Had a blast and a half, with the Outbreak Festival crew, in the old Daghda space (St. John's Sq, Limerick) last night. A healthy (or suitably unhealthy) crowd shuffled horrifically down to enjoy local film-maker Dermott Petty's Gothic Country 'n' Irish short Zombie Waltzing, and the "splatstick" classic I'd chosen as our main attraction, Return of the Living Dead.

On the off chance any gorehound wishes to check out the folk and films mentioned in my introduction to the screening, here it be.

The film you're about to see, Dan O'Bannon's 1985 Return of the Living Dead, was released almost simultaneously with Day of the Dead, the third film in George Romero's seminal zombie series. Though the two films share a common birthday, tonally they could hardly be more different. While Day was bleak and grim, Return was (and is) in the words of zombie-scholar Jamie Russell “a breathless horror cartoon that aspires to make jaws drop to the floor through its sheer exuberant excess”.

It had originally been conceived by John Russo – Romero's co-screenwriter on 1968′s Night of the Living Dead – as a straightforward horror film in the Romero mould, with Tobe Hooper (of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre fame) directing. When Hooper departed to direct the schlocky alien vampire-fest Lifeforce, Dan O'Bannon (who had written the screenplay for the original Alien and worked with John Carpenter on Dark Star) was brought on board.

In O'Bannon's hands the tone quickly shifted from earnest to overtly and outrageously comedic. Though horror and comedy might, on a superficial level, seem odd bedfellows, they've been combining happily and hilariously on-screen for many decades, dating back at least as far as James Whale's Old Dark House in 1932. In terms of breaking taboos, saying the unsayable, graphically depicting things that society normally hides away, the comedic and the horrific are, in reality, close cousins. Allowing audiences to laugh and scream in the face of their fears.

What films like Return of the Living Dead specifically helped popularise was the horror sub-genre/form generally referred to as “splatstick”. A key influence on O'Bannon's film – and other “splatstick” classics like Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator, Peter Jackson's Braindead and Sam Raimi's Evil Dead 2 – were the outrageous horror comics of the 1950s, particularly those produced by the legendary EC. In those publications – which were victims of a sustained campaign of moral outrage – death, dismemberment and evisceration became gleefully delivered punchlines. The tension-releasing laughter they inevitably invited being one of the things that infuriated the guardians of public morality the most.

So what exactly makes Return of the Living Dead one of the finest examples of “splatstick”? Well first (and possibly foremost) are the three pitch perfect performances from the senior male leads: the wonderful James Karen (as the folksy and avuncular 'Frank'), Clu Gulager (as his put-upon, pragmatic boss 'Burt'), and Don Calfa (as the Nazi-loving embalmer 'Ernie Kaltenbrunner' – named, incidentally , after a real-life Nazi war-criminal). The gusto and glee with they embrace their roles, not only offered a refreshing counterpoint to the often irritating woodenness of the film's teen stars, but showed how instinctively they understood the kind of acting “splatstick” demands: full-on, no-holds-barred commitment, no matter how ludicrous the situations might be. [Bruce Campbell, of the Evil Dead fame, is probably one of the finest practitioners of this kind of OTT style]

Then, of course, there are the zombies themselves. In keeping with a film that cracks along at a frenetic pace, and bounces along to an ass-kicking punk soundtrack (featuring the likes of The Cramps, 45 Grave and The Damned) – the film's zombies don't shuffle and stagger about a la Romero. They sprint full tilt toward their prey – anticipating the hyperactive undead of 28 Days Later and Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead remake.

Most memorable of all was the film's so-called “Tarman” zombie – a dripping oozing mass of putrid flesh whose obsession with devouring big juicy “braaaainnns!” almost single-handedly popularised the notion that the undead are fixated with the contents of our skulls.

Oh…and then there's Linnea Quigley's…em….naked gyrations on a crypt. Which proved catnip to teen fanboys, and helped turn her, overnight, into a successful and prolific “scream queen”.

As gloriously goofy as the film undoubtedly is, there are moments where unsettling horror, unexpectedly and delightfully, creeps to the surface. While previous zombie movies had portrayed the undead as abjectly wretched – denied the dignity of eternal rest – Return of the Dead was one of the first films to suggest that being dead was actually painful. They're not just eating our brains because they're hungry, they're eating them because doing so offers temporary respite from the agony of being dead! Death, then, is not a release from bodily pain, but a descent into even more terrible suffering!

Another of the film's innovations was to actually show you the process of someone slowly turning into a fully-fledged zombie. As they lose control of their will, develop rigor mortis, and feel the urge to eat brains grow, Frank and Freddy describe what all this feels like. And force us to imagine and feel it too.

But, enough of all that. It's the laughs that brings people to the film, and it's the laughs we remember. There may be one or two more important zombie films, and certainly one or two more sophisticated zombie films, but none are anything like this much fun. Enjoy.

But, wait. All is not lost. We have in our possessions a technological miracle. A camcorder. You press a button and it imprints moving images on tape. Crazy! And check out the settings. Pixellate! Solarise! Sepia! The future was here (or there, and then). What a world.

And so, we grabbed the camera, and pointed it at things (mainly ourselves). Two hours later and the greatest fucking zombie film ever made by anyone anywhere was in the can (if, y'now, "the can" had been an 8mm TDK tape). My friends, behold BRAINSTORM (or Dawn of the Damp). The newly-digitised "Director's Cut", with delicious layers of funky muzak lashed on.

Forget wordy old Ulysses. This is the the most important cultural artefact ever hewn by Irish hands. Even if you ignore its aesthetic wonders (not that you should), it functions as a poignant and moving document of the world that was. A few short months later Y2K rode in on a pale horse. And the computers, as predicted, went nuts. And the robots rose from the wreckage of global apocalypse to force us all into sex slavery. The bastards.¹

1. I think I'm accurately representing Adam Curtis' thesis here. [back]

Choices were stark and choices and simple. And really limited. You could sit munching a communion wafer (or sucking an Oatfield sweetie) from mid-afternoon on a Friday, waiting, desperately, for the misanthropic Uncle Gaybo's Late Late to start, or you could curl up on a gold couch and sob. Beside a white telephone. Like Isabella Rossellini.

My mother always chose the latter option. Always. I played Subbuteo.

Back in the fun-stuffed, joy-filled, gloriously utopian days of the early 1980s, three things seemed sure and certain.

1) Nuclear Armageddon was imminent and inevitable. It was 2 minutes to midnight and jttery fingers hovered over red buttons. We were all fucked.

2) We'd soon be abandoning a borked earth and heading out into the cosmos on giant space arks. Possibly as a result of 1.

