.
30:29And, you know, ironically, those are the problems that led to the building of the large mental hospitals to begin
30:35with.
30:37Ireland today has the third lowest number of psychiatric inpatient beds in the EU.
30:42So a very dramatic swinging of the pendulum has it swung.
30:47Ah, so do you have a sense we might have gone, we don't have enough?
30:51I think maybe we don't have enough.
30:53And, you know, if you look at care for children and adolescents, child and adolescent mental health services as well,
30:58you know,
30:59and adult services, the problem today, the problem isn't really protecting people from over exuberant care.
31:05You know, the problem we hear about constantly is access to care, almost the opposite to what the problem was
31:11in the past.
31:12Is there a problem with diagnosis nowadays?
31:15Is it too, does it come when you finish filling out a form?
31:21Well, diagnosis is an interesting thing.
31:25It's a very powerful thing.
31:27And in psychiatry, in my field, there are no blood tests or brain scans that will diagnose things.
31:33More broadly, there is a desire to medicalise unhappiness, to describe the ups and downs of life as mental health
31:42problems or mental health issues.
31:44And that can be helpful for some people, for sure.
31:47But for other people, maybe not so much.
31:50And maybe, you know, a greater tolerance of, you know, unhappiness, sadness, difficulty would be more empowering rather than seeking
32:01or giving a diagnosis.
32:03So both my mother and my grandmother became addicted to prescription tablets and they were huge mood altering substances.
32:13And they would go through severe withdrawals when the medication ran out.
32:20How did that happen?
32:22The history of psychiatry is a history of therapeutic enthusiasm.
32:27And we saw a series of treatments introduced from the start of the 1900s, Tommy, from insulin coma therapy, giving
32:36people malaria to treat their mental illness, actually getting mosquitoes to bite them.
32:41And lobotomy was surgery on the brain as well.
32:44And then an era of medications came in.
32:47And the excessive enthusiasm latched immediately onto those, particularly benzodiazepine medications, which produced the kind of dependence that I think
32:56you're talking about there.
32:57And I'm obviously very sorry to hear about that with both your grandmother and your mother.
33:02Yeah. Addicted to such an extent that when one of them died, a friend called to the house and went
33:15down to the bedroom to try and get the tablets that hadn't been taken.
33:21Again, a friend who was also a friend of theirs who was also addicted.
33:25That's a high level of irresponsible.
33:30I mean, negligent is too pretty a word on the medical fraternity, isn't it?
33:38It's scandalous.
33:39Absolutely.
33:40You know, this therapeutic enthusiasm that sweeps through medicine and through my part of it, psychiatry, every few decades is
33:49an extraordinary thing.
33:50And this, with the benzodiazepines, they came in an era before the regulatory requirements came in in the way that
34:00they have now.
34:01They still exist and they're highly regulated in every country, including by the Health Products Regulatory Authority here in Ireland.
34:09But also for the other medicines that we still use, we have long term follow up studies now that simply
34:16were not available when benzodiazepines came in.
34:20I think doctors are still shoveling out these pills.
34:23Yeah.
34:23I think there are people watching who know people who have been on a certain script for decades.
34:31When you look at Ireland in particular, in relation to prescribing of medicines, we are again, a low medicine prescribing
34:39country internationally.
34:40If you look north of the border, for example, a person is, any given person is twice as likely to
34:45be on a benzodiazepine as they are in the Republic, twice as likely to be on an antidepressant.
34:51Nonetheless, the point is well taken, Tommy, like it absolutely is.
34:55And people watching will be familiar with the kind of scenario, but there is a tighter regulatory system.
35:02What's your feeling about psychedelics and neurology and rewiring or that kind of stuff?
35:13Yeah.
35:14The psychedelic story is really interesting.
35:16So these were investigated in the 1960s.
35:19They were abandoned for political reasons, largely.
35:21And now there are some very careful research studies happening, looking at, for example, psilocybin.
35:28So there is a place for this kind of approach.
35:33And it's a really interesting one because it combines talking and the medication really nicely.
35:37So there is a place for it.
35:39But the most interesting thing is the wild enthusiasm that this idea has generated among certain people.
35:45We are absolutely deluged with what I can only call media people of a certain age who see this as
35:52some kind of endorsement of their ayahuasca ceremonies.
35:56Yeah.
35:57Up the Andes or wherever it was all those years ago.
36:00And it's funny that the reinvention or the turning of this wheel, it's very corporate.
36:06It's big pharma is what's going on.
36:08And it's the absolute opposite of heading up the mountain to the shaman.
36:12But if I presented to you and say, I said, Brendan, look, I've 10 grams of these dried magic mushrooms
36:18that I got from a farmer in Leithram.
