VINCENT BROWNE SHOW 1998:BRENDAN BEHAN SPECIAL
Oct 26th, 2008 by Conor McCabe
I came across an old tape today, of a Vincent Browne Show special on Brendan Behan from 1998, on the occasion of what would have been the author’s 75th birthday. His guests that night included Carolyn Swift, Ulick O’Connor, and Brian Behan. It’s about forty minutes long, and the tape runs out before the end of the show. However, it’s quite an interesting memoir of the man and his work.
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Enjoy.
While at UCD, I lived in a flat on Anglesea Road, which runs along the side of the RDS showgrounds, during the period 1963-64. My double bedsitter was seven doors away from No. 5, then having a handpainted little notice attached to the front garden gate bearing the word ‘Cuig’. This was the home of the writer Brendan Behan, notorious for being an alcohol-fired hellraiser. I saw him around Dublin three times before his death early in 1964 aged 41, and each time he was unkempt and obviously under the influence. One Saturday night there was a late night concert of ballad singing at the Grafton Street News and Cartoon cinema at which he turned up, having emerged from a nearby hostelry after closing time. He took the microphone for a few minutes and crooned sluggishly through an Irish language song, then sat down alongside the advertised performers, swaying unsteadily.
I’ve read his autobiographical Borstal Boy and found it uplifting. He coped well with incarceration through the ebullience of his warmhearted personality. His garrulous storytelling and witticisms endeared him to warders and fellow prisoners. The Quare Fellow play was well received on the London stage and contributed to the atmosphere of public debate in Britain that ended with the abolition of the death penalty. I enjoyed the black and white film of the same title. His late books, some published posthumously, are an embarrassment, having been dictated erratically between drinking bouts into a taperecording device supplied to him by the publisher. Succeeding generations of Irish writers have tried to live steadier lives and to cultivate more temperate public profiles.
What a lovely comment. Cheers for that, Gar.
I’ve just had the chance to listen to Vincent Browne’s radio show about Behan, and commend readers to the percipient comments of Colbert Kearney on Behan’s literary talent and natural intelligence. Incidentally, I liked the short story The Confirmation Suit, anthologized by Augustine Martin in that excellent school book. Some years ago I was also impressed by a Behan novella (or long short story if you care to call it) The Scarperer, a crime-adventure story originally serialised in a newspaper before Behan achieved deserved fame with his Borstal Boy. In paperback it appeared some time after the writer’s death. Apparently The Scarperer appeared in the newspaper either under a pseudonym or without attribution and was resurrected for posterity by some eagle-eyed literary buff who drew it to the attention of Arrow paperback book publishers in England. The sharp Dublin wit and verbal punchiness is evident in the writing of that piece. Behan loved life and humanity but destroyed his enjoyment of it with alcohol abuse.