3) I'd wake, most days, to find myself caked and coated in drying urine.

All three were, I'm sure, related. Cold war politics, space opera, and my stinky wee. Key ingredients of a frazzled Zeitgeist.

It's my daughter's ongoing love affair with Bosco that has such thoughts fizzing about my brain-box. This afternoon we watched the episode where Frank Twomey returned from "the pictures" having viewed a Star Wars knock-off. He was jazzed. He was jizzed. He was excited. He wanted, he said, to build a spaceship and to head off, he said, into the depths of outer space. He, Marian and Bosco decided to sing a song that spoke of the thrills, spills and adventures that awaited them there. This is the result.

Bosco – Outer Space, Is the Place

Melancholia and poignancy absolutely drip from every flat, warbled note. Outer space suddenly doesn't sound anything like a jolly old…er…space where you'd whizz about in an X-Wing, chortling delightedly. It sounds deeply sad. And empty. A place of forced exile. A quality Marian captures upsettingly with the words…

"Past the moon,
And then soon,
We will wave the sun goodbye".

Yes, we will wave the sun goodbye as we squat in our tin-can ships gazing longingly back toward a long-disappeared earth. Tears streaming down faces half-lit by said sun's weakening rays. We're suddenly out here like Major Tom, spinning and floating and slowly asphyxiating. Mummy! I want to go home!

To make matters worse, Frank all but admits that space travel is, really, when you think about it, a metaphor for death.

"Outer Space,
Is the place,
Where we all intend to…fly".

There's a millisecond's pause between "to" and "fly" that inevitably invites the listener to jauntily sing "Where we all intend to…die!". You think subtleties like these were lost on young Bosco enthusiasts? Not a bit of it. There may have been a time, back in the giddy days of the 50s and 60s, when space seemed seductive. A place of boundless possibilities and off-world technological utopias. But by the time I was old enough to really consider such things, and worry about such things, and piss in the bed as an indirect result of such things, space just seemed horribly cold, weird and indifferent. A vast place where'd you'd lose your mind. Where you'd slowly suffocate or burn up on re-entry. Where you'd watch the tiny blue bauble of mother Earth vanish (forever) into the endlessly black distance. The place where we all intend to die.

Nobody (not even Kubrick, or Bowie, or Tarkovsky) articulated this space/death analogy as succinctly and movingly as Europe's beautiful Joey Tempest of course.

The mushroom clouds are rising. We're headed for Venus.¹ The undiscovered planet, from whose bourn no traveller returns. It's game over, man. I'm off for a little cry. *Sob*²

1. Snigger! [back]
2. Actually, I'm off to the Irish Blog Awards in Belfast. I may see some of you there. [back]

About 6 months ago, on a night (dear readers) very much like this,¹ I found myself sitting, sweatily, at a giant mahogany table in my parents' "Good Room".² Phone in hand. Preparing to talk to an 85-year-old Richard Matheson.

Look, I don't usually conduct telephone interviews in my parents' "Good Room", OK? It was very late, and I think I was worried about shouting at an 85-year-old in California (who might, after all, have been a bit deaf) and the effect that might have had on my sleeping toddler daughter and…I'm sure there was probably some other stuff too, but, anyway, there I was. Phone. Mahogany table. Sweaty head.

The reason for the call was to (hopefully) hoover up a few choice quotes for an SFX piece I was writing on The (Incredible) Shrinking Man. The reason for the sweaty head was a combination of fan-boy jitters, and an unsureness as to how Matheson would react to questions about the (absolutely unavoidable) sexual/gender subtexts of the novel.

The phone rang. A frail and barely audible voice answered. I blurted out my spiel. Who I was, what I was doing, how it had all been arranged.

Silence.

The kind of silence that feels hideously like one of those "I have no idea what the hell you're talking about" silences. Then:

"Can you hold on for a few minutes?"

I held on. For several minutes. Richard Matheson was speaking to another (unknown) man. Speaking to this other (unknown) man about the security of his property. About how there were gaps in this security. Gaps that were allowing things in.

Unknown Man: "…this here is an open area. It used to…uh…have barbed wire but it broke on the other side. So…I was wondering if you wanted that filled in?"

Matheson: "Will coyotes still get in?"

Unknown Man: "Well…if coyotes want to get in, they'll get in."

And on and on it went. I was both thrown and thrilled. Matheson was sounding just like Robert Neville. Or Scott Carey. The doomed "heroes" of his deeply paranoid (and deeply wonderful) pair of genre classics – I Am Legend (1954) and The Shrinking Man (1956). Novels absolutely dripping in angst about invasion, loss of integrity, loss of self. "I bet he'll love my question about The Shrinking Man, male diminishment, nascent feminism and the undermining of patriarchal structures!", I all-but-chuckled to myself.

Several minutes later still, after much unsuccessful (and desperate) fishing for answers I knew must be there, Richard Matheson signed off with the following:

"Don't emphasise any kind of subconscious desire on my part to make social commentary."

I assured him I wouldn't. And I didn't – in the piece at least. But I may have now.

Will coyotes still get in?

1. Except significantly warmer, and brighter, and less March-like, and well, not very much like this at all. [back]
2. One of those "fancy" (useless) supplemental sitting rooms that nobody ever goes near and serve only to potentially impress the kind of guests who never visit anyway. [back]

Five seconds later and my memory centres were launched on a Proustian rocket ride back into the (usually) dim and (always) distant past. Clacton-on Sea, circa 1976. The elder sister and I shyly stand by the door of a promenade apartment as an elderly woman shuffles over to her card table. She lifts its lid and produces two small boxes. One, an "Animal Snap" game of some sort (which she places tenderly into my nervously-outstretched hand).

The other? My sister's prize? Old Maid. The exact same Old Maid. Same (glorious) font; same lurid colour scheme; same thin and sweet-smelling cardboard. 34 years…erased in an instant. I was so utterly transported I nearly forgot to buy a jumbo-bag of Maltesers.

Anyway, delicious as the exterior is/was, it is but a taster of the delights that await within. I have no idea how you play Old Maid (even after reading the enclosed instructions), so I'll take a cue from the title, and 1940s aesthetic, and assume it's all about not getting "left on the shelf", like a mad, dessicated old cat lady.

The pack is divided into pairs of hunky and eligible bachelors¹ on one side (the side of right, naturally), and a lone "Old Maid" card on the other (rocking a slightly less Old-Maidy look than her *totes* frigid sister on the box).

There she waits, the patron anti-saint of non-romance – dooming all who touch her to an anguish-stuffed life of unutterable loneliness and despair. Yay! Root through the purse of any single woman of a certain age and you'll find (tucked away at the bottom) a tattered card such as this. A grim reminder of the youth, hope and dreams that now lie smashed and shattered. The Old Maid smiles, thinly. She has won…again.