36:21If I take them, will you mind me?
36:23I would tell you not to take them.
36:25You're rolling the dice with your very, very precious mental health.
36:29You're an excellent mental health at the moment.
36:31And I certainly wouldn't roll the dice with...
36:34With 10 grams, maybe three then.
36:35Zero.
36:36Zero magic mushrooms for you.
36:37Zero.
36:38Zero.
36:39Oh, I need a second opinion.
36:43Zero.
36:47Zero.
36:50Zero.
36:51Zero.
36:54Zero.
36:57Zero.
36:58Zero.
36:59Zero.
37:00Zero.
37:02Zero.
37:03Welcome back to the third half, everybody.
37:05Freddie.
37:05Who's next?
37:06Tommy.
37:07Our next guest is Paula Nguyen.
37:15Paula.
37:18How are you?
37:19Yeah, I'm...
37:20How are they say?
37:27I was looking at your stuff recently actually. Why are you a poet?
37:37I got my language in the north inner city, you know, which is incredibly sonically rich as a child.
37:45I grew up all over the place really, you know, we were back and forth to London in the 50s.
37:51My family emigrated at one stage and came back and I was sent home to live with grandparents.
37:57But when the family got back together again, we had a flat on the corner of Gardner Street and Sean
38:03McDermott Street, right?
38:05Corner flat. Some of our windows looked out onto Gardner Street and the other windows looked out onto Sean McDermott
38:12Street.
38:12So you had Sean McDermott, you know, the Leitrim Patriot executed as a revolutionary after the rising.
38:22And you had Gardner Street named for Luke Gardner, who built the first Georgian settlements, the beautiful settlements of the
38:31north side.
38:31And by the time I met those those things, we were living in the tenements, you know, and my grandparents
38:41came out of Monto, out of Railway Street, formerly Lower Tyrone Street.
38:46Now, I wouldn't have known about that shadow history and our family's part in it, because there's a curious thing.
38:55We don't we try not to pass on the traumatic stories to our children, right?
39:01We give them a very safe and comforting maybe version of our histories.
39:07Boy, people don't talk about the Civil War afterwards for generations.
39:11We don't tell them the stories, but we they're they're a witness to the effect of the stories.
39:16Exactly. So there were always clues.
39:20And so that strange acoustic between the new state and the ascendancy layer really became really part of my obsessional
39:31life.
39:32Like my grandfather would say, oh, you take after my mother.
39:38She always had her nose stuck in a book. Right.
39:41Now, when I went to look for his mother in the written record, she signed everything with an X.
39:49I'm going, what's that about? You know, because she always had her nose stuck in a book.
39:54So it was Terry Fagan, the great oral historian of the month, who came up to me in 1983.
40:01And he said, I've great of great stuff on your great granny.
40:05I'm saying, oh, really fascinating.
40:07And he said, do you know what she was? Do you know what she did?
40:11Oh, yeah. She was secondhand furniture dealer.
40:13And he just laughed and he said, well, she was a dealer, but not in secondhand furniture.
40:17So seemingly Anna Meehan, my great grandmother, was the last of the Dublin madams.
40:26She sat down with Frank Duff and negotiated the peace, the end of brothel culture in the month.
40:37So now it was the biggest red light district in Europe in its day.
40:41But the pull out and the pun is intended of the soldiers and the end of the docks and the
40:48rise of Frank Duff.
40:51And who wasn't a bad character, but the rise of the Catholics, the state, the theocracy.
40:59That was the end of the economic base of the area and dismantlement with results that to this day, you
41:07know, to this day are reverberating in the indigenous community.
41:13In what way?
41:14Well, that would have been because of the rise of the new state.
41:21It would have been a completely disrespected, demolished area and just gradually with a lot of addiction, a lot of
41:31the old.
41:32I remember, you know, I remember the what I call in one poem, the displaced relics of imperial trauma, which
41:40would have been the women who worked in those places.
41:43I mean, I wouldn't glamorize it, but also the soldiers who came back.
41:48Like when I was a child, I saw the old soldiers from the First World War still with the mustard
41:55gas effects, you know, and these were very displaced.
41:59I remember them coming in to sleep in the hallways of Sean McDermott Street, of the flat, you know, where
42:06we were at the house.
42:08And I remember my mother would send me out with a cup of bread or a cup of tea, you
42:15know.
42:18But I think then when the 80s, when I was finding out about this shadow side in the family, if
42:26you like, in the 80s, you know, heroin hit.
42:30And that was, you know, another in the sequences of trauma.
42:36Is it partly to do with the fact that a community doesn't think it deserves to get out?
42:42It's being told it doesn't deserve, isn't it?
42:46Whatever you believe.
