The Eejit

Chapter 6 If I Should Fall From Grace With God

The only other place to give us a chance was a very large Irish pub / venue in Stockwell called The Swan.

The Swan can be found on the corner of Clapham Road and Stockwell Road in South London. It's a large and utilitarian looking building with several floors, bang opposite Stockwell tube station.

'Old Patsy' Sheehan and his wife Eileen were the owners of The Swan. and their sons, Jon and (young) Patsy ran the place, and they ran a very tight ship indeed. Eileen, or Mama Swan as we affectionately called her, was indeed the matriarch and perish the thought that you should fall foul of her. I really liked her. She was considerably taller and more physically impressive than her husband, who made up for his hirsuteness with a rapier charm, a studied and disarming self - effacement and an admirable ability to buy everyone a drink all the time. Old Patsy was very good at playing the eejit but only foolish people indeed would have imagined that he actually was. He had built an empire in the heart of London at a time when the Irish were not supposed to be successful.

His sons, Patsy and Jon, played good cop and bad cop respectively but both were very nice men, although you wouldn't want a fight with Jon. Patsy was the visionary; he loved music and would listen to all the tapes that young aspiring bands had sent in. I cannot tell you how important that is to the bands that take the time to create these tapes and Patsy took the responsibility seriously. Jon ran the business. He was no nonsense and as hard as nails but he was also deeply fair. He always dressed smartly and I imagined that between the early morning beer deliveries and the 3am closure of the upstairs venue, The Swan's Nest, he probably never slept. Collectively the Sheehans owned and ran The Swan and also The Venue (in New Cross), somewhere in North London, a pub called the Belle View in Clapham, several places in Co Kerry and other parts of Ireland, and a collection of thoroughbred race horses trained and stabled at a large stud farm in Sussex and a successful hair salon that specialised in making the Irish and West Indian ladies of South London all look smashing.

The Swan was a big place indeed. It had a large bar area with a stage downstairs and an even larger version of this upstairs called The Swan's Nest. The upstairs bar was the venue for the weekly Thursday, Friday and Saturday night Swan Disco to which the young London – Irish population swarmed so faithfully. This happy ghetto stemmed from a time when, contrary to popular myth, it wasn't trendy to be Irish. The numbers of people present provided a safety net against those who thought that all the Irish were murderers and deserved a good beating. I well remember this time. The 'No Blacks, No Irish' signs proudly and ignorantly emblazened on the doors of grotty London guest houses and pubs; I remember getting several beatings at school off the older boys during the seventies and early eighties at the height of the IRA's bombing campaign because, whilst I never had an accent, I was deemed Irish enough to warrant it on account of my parentage.

The Irish in London had long existed on the fringes of society despite being everywhere, hidden in plain sight. Hidden in churches, hidden on building sites, hidden in hospitals, hidden in pubs and boarding houses. The Irish pubs of the 70's and 80's were not the neon lit, theme parks to drink tourism that they have subsequently become. They were quiet, solemn and hidden; a dark and wretched refuge from a life of exile and isolation in a country where you were the enemy within. Such venues as existed for the ex-patriot community in London, such as the Hibernian Club in Fulham and the Galtymore in Cricklewood were heavily self - policed by big, burly men and often, even bigger burlier women.

The turning point in London for my generation was the arrival of a band called The Pogues. Led by Shane MacGowan, himself the son of Irish immigrants to this country, this ensemble of other London Irish musicians turned the sacred music of our parents (so often hidden) former lives on its head and pulled it inside out, rolled it's sleeves up and gave it all a whole new meaning and transformed the experience of being second generation Irish. It was fantastic. Going to the Brixton Academy with 4000 other mostly second generation Irish, my own age, all pogoing up and down to punked up, 150 mph versions of our parents favourite songs was a truly religious experience. "If I should fall from grace with God where no doctor can relieve me, if I'm buried 'neath the sand where the angels can't retrieve me, let me go boys" they sang and we understood. Then we were proud to be Irish, we were there in large numbers and then we became trendy. Oddly enough though, as being young and Irish became trendy, the same types who had duffed us all in the playgrounds were busy denouncing us as not really Irish or as plastic Paddies which is a horrible racist phrase but – and here's the thing – we didn't give a shit. Our day had come and a process had started that would change the whole experience of being a second genner forever.