What you should have done, single ladies, is picked one of these majestic specimens. They are the cardboard embodiments of all that is good in manly man. Look at all we have to offer? There is simply no need to die alone and unloved in a dank, dark house where (because of your weird, off-putting spinster-ness) your body lies undiscovered for weeks. The cats probably eat a bit of you too. All because you were too proud, or fussy, or intellectual or something. Look what you missed out on.

Proto-Top Gun studs in bulgy suits!

Big Caruso baldies with tiny feet!

Wet sucky-lemon-faced Tory minister types!

Passionate artist chaps who'd get all sexy and paint you nekkid!

Golf ball smashers!

Outdoorsy Victorians who hit fish with big sticks!

Um, lady cyclists…

And, my personal favourite, sharp-suited, pipe-smoking, dreamy motorcar enthusiasts! Look at the crease on those slacks! Swoon!

If, after all this, you still insist on turning your disdainful, womanly nose up at the above catalogue of wonders…then I suggest you grab the nearest cat and disappear into the gloom and the silence. The chaps (Tally ho!) will carry on regardless. The "Old Maid" – eternal, terrible and deathless as the deepest sea – will add another soul to her collection.

[Full Set Here]

1. Steady, girls! [back]

Back when I was a wee lad, I never lost my temper. I never accidentally stabbed my sister with a metal badge in the shape of a thumb.¹ I never did anything wrong. Ever.

There was, however, a small boy – coincidentally looking just like me and living in our house – who'd frequently commit acts of naughty badness. His name was "Jivvy", and he'd routinely depart the scene of various crimes just as I arrived. Leaving me to clean up his mess and take the rap for his indiscretions. Damn imaginary bastard.

In young Mia Blake – put-upon protagonist of Jinty's "Slave of the Mirror" (1974) – I recognise a kindred spirit. While slaving, skivvy-like, in the attic of her sister Janet's Cornwall boarding house, she stumbles across an antique mirror. An antique mirror in which a leering, diabolic face is reflected back.

A diabolic face whose penetrating gaze decides (just for yuks, presumably) to crush her will and force her to commit anti-social acts of boarding-house-destroying eeeevilll. She tries her best to resist…

…with mixed results.

Her sis, noticing this abrupt change in young Mia's attitude, decides to cheer her up…by nailing the devil mirror to her bedroom wall. Oh dear.

We've all been there. We've all told ourselves, "I'll never let demonic faces in mirrors (that no-one else can see but me) tell me what to do again. I'll kick the habit. Cold turkey". But then…you're up late. You're bored. You think, "One more quick look can't hurt". And then…

It cannot be defeated. It cannot be reasoned with. It wants nothing less than to devour, digest, and then shit out our souls (while adversely affecting the reputation of a seaside guest house). This is why I haven't stared into a mirror for 30 years. Jivvy lives there. And I must obey him…

1. This was one of the great tragic misunderstandings of my childhood. After one of my daily shouting matches with said sister, I (somewhat unusually) felt bad. "I know", I thought, "I'll offer her an olive branch. I'll give her a gift". The most kingly gift I could think of was a metal badge that had come free with one of that week's comics. It was in the shape of a "thumbs up" hand. I sat my sister down on the stairs and said "Close your eyes and do a thumbs up". This she did (suspiciously), upon which I produced the badge (hidden behind my back) with a flourish. So much of a flourish that the badge's pin jammed straight into her up-pointing thumb. And stayed there…as we both stared, disbelievingly, at the sight. Her thumb pierced by a small metal thumb. Shrieking and wailing followed. As I tried desperately to explain my good intentions…and how it had all gone horribly, nightmarishly wrong. [back]

I shall treasure it always.

A quick explanatory note on “slash fiction” (in case anyone’s rigid sense of moral propriety makes them unfamiliar with the term). “Slash fiction” – which first appeared in its contemporary form in the 1970s – was (and is) amateur, not for profit, fan-made-fiction (often written by women incidentally): focusing on romantic/erotic relationships between same-sex fictional characters. The original (and most important) of these pairings being Star Trek’s Jim Kirk & Mr. Spock.

And to set the mood I’ve got a tasteful fan-produced slide of them to show you…

There they are – relaxing and luxuriating in a nice bubble bath, in front of a gorgeous backdrop of airbrushed gas clouds, stars and swirling nebulae. By the way, if you’re thinking that this represents a twisted, perverted and wholly re-imagined version of the Kirk/Spock dynamic then you’ve obviously never seen the show or subsequent films. Slash fiction writers (and artists) weren’t inventing subtexts, they were accurately representing the text.

Here’s another…

…where they’re both manacled and topless in a prison cell – having just been brutally tortured and whipped. By Nazis. Amazingly enough, that one’s actually real.

Now, Trek creator Gene Rodenberry, may have intended the relationship to epitomise some kind of 23rd century Platonic ideal of male love (and it’s certainly moving on that level): but in giving Spock so much Vulcan restraint and stiff-upper-lippiness, he (perhaps accidentally) created a pulsating Costume Drama style vibe. As in most costume dramas, unarticulated passions heave and seethe just below the surface – held (just about) in check by Spock’s Vulcan cool and their mutual professional obligations (this is, after all, a workplace romance).

Unlike most costume dramas, one half of the couple (namely, Spock) suffers from the Vulcan affliction of Pon Farr, which means he has to mate once every seven years or else he’ll actually die. Talk about pressure. So even if they never actually shared a sensual cosmic bath together (onscreen at least): every loaded look, and potent touch, and awkward (pregnant with meaning) silence suggests that they definitely both considered it.

Anyway, where once such tales were distributed through hand-stapled and crudely photocopied fanzines – they’ve now, unsurprisingly, found a perfect and sympathetic home on the internet. Expanding and exploding online to include not just slash tales of same-sex encounters – but heterosexual, bisexual, pansexual and (somewhat alarmingly) interspecies ones as well.

Not all fictional universes, however, are evenly or equally represented. Over on the indispensable adultfanfiction.net, for example, the clear market leaders (with thousands of tales devoted to each of them) are Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Lord of the Rings, and (slightly upsettingly) Harry Potter.

The convention is for each story to synopsise itself through a use of codes indicating the relevant genders involved and themes explored. Here’s one perplexing – and mildly terrifying – example of said codes taken from a Buffy story called “My Own Demons”.