42:48And yet at the same time, like, that's where I got language and I got a ferocious language.
42:53And I got friendships, I got an education, Central Model Girls School, Miss Shannon beating out the meter with her
43:02stick, you know.
43:03I got my moral compass, my values in terms of community to this day are rooted there.
43:13When or who was the first person that you told that you were a poet?
43:18We shifted out to Finglas when I was coming into my teens.
43:24We were like right to meet the Zeitgeist, which, you know, came in from all over, but from the States,
43:32you know, Bob Dylan.
43:34You know, the great lyric tradition coming in, Joni Mitchell.
43:38I mean, we were music mad and it was all bands and performance.
43:43And, you know, it was a fun. I had a fantastic gang.
43:46You know, we were absolutely wild, but we watched each other's backs, you know.
43:53We were mostly thrown out of the schools.
43:55I went into Trinity at 17 and I had fantastic teachers, you know.
44:01And I was, I mean, I was as wild in Trinity in a different way as I was through the
44:07schooling.
44:10Like I kind of did what I wanted and it allowed me to do what I wanted, you know.
44:17It gave me a space just to talk to people from all backgrounds.
44:22I'm wondering two things. So the first one is Kavanagh and the way that Patrick Kavanagh was this kind of,
44:32this awkward presence from the country.
44:36Yeah, I know.
44:38And did that then in a way, not give you permission, but you were able to declare, I want to
44:47be an awkward presence from the city.
44:50Is there a connection to you?
44:52I think I've had that self-consciousness.
44:53I just wanted to do my thing and be myself and, you know, avoid work.
44:59Yeah, yeah.
45:00Do you know avoid, because that was my father, like God love him, Larry.
45:05He'd be saying to me, what is all this education for when I was going through it?
45:10And I'd be saying, I don't know, you know, that's not the point.
45:13Yeah, yeah, yeah.
45:14Yeah, yeah, yeah.
45:14He'd be saying, you know, what is all this?
45:16And then, you know, as time went on, and I wasn't making this big leap into his idea of what
45:23an education gave you, like a car and a big house and a good job.
45:27It became, what was all that education for?
45:31And a lovely thing happened towards the end of his life, in the last few years of his life.
45:39And he was a lifelong crossword fanatic.
45:42And I probably got the verbal from here and that all through my childhood.
45:45Five letters, seven letters, himself and my ma would do the crosswords.
45:51And he was a lifelong gambler.
45:53He worked at the dogs and the races.
45:55But an amazing thing happened the last few years of his life.
45:58I was a clue in a crossword, right?
46:02Four letters.
46:03That became, you know, four letters, Laurie, four letters, you know?
46:08It was poet, was it?
46:10Yeah.
46:10Yeah, yeah, wow.
46:11And I was a bet in Paddy Powers that I would come up on the leaving cert.
46:16Isn't that mad?
46:16Wow.
46:16To live in a country where they bet on such things, you know?
46:24So in terms of the public poet, there is giving voice and demanding acknowledgement of things.
46:38What is it in the private sphere?
46:40So of being in relationships and putting words on something that hasn't been said in terms of the dynamic between
46:53people.
46:54Yeah.
46:55And then having the poem to say it.
46:59What is that experience like?
47:02It was probably more destabilising when I was younger.
47:07I was just looking at an old dictionary I had, and I had 26 addresses in it.
47:15Now, the last two addresses covered the last 30 years of my life.
47:21So I did settle, and I settled with a lovely guy from Cork.
47:25At all.
47:25Also notorious.
47:28As notorious as myself.
47:31More notorious, you know.
47:32Just lovely.
47:33And that was an amazing connection, you know?
47:38And because he understands the kind of energies, especially the destabilising energies that can go into a life as an
47:49artist of any kind.
47:51He's fantastic, you know?
47:53So you can see with my dictionary, all these three months here, four months there.
47:59And I could probably fill in the relationships I was in in those times and travelling all over.
48:05Because I was a total rambler.
48:07I would just take off, you know?
48:09And so I entered this very calm time where, you know, it's fantastic to have it and to live through
48:19all of those experiences into a time where I could kind of give poetry what it deserved.
48:27You know, it's been salvific for me.
48:30Is it, I don't mean the specific of this relationship, but I'm saying.
48:34Well, let's steer carefully now.
48:37To find a relationship that's poem proof.
48:40Yeah, yeah, yeah.
48:42It's good.
48:43You know, and I can be free and I feel unfettered.
48:47And the only thing really that fetters me is the sense to try not to hurt people because I can.
48:57And I look back at some of my early work and I think, oh, Jesus, you know, that that's hurtful.
49:02And it's revenge driven because that's poetry is a great.
49:06Of course.
49:07Revenge.
49:08Yeah.