Obviously, there’ll be a few even the most chaste of you will recognise there: Anal, Oral, Trans, Bond and…um…Other¹ – but unless you’re a particularly open-minded crowd, I’d wager that the bulk are unknown, and possibly unknowable. I’m not sure man (or woman…or other) was ever meant to know the meaning of HJ. Or AU/AR. Or UST, WAFF, WIP and Yuri. It’s like trying to fathom a mind-bogglingly complex equation, cataloguing the inner workings of outré human passions and sexual depravities. Stare at it long enough and you might just go mad.

Go down through the code-heavy lists on adultfanfiction.net and you’ll soon find yourself venturing into fringe and niche waters. Who’d have thought, for example, that Black Books could produce 10 texts? Or that Greatest American Hero would warrant 7? Or that Jurassic Park might spawn 11? – one of which (by noted author “bighardwang”) tells the alarming tale of how the…

“Professor dude who gets eaten in a bathroom finds a really pretty dinosaur before he gets eaten”.

Then there’s Dawn of the Dead’s six pieces (with one featuring the immortal line: “The zombie squeezed his balls between its gripping fingers”), Captain Scarlet’s one (wherein Captain Scarlet touchingly admits to his beloved Captain Blue: “I may be indestructible…but my heart isn't”), a lone Goonies story (I didn’t dare look) and two on…um…Schindler’s List.

Keep probing and exploring, and still weirder treats make themselves known.

Serving the deranged Mechanophile, or obsessive Top Gear follower (who foams at the mouth at the thought of polished chrome and thrusting pistons) is the surprisingly popular Transformers category. Which contains, to my human eyes at least, some of the least erotically-charged prose ever dreamt up by the human imagination. A few choice examples:

“The port was still dry, indicating that he wasn’t aroused. This made it a difficult situation since inserting his transfer into an unaroused mech would not be pleasurable for either one of them.”

“Slowly, Prime began to move his hip servos. Arching up against Soundwave…His aft port became slicker…”

Further down the rabbit hole of bonkers-ness are two understandably neglected categories – serving and servicing the proclivities of, I’m not sure who or what exactly. Exploring, in unflinching furry detail, the “erotic” adventures of Care Bears and My Little Ponies.

First up is the delightful “Belle of the Ball Until Dawn Comes…” the lone tale in the My Little Pony archives. Although…one My Little Pony story is still one more My Little Pony story than one might expect to find.

Here we’re invited to experience, with slack-jawed and agog faces, an account of a night of passion between Star Catcher and Twinkle Twirl.

That’s Twinkle Twirl there on the left, and the rearing and magnificent Star Catcher on the right. After an enchanting ball in magical Ponyland they tenderly get down to business.

"Star Catcher?" Twinkle Twirl whispered, shaking a little from the newness of things. She was aware that he had taken off her skirt and she was a little shy.

Now, I freely admit, I’m no My Little Pony expert, but I wasn’t aware they wore skirts. I guess without something to remove there’s less of an erotic frisson. As my father always says: If you want to eroticise animals, put clothes on them. Naked animals are, simply, animals. You wouldn’t want to bang a duck unless it had a pair of pants you could whip off.

Back to the story…

"Close your eyes… It'll be more pleasant that way. Relax and breath deeply of the cool night air", Star Cathcher instructed Twinkle Twirl as she complied. He began to massage her neck muscles softly… allowing her to loosen up as he went along. "How does it feel?" he queried.

"Heavenly…" Twinkle almost purred, except that ponies don't purr.

You have to give the author props for self-correction there. Instead of anticipating objections about the outrageousness of the material, he/she imagines incredulous readers saying: “Look, we can suspend our disbelief and buy all that stuff about magical equine fucking in a colourful fairyland, but purring ponies! Come on! That’s ludicrous!”.

Moving to the climax…

"Star Catcher!" She breathed. "HARDER!" She panted in a breathy equine sort of way, shivering.

He thrust into her harder still, gasping as he did.. IN and OUT…. in and out… back and forth… faster and faster… "Oh! TWINKLE!" He called out heavily. "Twinkle Twirl… you're wonderful…!!!!!"

I should point out that “you’re wonderful” is followed by no fewer than five exclamation marks² – so I fear my drab delivery isn’t really doing justice to Star Catcher’s punctuated enthusiasm.

We'll finish with “Morning Reflections” – a surprisingly affecting and sensitive Care Bear tale from the sex-mind of “Mana Angel”. Here are the relevant couple…

Proud Heart Cat there on the left, and the angst-ridden/sexually-repressed Brave Heart Lion on the right.

Brave Heart Lion knew about sex, of course…but he hadn't heard about it from his cubhood guardians, True Heart and Noble Heart. He supposed they figured it was a non-issue with them being what they were. But when he was younger, he had discovered by accident that when he touched a certain part of his body a certain way, good feelings resulted from it. Because of the private nature of that body part and those feelings, he had kept it to himself, but he had always wondered why. Then, one day, he had caught himself staring at Proud Heart Cat, and he’d almost had a serious social disaster when his penis began to swell. He had excused himself from tummy symbol practice,³ saying he didn't feel well, and walked towards his home with his hands folded in front of him to hide his condition. How embarrassing!

We meet him again, a little later, after a moment of painful intimacy…

Proud Heart had touched his most secret place, where her paw encountered nothing but silky fur. Their genitals were always masked by their fur, and for the males, their penises were hidden in a sheath; you'd never know they were anatomically correct…but they were.

Audience members of a certain vintage will undoubtedly remember the scandal and outrage caused by Kenner Toy’s 1982 range of anatomically correct Care Bears. If you cuddled them but a little they’d chuckle and lecture you on the merits of sharing. If you cuddled them a lot a fur-lined phallus would unsheathe itself, creep out, and poke you in the belly.

Moving on and wrapping up…it’s later still and Brave Heart Lion is shampooing his mane in the shower.

His balls drew up close to his body, and he emitted a roar as he ejaculated. He had the sense to aim for the drain as his penis spasmed and his testicles emptied themselves of his seed…

He felt awful. It was a dull, hollow pain in his chest, as if he had committed some grievous sin. His member had shrunken and retreated to the safety and obscurity of its sheath. He sighed, shut off the water, and dried himself off. It was late enough as it is, and he still had to eat before he left the house. He pushed his guilt away, and went down to raid his fridge. It was his secret. No one would ever know.

Now, Brave Heart may only be a Care Bear, or a Care Lion (or whatever), with a jolly red heart adorning his chest – but that’s one of the most eloquent and heart-rending articulations of pubescent masturbatory guilt I’ve ever read.

Though I can’t quite relate to the mane, and the silky fur, and the sheathed cock – I can readily identity with the shame and the emptiness of covert, feverish wanking in the shower. Not only that, but when I was 13 I regularly brought myself to orgasm by humping a Masters of the Universe bean-bag (while dreaming of the Cadbury’s Caramel Bunny), so I retain a certain warm and fuzzy nostalgia for eroticised cartoon universes.

So, in conclusion, while there’s not much in the way of sexy pleasure to be had from the boggle-eyed reading of these tales – they do serve a purpose: namely, to remind us (in brain-scalding terms) of the rich, mad, endlessly perplexing tapestry of human sexualities. On adultfanfiction.net and its sister sites, nobody’s really a weirdo…because (of course) everybody is.

1. Catch all term there [back]
2. Bit of a redundant point in print, but there you go. [back]
3. I don’t know what that is, but it sounds hilarious. [back]

"Who's yer man?", asks the English brother-in-law.

I explain…as best I can.

"I thought he was just some random nutter", the bro-in-law observes shrewdly.

I sip my beer, exhausted, as my brain tumbles (pleasantly) down a rabbit hole. It was just one of those weekends. Random and chaotic and ultimately lovely.

A gazillion thanks to Pat, Mel, Steve, Emma & Phil. They were stellar guests, spinning the humble canvases of Leviathan into magical wonderland gold – as Laurence Mackin kindly reported.

What I can say for definite is that the Comics discussion was stellar – Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell was in brilliantly good humoured and rambunctious form (although I would have paid a small fortune if that Blair at EP rumour had turned out to be true, just to see how Bell would have reacted). Pat Mills of 2000AD was the voice of wisdom on the panel, and Emma Vieceli did a terrific job in arguing the case for Manga. Favourite quote: “Boys’ comics are about adventures and events, girls’ comics are about the people those adventures and events happen to.” A genuinely illuminating afternoon in fine company.

Thanks to Naoise, thanks to a cuddly & handsome audience, thanks to those guys who made those nice pizzas that saved my life. It all flew past dizzyingly till thump! thump! down I came upon a heap of sticks and dry leaves, and the fun was over.

You hipster musos might like to pretend that the first record you bought, with your own precious pocket money, was Music for the Masses. Or Purple Rain. Or Rain Dogs. But it wasn't. Like me, the first record you bought (with your own precious pocket money) was the 7″ single of Nikita by Elton John. I know. I can see the shame reflected in your eyes.

I had, I now realise, something of a cold war fetish as a young fella. In this, I'm sure I was not alone. It wasn't so much the spies and the intrigue and the defections that made me giddy. It was more the (supposedly) imminent threat of global annihilation. On the one hand it was (of course) a bit on the terrifying side. Melted faces and irradiated eyeballs and your family being dead and so on. People shuffling about wailing and dragging their skin behind them like hideous mutant freaks. All that was, I suppose, in the debit column.

On the other (mutated) hand, it was hard not to acknowledge that the world was hopelessly shit as it stood. Dropping the bombs and blowing everything to bits afforded us the chance to a) rebuild the world anew as a (clean and bland) Star Trek-y futuristic utopia, while, b) living out our childhoods like the resourceful, independent, and semi-feral young heroes of an Enid Blython-esque post-apocalyptic fantasy. Sadly, of course, the wall came down and the Hard Rock Cafe invaded Moscow and the world continued to build shittier layers upon shitty foundations. Boo.

But the pop-cultural flotsam and jetsam of the time retain their power to move and amuse. Step forward Elton & Bernie (Taupin).

We'll leave the whole "Dude! Nikita is a MAN'S name!!" discussion to the sophisticated troll armies of YouTube. All I'll say, in hindsight, is that Nikita (the video) marries the glamour of a Soviet passport control checkpoint with the endearing lovableness of a relentless stalker (telephoto lenses and secret slide shows in his apartment) in a way that seems, in a world stubbornly resisting nuclear wipe-out, delightfully cuddly and fuzzy.

Event

Join us in the MindField on (Saturday) September 4th at 5 p.m. for a chaotic and fun-stuffed rocket ride through the inner and outer reaches of the comics and cartooning universes. Our intrepid and esteemed panel will cheerily dissect and debate the “sequential art” scene as it and was: offering thoughts, opinions and recollections on a wide range of topics, including: Classic British comics, Manga, Bande dessinée, Girls’ comics, John Major’s underpants, the Irish small presses, and much, much more. Masked and caped crusaders may also get an occasional mention…

Guests

Pat Mills is affectionately (and accurately) known as the “godfather of British comics“. A comic industry legend, he was the founder of 2000 AD, Battle and Action. As a writer he has created some of the UK’s most seminal and best-loved comic stories: Sláine, Charley’s War, ABC Warriors, Nemesis the Warlock and many more. Among the other credits on his extensive CV are Marshal Law, Metalzoic, The Punisher 2099, Requiem Vampire Knight and Batman: The Book of Shadows.

Emma Vieceli is a freelance artist and writer based in Cambridge. Artist for 2 of the acclaimed Manga Shakespeare graphic novels (and featured in the award-winning Comic Book Tattoo and Marvel's recent Girl Comics amongst other publications), she is currently working on two graphic novel series: one for Oni Press and one for Penguin Books. She also continues to work on her own independent series, Dragon Heir (printed through Sweatdrop Studios).

Steve Bell is one of most original and respected figures in contemporary cartooning. He has produced illustrations and comic strips for many different magazines, including Social Work Today, Punch, Private Eye, New Society, Radio Times, New Statesman, The Spectator and the Journalist. Since 1981 he has written and drawn the daily If… strip in The Guardian, creating such memorable images as – John Major with his underpants worn outside his trousers, Tony Blair with Margaret Thatcher’s rogue eyeball, and George W Bush as a chimpanzee. He has had twenty seven books published, including a cartoon autobiography of George Bush called Apes of Wrath, an anthology If… Marches On and, most recently, a Tony Blair self-help guide titled My Vision For a New You. His work has been published all over the world and he has won numerous awards.

Philip Barrett has been self-publishing comics since 2001, including writing and drawing 9 issues of his catch-all title 'Matter' and contributing to numerous anthologies. With Liam Geraghty he has produced 'Gazebo' and 'The Littlest Arsonist'. In 2010 the Verbal Arts Centre in Derry published Philip's 'best-of' collection 'The Human in Me'. He is a co-founder of Edition Book Arts which celebrates the craft of the book and self-publishing. Philip helped get the ball rolling on the regular Dublin Comic Jam and is particularly interested in how good comics are at documenting the collision between the worlds of the fantastical and the mundane.

Mel Gibson is a UK based comics scholar, consultant and Senior Lecturer at Northumbria University. She has run training events about comics and graphic novels for libraries, schools and other organisations since 1993. Her published research has addressed such varied topics as girls’ comics, picture books, children's literature, graphic novels and manga.