49:09Practice.
49:09Yeah, yeah.
49:10So I think time and compassion, you know, for suffering, because you understand we're all coming from a suffering place.
49:21Yeah.
49:22You've been moved to near tears a few times.
49:27How come?
49:30That's you.
49:33You're bringing me to tears, Tommy.
49:36You're like Bramovich, you know, the artist who sits across from people.
49:41Yeah, yeah, yeah.
49:42And makes them weep.
49:43I don't know.
49:45You've opened something in that conversation that makes me emotional.
49:49But it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, um, it's not unhappy or it's not uncomfortable.
49:56It's just the way I am.
49:58Yeah.
49:59And I always want to have a look at your tattoos up close.
50:04Oh, look.
50:05So the blackbird and the bell.
50:06Yeah.
50:07So instinct, uh, nature, freedom, uh, discipline, order, routine.
50:18Okay.
50:18Fantastic.
50:19And you know, the blackbird is the emblem of Irish poetry.
50:23Yeah.
50:23Yeah.
50:23Since the blackbird of Belfast lock, the little marginalia from which we derive our secular tradition.
50:32Explain that to me.
50:32I don't understand.
50:33You know, the, the scribes.
50:35Yeah.
50:35When they're writing the holy book and they were caught, their, their cat, something in
50:41nature and the little marginal note, that's really where I, I believe.
50:47Yeah.
50:47Many people believe those haiku, small visions, uh, they are the ones that kind of moved mainstream
50:54out of the edges.
50:56You know, it's a lovely, um, motif for what happens with poetry.
51:00So it's the image I got in my head there, as you're speaking was almost of a blackbird,
51:05uh, fluttering about in a library.
51:08And people are reading these big series books, but there's this living thing.
51:12Yeah.
51:13It's the living thing.
51:14In the room.
51:15Would, would don't fence me in be part of your central nervous system?
51:22Yeah.
51:23Yeah.
51:23But I'm also thinking I'm entering my third age.
51:28I'm afraid I'm entering my anecdotage and I'll go around just rambling old stories
51:34all the time, you know, but, uh, it's the bringing it out as well.
51:40Wouldn't that be great though?
51:41I don't know.
51:43I think it'd be, again, I just, traipsing around the town talking.
51:48Raving.
51:49Raving.
51:50There's that old one in the corner raving her head off about the old days on Bob Dylan,
51:55you know what I mean?
51:56Oh.
51:57Thank you so much.
51:59Oh, look, listen.
52:00For coming on and doing the show.
52:01Paula, really.
52:02Thank you for listening to me.
52:03As I enter my anecdotage.
52:07Oh, thank you.
52:08God.
52:10And now, ladies and gentlemen, to play us out with you, please welcome Roisin El-Sharif
52:14performing her new single, Shulerun.
52:44I wish I was on a yonder hill, just there I'd see it and cry my fill, till every tear
53:00would turn a mill.
53:05I'm ready to go after you, in a long river.
53:11Love you, Shulerun.
53:18I'm ready to go.
53:23I'm ready to go.
53:24Love you, Shulerun.
53:29Love you, Shulerun.
53:31Love you, Shulerun.
53:32I'm ready to go.
53:37I'd sell my rock, I'd sell my reel, I'd sell my only spinning wheel, to buy my lover's
53:52sword of steel, I'd sell my own spinning wheel, to buy my own spinning wheel, to buy my own
54:20It's good shape to my flower needs
54:24So
54:33So
54:34So
54:34So
54:35So
54:36So
54:37So
54:37So
54:37So
54:40I
54:40So
54:41So
54:41So
54:41So
54:41I love my food from all of my countries
54:45Until my people left me in a night
54:52I've been here and I've been here
54:59I've seen, I've seen
55:02I've seen, I've seen
55:03I've seen, I've seen
55:08My heart is another
55:10I've seen, I've seen
55:14My trust
55:19I've seen, I've seen
55:21My heart needs no
55:26I've seen, I've seen
55:29I've seen
55:30The truth
55:30I've seen
55:33I've seen
55:33I've seen
55:36I've seen
55:37Shul kathar sa'k se'li lor
55:43Isko chay tu ma'far nin slor
55:51Shul shul, shul arun
55:56Shul kathar sa'k se'li lor
56:10Isko chay tu ma'far nin slor
56:17Isko chay tu ma'far nin slor
56:22Isko chay tu ma'far nin slor
56:33Tommy moved back at the slightly earlier time next Saturday of 20 to 10 here on One, and you can
56:38catch not just the current series on RT Player, but also five previous seasons as well.
56:42Next tonight meantime more magical music including Irish women in harmony paying tribute to the Dolores of Airden on the
56:48heart of Saturday night.
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