I refer of course to the classic 70s/80s version. The version I collected as a kid. Back when everything was 100% objectively better in every conceivable way than things are now. The contemporary versions – like the diabolic abomination that is/was reimagined roller-bladin' Pepsi Max Action Man – are utterly soulless affairs. Dreamed up by besuited corporate dullards. Crap and cynical tie-ins for crap and cynical "franchises".

Though the slick and lifeless images are bad enough – smothered, as they are, in a processed CGI-cling-film sheen – it's the arbitrary and WTF-like nature of the individual category scores that most offend my nerd-child sensibilities. As a young fella I genuinely believed that Waddington's employed teams of cool and dispassionate boffins (boffins swayed by neither whim nor fleeting fancy) to assign a particular card its values. They were, basically, androids – who'd crunch all available data before deciding that Fu Manchu warranted a "Fear Factor" rating of 74. No less. No more.

Today's Trumps (with their chimps and typewriters approach) either reveal this belief to be the product of wide-eyed boyhood naivety, or else the makers (as I suspect) just give much less of a shit now. Sure the kids will lap up any old crap as long as Harry-fucking-Potter-cock is on the box.

Anyway, that lengthy old-mannish rant is but an excuse to showcase some of the crude beauties of yore. All of these were once in my possession. Now gone. All utterly gone forever. *sob*

The Fiend. Not (by any means) the most formidable card in the Horror pack (or packs, there were two) but a clean decapitation with a single swipe? Kudos. No skimping on the gore either. Yay!

Venus? Goddess of love and beauty. Venusians? Unfeeling hackers-off of prisoners' heads.

Yes, Death was actually a playable card. Death! And he looked weird. And he kicked ass (check out those stats). Have to question a "Killing Power" of (a mere) 95 out of 100 though, for a character who, y'know, is death itself.

The "Spacecraft" set was another favourite. One offering delightful (and incongruous) mash-ups that gleefully erased boring old divisions between science fact and science fiction. Ever wanted to know who'd win in a "fight" between the Viking 1 Mars Lander…

…and an "Imperial Space Cruiser" (a.k.a Imperial Star Destroyer)?

Top Trumps once had the answers. To this, and all other questions.

He was a gent throughout, expounding at length on such subjects as – sharing a stage with Laurel & Hardy, the failings of Fortycoats, colicky horses and much, much more.

By way of small (but long) tribute to the great man I dip into the archives and reprint the interview in its entirety.

May he rest in peace.

Part 1

To begin with, Eugene, can you tell us a little bit about how you first got involved in puppetry?

Well, I actually started doing puppets when I was a child, 8 years of age, when I got some books on it. My father was a county librarian in Sligo, I’m originally from Sligo by the way. Anyway, I made a ventriloquist’s doll when I was about 10 and after that I used to do school concerts and shows for the boy scouts and all that sort of thing. So that was the beginning.

You spent 7 successful years, I believe, with Jury’s cabaret performing as a ventriloquist with your dummy/companion Finnegan. Was ventriloquism a popular form of entertainment on the Irish variety circuit at the time?

Well no, not really. There were only about two ventriloquists around! So when I started doing it I had no idea that there was even such a thing as a ventriloquist. (laughs)

Was it literally then a case of just getting a book from the library and teaching yourself?

Well I actually started doing ventriloquism without a book at all. I’ve always mimicked and done voices and all that sort of thing, so it was a really just the next step from the other puppets I used to make…deciding to make a puppet that could move its mouth.

So if that was the very beginning of your interest in puppetry, how did you then get involved in it professionally?

Well, I was doing those concerts…and…you see my father died when I was 15 so I had to leave college, but I did go to the Tec for a few years, and I was always very good at making things with my hands. Then I actually became a fitter in Denny’s Bacon factory in Sligo, but I still used to do parochial concerts, and that, with the ventriloquism.

Then I came to Dublin…and we got married in 1950, Mai and I, we were only 22! So we came to Dublin and, as I always tell the story, we only had two cases. All our belongings were in one, and my puppet was in the other. That, and ten shillings…that’s what we came to Dublin with, you know. By the way, the dummy I had then was actually a predecessor of Finnegan, a character called Frankie.

Anyway, we came to Dublin and I got a job in refrigeration, in 'Re-cold', 27 Pearse St. It’s actually the Pearse Museum now, that building there…but it used to be a company called 'Re-Cold'. So, I was working in the fridges there when Mai entered me for a talent competition in James’ St. Hall. I won the competition and a chap saw me, he was a magician, and he brought me down to the Queen’s Theatre, which also used to be in Pearse St. So I got on in the Queen’s and that was really the first sort of professional break that I had. I did a lot of weeks in the Queen’s, before going on to play in the Capitol Theatre, which was beside the GPO, and the Olympia. In 1954 I actually played with Laurel and Hardy in the Olympia!

Around that time someone saw my act and I ended up going to England for 18 months, touring on the Musical Hall circuit. Nobody could do that now, of course, because it’s all gone. But it was a wonderful experience…and that, I suppose, is where I got my proper theatrical experience.

You said there weren’t many ventriloquist acts in Ireland at the time, but presumably there were quite a few on the Music Hall scene…

Well there was a famous ventriloquist called Terry Hall, and he was in the show in the Olympia when I was in the Capitol, and…I don’t know whether you ever remember Lenny the Lion?

Em…a bit before my time I'm afraid…

He was actually on the BBC…he had a BBC show…and Terry had left the show in the Olympia to do that, which is how I got the job! So, I went on tour then …I remember the first stage of the tour was in Cork in the Old Opera House, and when that finished I went to England and toured for 18 months as I’ve said. After that I came back to Dublin, and started doing dinners, children’s parties etc., but I also had a day job!

I also believe that you used to perform with Finnegan on a popular RTÉ radio program. Hearing this reminded me of a scene in Woody Allen’s Radio Days where one of the characters protests at the presence of a ventriloquist on the radio, asking (the fairly obvious question) "How do we know he's not moving his lips?". Was that ever an issue for you?

(laughs) Well no, not really. Charlie McCarthy was extremely successful in America on the radio, and then you had Peter Brough with Archie Andrews on the BBC [in a show called Educating Archie], and then, of course, I was here.

Take the Floor was a show on Radio Éireann with a man called Dinjo…and it was a huge success, and I toured around the country doing concerts with him, mainly Sunday nights…or the whole weekend in some places…and, of course, did the day job as well. We’d travel to Killarney and back in the one day and then have to go in to work in the morning!

I actually also had a children’s program called Finnegan Picks the Music on the radio…and that would have been way back in the 50s and the early 60s.

And what was the format of that?

Well it was based around Children’s records…which unfortunately you never hear now. I know people say that kids now are into pop music and all that, but they never hear the likes of Burl Ives and those songs…those wonderful children’s songs that he had. But there were a whole lot of these songs you know…Danny Kaye, for example, had hundreds of children’s songs. So I used to play those kind of records and then do a little bit of dialogue between songs with Finnegan and myself.

And then in 1963, I entered an idea to Telifís Éireann, and that’s where the other puppetry started…with a show called Murphy agus a Chairde. The idea I submitted was actually a marionette show, and from that I got what they call a 'test'. So it was all based around marionettes, which I had to make, and Mai (my wife), and my eldest daughter manipulated them with me. The other children (we had ten in the family) were very small at the time.

At the same time I was doing "Gaels of Laughter" in the Gaiety with Maureen Potter, as well as seven nights a week in Jury’s Cabaret in Dame St. So I had to give up the day job at that stage…as the money was pretty poor in comparison…

What was the money like in Telifís Éireann at the time, if you don’t mind me asking?

It was never good you know…but it was a lot better than the day job! (laughs)

So then, on the television front, Murphy agus a Chairde ran up until 1968 (5 years in all), and in the meantime I had met a wonderful director called Don Lennox and we started discussing further programs…and Wanderly Wagon came out of that and ran from 1968 up until 1982.

Part 2

Ok, Eugene, if we could just talk a little about the origins of Wanderly. Who takes the credit for the initial concept of a show based around a ‘magical wagon’?

That was a joint idea between myself and [director] Don Lennox. We had a lot of ideas at the time…but then of course they brought in writers…there were a lot of writers. We probably had, oh, 7 or 8 writers over the years.

Is it true that Pat Ingoldsby wrote some episodes?

Oh yes, Pat Ingoldsby wrote for us…Neil Jordan too! Then there was Carolyn Swift, Gordon Snell, Michael Judge…and a lot more.

I’ve heard you mention that Judge and Mr. Crow (the two most iconic puppet characters) were there from the very beginning of Wanderly, but had they ever been used prior to that (in Murphy agus a Chairde for example)?

Oh no, they were all different. They were all specially created for the show – Judge, and Mr. Crow, and Foxy, the squirrels, the mice, and Sneaky Snake – they were all our own original ideas for Wanderly Wagon.

According to the recent documentary made about the family, Pulling the Strings, you were originally only supposed to supply the puppets, but eventually found yourself playing the 'Jovial character' that Wanderly Wagon needed.

That’s right yes, originally. I had done some straight acting before that though. I was in the Abbey Theatre production of At Swim-Two-Birds [an Adaptation of Flann O'Brien's novel by Audrey Welsh] where I played the Pooka.

Oh Right!

…and did the ventriloquism for the Good Fairy who was an invisible character. Alan Simpson, Lord have Mercy on Him, was the director of that…an absolutely wonderful man. It was a wonderful production.

I also acted in a children’s play, a Robert Bolt play…in the Eblana theatre, which is gone now…and I did pantomime, of course, and a few other things too. I actually did several pantomimes with Maureen Potter in the Gaiety.

Of course when I did the ventriloquism it was really more adult shows and cabaret, but through television, then, I became known more as a children’s entertainer than an adult entertainer…

What about the casting of Nora O’ Mahony? Had you known her before, and what was she like to work with (and as a person)?

Nora O’Mahony of course was Godmother, and I knew of her…you know. She was a very famous actress actually, and had played in several films in Hollywood. One of the last ones she did was Darby O’Gill and the Little People, do you know that one?

I do indeed, with Jimmy O'Dea, Sean Connery etc.

Yes, they showed it quite recently…she was the barmaid [Molly Malloy] in that, so if you ever see it again you’ll know to watch out for her. She was a lovely person…but she gave it all up and went to work as a lay missionary in Rhodesia, and she was Bishop Lamont’s secretary for many years until she got a tropical disease, a kidney disease, and she was invalided home. After that she started reading letters on The Frank Hall Show on television, and that’s how we discovered her for Wanderly Wagon.

I believe that Rory (Bill Golding) left the show in 1974, though I don’t recall this personally I might add. I’ve read that the character "left the team early deciding to help the moon mice repair the moon with the help of some cheese". Is this true, and what are your memories of Bill?

He was a wonderful actor and he played several characters. He played Fortycoats¹ actually, with his flying sweetshop (The flying sweetshop was my idea, by the way).

And yes, what you read is true, himself and Foxy went off to repair the moon with the mice!

But Bill was always very busy because he did a lot of commercials and he did a lot of straight acting in the Gate Theatre and that…

Someone told me that he actually does the voice of "Ould Mr. Brennan".² Is that right?!

Yeah, that’s actually the voice he used to do for Fortycoats, the original Fortycoats! Now after Wanderly Wagon finished they did a program called Fortycoats & Co.…which was a rehash of our program…

So you (the Lamberts) didn't have anything to do with that show?

No, we’d nothing to do with that at all…but they actually rehashed some of our scripts, you know. Anyway, it was never as popular as Wanderly Wagon! (laughs)

Frank Kelly is another fondly remembered Wanderly regular. What are your memories of working with Frank?

Well Frank Kelly actually wrote quite a lot of Wanderly Wagon and then he played several characters over the years, the last one (of course) being Dr. Astro. But he had played several others…I remember he played a pirate – I forget his name now [Ed: Possibly 'Long John Gold'?] – and he was a brother..a monk! And, of course, he did the voice of Sneaky Snake. He was a very versatile man, though he’s now (of course) best know for Fr. Jack!

There’s a scene in the documentary where Jim O’Hare talks about the actual design of the wagon. Can you tell us a little bit about how it was first created?

Yes, Jim was the designer, and he worked in Telifís Éireann. The wagon was designed on a dray…CIE used to have these horse drays and it was on one of those. And we actually bought the original horse, Telifís Éireann owned him…Pádraig the Horse! We did a lot of filming of putting on the harness, and feeding him, and hooking him up to the wagon and all that…but there was actually a new lawn laid in Telifís Éireann, because it was quite a new building back then, and the poor horse ate the grass, got colic, and died.

Oh dear…

The thing was that nobody knew because we were still using all the footage we'd shot of the horse and the wagon! Then over the years they hired several other horses, but the kids never really seemed to mind that they were different. We had a piebald horse, and a brown horse…but it was just accepted! (laughs)

And, of course, we did a lot of the St. Patrick's Day parades with the wagon and the various horses.

So it was actually a properly functioning wagon then?

That’s right. Oh it was, yeah.

But the interior was obviously a set…

Yes, it was a separate set, and that was always a bit of a shock to the kids when they had a look inside!

I presume that the wagon was designed, from the beginning, with puppetry in mind?

Oh yes, it was. The downpipe was for Crow, and there was a barrel where Sneaky Snake was operated and so on. There was actually a fair bit of room inside, but it still used to be cramped enough when all the puppets and puppeteers were in there.

Jim also suggests that the original intention was for the show to be an outside broadcast, with the wagon (physically) travelling around Ireland every week? Was that the case?

Yes, but we very seldom travelled anywhere! We had it down in Clonmel at a big parade one time…and I’m sure there’s footage somewhere, because that was filmed…so it’s around somewhere.

Would be great to dig that up. So, basically, despite the initial concept, the show pretty quickly became almost exclusively studio based…

That’s right, but we did do a few outside things. I remember we had it in Powerscourt a few times, and Stephen's Green on several occasions. Whenever we actually went anywhere thousands of people used to turn up! We also had it in Birr, and a few festivals here and there but originally it was supposed to travel a lot more.

Part 3

So what's become of the actual wagon now Eugene? The documentary [Pulling the Strings] seemed to suggest that it has become the property of Fossett's Circus….

It used to be outside Telifís Éireann [in Donnybrook] for a long time, literally falling asunder, until Eddie Fossett took it. He then (thankfully) decided to repair it, so he has it in storage now.

Actually, for the second last Late Late Show with Gay Byrne, Gay said he would love to have the wagon on…but nobody knew where it was! Then, by accident, I found out where it was through doing the Punch and Judy Act in the Peter Ustinov film version of The Old Curiosity Shop. I didn't appear myself, but I did (as I say) do the Punch and Judy in it, and there were also some of Eddie Fossett's jugglers and acrobats involved. Anyway, Eddie and I got chatting and he said "You know, I have the wagon!" (laughs) So that’s how I got to find out.

Then, about 4 years ago, we had it up in the National Museum in Collins' Barracks, and we had about five thousand turn up to see it…mostly adults!

So is it back in Fossett's now?

Yes, it's back in Fossett's. It's there and it can be hired out.

You've suggested that you felt that you (and the family) lost control of Wanderly Wagon, somewhat, around the time it made the transition to colour, as it no longer felt like "a live show". How had things changed exactly?

In the early black and white days they couldn't edit the tape, so you did the show from beginning to end and if anything went wrong you had to start again. But then when it went into colour and they started to have editing facilities, they began to do shows simultaneously, so we'd do the interiors (say) for two different shows together. That made continuity very difficult …it became more of a technical show…and it was much more difficult to work like that for me.

I know that Wanderly was one of the first Irish TV shows (if not the first) to use 'Chroma Key' (or 'Colour Separation Overlay'), thus allowing the wagon to enter more fantastical realms (under the sea, outer space etc). What are your memories of working with that technology?

Well there were wonderful things you could do, of course. Suddenly the wagon could fly, and I remember we used helicopter footage that they had, and showed the wagon flying out to Cappagh Hospital, and all the other children's hospitals we used to visit at Christmas.

In general, how much freedom, did you have from RTÉ creatively?

Well we were always allowed to come up with ideas, and I was consulted about the different things we could actually do with puppets. So…over the years we came up with a lot of the puppetry ideas that made the show what it was.

How tight was the schedule in terms of getting the shows finished on time?

We used to rehearse for two days, and then we’d be in the studio for a full day, but it was never enough time, never enough time…

Then there were also sessions doing songs, recording songs and so on with Jim Doherty who used to do the music. There were a lot of different song-writers and composers too, over the years.

Were the mythical/folkloric elements of the show something you personally felt interested in, or did they (instead) spring simply from the imaginations of individual writers?

Well that really only featured in the later episodes like the ones they're after doing for the DVD, and 'Chroma Key' was used a lot in those ones. But we really didn't do that kind of 'Irish folklore' thing too often before that. We had some great episodes, though, in the early years, like 'Upside-Down land'…and…some of the early ones were marvellous really. All done without the special effects too.

I’ve heard that many (if not most) of RTÉ’s Wanderly Wagon tapes were erased/re-used due to cost-cutting techniques prevalent at the time. How much material actually remains in the archives, do you know?

Well they were big, wide tapes and they used to use them over and over. I was originally told that most of the tapes were gone, but there are still quite a few left…probably 150 tapes at least. Of course, we must have done an awful lot more that that over the years…so it's a great shame. But it was common practice at the time, and the BBC used to have the same problem.

For example, for all the years we did Murphy agus a Chairde (5 years) there's none of it left. Well, there's a little 2 minute clip…or it mightn't even be 2 minutes…in the documentary, and that survived because it was on film. It was a documentary about Telifís Éireann that happened to be filming at the time.

But in the coming years they're going to allow me to go through the archives and pick out ones that I'd like. I'll hopefully even be able to get something out of the tapes that are damaged, and I could always link up the fragments with inserts from Judge and myself.

So there'll definitely be more material coming out on DVD?

Yes, [the first volume] was a great success last year with over 30,000 copies sold. I didn't really have that much to do with it, they really only gave it to me to OK, but if I'd had the choice I wouldn't have picked the ones they picked. If I'd had the time I might have chosen something else but by the time they came to me it was already November so…

Anyway, it was EMI that did it and it took a long time to get Telifís Éireann to release the material, but because of the success they're definitely going to do more.

Finally, Eugene, could you tell us a little bit about the 'International Puppetry Festival' you're currently organising?

The puppetry festival is in its 13th year, and we're working hard on it at the moment. We're hoping to have a Russian company, a Mexican company, and a group from Iran would you believe! They're three girl puppeteers from Iran and it would be a great coup if we could get them.

As well as our own theatre we'll also be using the Pavilion this year, for the Russian one. It's not all finalised yet but we're hoping it'll be a very good festival.

1. The character of Fortycoats seems to have been named after a real-life Dublin 'character'…or possibly more than one, as Wikipedia explains:
   

   The name Johnny Fortycoats first appears in Dublin folklore in the 1930s. It may perhaps have been applied to more than one person, including one of a couple of tramps who walked the coast of Dublin at the time of the television series. A wild looking man, universally recognized (Dublin is a large village), harmless as anyone knew. He was far removed from the world of television. It was his habit to wear several coats, hence the nickname.

   [back]

2. For those who don't know, 'Ould Mr. Brennan' is a famous Irish, uber-Dub, radio character who advertises "Brennan's Bread"…in pretty maudlin style. [back]

This is why ad agencies should be paying me the big massive bucks. But they're afraid. Too afraid…

The damn spineless & hidebound fools!

No more gif(t)s for you tomorrow. You've had enough.

Final gif(t) tomorrow.